The Lucky in Love Collection - Lauren Blakely Page 0,138

it is.

“Definitely. That’s what it usually is,” Hunter says, staying chipper. God knows I need it.

We arrive with the fire department not far behind.

But we don’t stay long.

Because she’s not suffering from anxiety. This is the real deal.

We rush her to the ER, and I hope and I pray and I plead for someone, anyone to look out for this woman who could be my sister.

She’s too young to go. Too healthy—on the surface—to be heading to meet her maker.

Anxiety claws at me for the next few hours, and I do my best to keep it at bay as we tend to other calls. I need blinders something fierce today.

“You okay?” Hunter asks at one point.

“Just thinking about my sister. She’s the same age.”

He sighs sympathetically then claps my shoulder. “She’s in the best hands possible, that woman.”

I nod, trying to believe she’ll come through. “She is.”

“Let’s just keep doing what we can, okay?”

“Definitely.”

But an hour later, when we’re back at the hospital, dropping off a skinny dude who had a bad fall at work, one of the nurses tells me the thirty-six-year-old didn’t make it.

My throat squeezes. “For real?”

“Yes.”

I wince, wishing fervently she was delivering some other sentence. This cruel news winds its way through me, tightening every muscle, squeezing every organ.

I tell myself she’s just a patient, just a call, just another day.

But this one hits closer to home. Maybe I’m raw already from last night with Perri. Or maybe it’s the pile-on. Whatever it is, my heart is leaden. My feet are heavy, and all I have left to hope for is that the car accident patients from earlier are okay.

The nurse says they’re stable, and that gives me some glimmer that I’m not a grim reaper, spending a day collecting souls.

When I find Hunter at the ambulance, his face is tense. “What’s the 411?”

“She’s gone,” I say, gritting my teeth.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Me too.”

Even though she has nothing to do with me. I don’t know her from Eve. But this loss is shoving its way under my ribs and setting up camp in my chest.

Battered and bruised when I leave at the end of the shift, I mutter a toneless good night to Hunter before I hop on my bike and head home as the sun rises.

Only, I don’t want to go home. It doesn’t feel like home anymore.

All I want is to see Perri, talk to her, tell her about my day, and then get lost in each other and forget what went down for me and what went down for her. Just be there for each other through the shitty times.

Curl up with my woman, get close to her, and reconnect to the living, to everything that makes us keep going in these jobs that can drain us dry.

I want to smell her hair, kiss her skin, and feel like she’s my reason.

But there’s a big fat problem. She’s not my woman. She doesn’t want me to be her man.

I drive past her house. It’s hers, not mine. I head to see Jodie.

34

Perri

“You’re going to get another shot at another promotion,” Arden says, encouraging me in the way only she and Vanessa can. “I know it.”

We’re sequestered in the back booth of Helen’s Diner, away from the handful of others here at this early hour. “You’re right,” I admit, wiping away the last tear I’m going to let fall.

“It sucks that this one didn’t happen. But there might be politics or who knows what involved,” Vanessa adds. “Look, I run my own business. So does Arden. The reality is there are a million things that go into these decisions, and sometimes we make the right ones as bosses and sometimes we make the wrong ones. And sometimes things just happen in their own time.”

I nod, my heart rate settling, my self-loathing dissipating. Vanessa makes a good point. The reality is, I’m good at my job. I simply didn’t get this promotion because—I didn’t get it. Not because of Derek, and not because I was distracted. I wasn’t distracted at work. Someone else earned the job. I take a deep breath. “It’s silly to get so worked up. I should be happy for Elias.”

Arden tucks a strand of blonde hair over her ear. “You can be happy for him and be disappointed for yourself. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“Exactly. You’re not required to operate your emotions like you administer the law. Emotions aren’t black or white, right or wrong. Sometimes we feel twenty-one emotions