Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake #5) - Rachel Caine Page 0,91

harassing you?”

“Because I was helping Kez.” Also true. Just not completely accurate.

“Well, like I said, you get the hell out. Now.”

I just nod. I don’t want to promise him anything, because I know that we’ve gone way past that particular exit. Maybe there never was an exit at all; maybe the second I went to that pond, the second he saw me there, he intended to come for me. I don’t know.

But I do know he’s coming. I just don’t know how he’ll do it, or how bad it will be. He promised I’d have a choice.

All I have to do is choose not to engage. I hope.

16

KEZIA

I hate hospitals worse than the woods. I hate being hooked up to tubes, and it’s strange but I’m scared to bend my arm in case something tears loose. I have nightmares, bad ones, but I can’t seem to wake up.

When I finally open my eyes again, Pop’s there, with Prester looming in the background. If we talk, it disappears into vague smears when I start to drop off again. He holds my hand; I feel the warmth of it like a promise. I have a blurry, unformed impulse to tell him about the baby, tell him the baby’s okay, but I don’t act on it before I slip away into dreamless rest.

When I wake up again, they’re gone. Instead there’s someone in the room placing a gigantic bouquet of flowers on the ledge across from my bed. It’s a vague shape in the dim light, and I blink to try to bring him—I’m pretty sure it’s a him—into more focus. He’s white, with close-cropped hair, wearing some kind of uniform jumpsuit and a baseball cap. I say, “Who sent those?”

“Don’t know, ma’am,” he says. “I just deliver them. There’s a card if that helps.”

I look over at the door, and the Knoxville police officer is there holding it open. He seems tired and impatient. “Okay, let’s go, buddy, let her get some rest. On your way.”

The deliveryman nods and half turns toward me. Says, “I hope you get well soon.”

When I blink again, he’s gone, the door’s closed, and I’m halfway convinced that I hallucinated the whole damn thing, except the flowers are still there. A riot of color in the otherwise bland room.

I sleep again, and it’s deep dark outside the window when I wake up. A nurse comes in and changes IV bags, takes my vitals. I need to pee, and she helps me drag my IV stand into the bathroom, then gets me back safe in bed. I feel pretty good, considering. Better than I expected. I tell her so.

“You’ll be sore by morning,” she tells me. “They’re taking you off most of the medications, but you tell me if you start feeling too bad, okay? Oh, and you have a visitor who arrived. It’s really late, and we don’t usually allow them, but he says he’s your boyfriend?”

“Javier?” I struggle to sit up. “Can you let him in, please?”

It occurs to me too late as the door opens that it might not really be Javier, that the man who crashed my car might have come back to finish the job, and I start to call out to the cop stationed outside . . . but then I just gasp. I cry hot tears of relief at the sight of Javier, really here, rushing toward me. Then he’s hugging me carefully, and I bury my nose in the crook of his neck and take in a deep breath. It carries the scent of him—mint soap, leather, sweat, a whiff of gunpowder. He’s still in his reserve fatigues. The hug turns to a kiss, and it fills me with warmth and the most perfect kind of peace.

I sigh into his mouth, and I think he feels that peace too. We don’t let go for a long moment, until the pain bites again and I wince. Then he eases me back to the pillow and drags a chair over to hold my hand. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he says. “You are okay, right?”

“Yes. And the baby’s fine too.” I have a vague, watercolor impression of most of the day, including the visit from Gwen, Sam, and the kids. I barely remember Pop and Prester’s presence, but I know they’ve been here. But the knowledge that my baby’s okay is completely, wonderfully clear. As is the love in Javier’s eyes. “They did tests. Everything’s going to be all right.” But even