Chapter 4
Four
I t was just after midnight when Bennett parked his truck and strode purposefully toward the hospital’s entrance. The electronic doors under the red “Emergency Room” sign opened with a soft swoosh. The girl working behind the desk looked up, and recognizing him as the local lovelorn idiot, offered him a polite smile as she returned to her paperwork. He could feel the side-eye as he walked past and he wasn’t even out of earshot when she started whispering to her coworker.
There was no denying that it was probably a huge mistake to come back. Clayton had called his aunt’s house and left a message on her answering machine that Mia was okay, but that wasn’t good enough. Bennett needed more than just okay.
He took the stairs up to the second floor. There were only two floors for the whole hospital and all of the patient rooms were up. At the nurse’s station was a girl both he and Mia had gone to high school with.
“Hey, Stace,” he greeted her. “I wanted to check on Mia.”
She glanced up at him, clearly surprised and more than a little worried. “Bennett, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I pulled her out of that creek, Stacy. I ought to be able to find out how the hell she’s doing,” he replied, trying to keep his tone reasonable.
She bit her lip and gave a sideways glance at the other nurses who were on duty, all of whom pretended to be blissfully unaware of what was going on. “I can’t tell you anything about her condition, but her family did sign a release to acknowledge that she’s here and to allow visitors. Visiting hours are technically over, but if you wanted to come back tomorrow and see her, she’s in room two-twenty-eight. It’s just around the corner.”
Bennett smiled at her. “You’re a lifesaver, Stacy. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me! Make your sister give me a big discount the next time I go to her store!”
He chuckled as he walked away. “Will do.”
Around the corner and just out of sight of the nurse’s station, he opened the door to Mia’s room softly. He wanted to see her, to make certain for himself that she was okay, but if she was asleep, he’d leave her be.
The room was dark, save for the small amount of light that filtered in from the hallway. Approaching the bed, Bennett noted the bruises that marred her pale skin. They’d bloomed furiously in the hours since the accident, but he didn’t doubt that over the next few days they’d get worse.
More tired than he’d been in a very long time, the events of the day finally catching up to him, he sank down onto the chair beside her bed.
It shouldn’t have mattered so much. She should have been out of his system ages ago. But she wasn’t, and he very much feared that she never would be. She’d dug in deep and there was no getting her out.
He cursed softly, but in the silence of the room, it was still enough to wake her. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked up, confused, disoriented, and then her gaze settled on him.
“Bennett?”
“I just came to make sure you were all right,” he said. “Are you in pain?”
“A little, but I think it’s more of a hangover than anything else,” she replied, her speech slightly slurred.
He smiled. “I think driving your car over an embankment and into a creek might be contributing to that as much as the pain meds.”
“I didn’t,” she said.
The hot clutch of fear was back. “Don’t you remember?”
She gave him a look that clearly stated he was a moron. “Of course I remember. But there was another car there, Bennett. I swerved to miss them and when my car stopped, the back wheels were right there on the edge.”
“So how’d you wind up in the creek then?”
“They pushed me,” she replied calmly. “They drove their car right up to mine and pushed me over the edge.”
The statement was made so matter-of-factly, that even as insane as it sounded, Bennett didn’t dismiss it outright. “Are you sure about that?”
“Yes. I’m sure. Didn’t you see them driving away?”
“No,” he answered. The truth was that his attention had been on a break in the trees on the opposite side of the creek bank, just across the bridge. Anytime he was behind her on that road, he’d watch to see her driving around those hairpin turns at a speed that made him sweat. When he hadn’t seen it, he’d known something was horribly wrong. “I just saw all the debris and the churned-up mud. I got out to look and saw your car sinking.”
She shivered.
Noting her reaction, he offered. “Let’s not talk about this now. I’ll look into it.”
“Swear to me. Don’t just placate me because you think I’m drugged out of my mind!” she insisted.
“I promise.”
A sad smile curved her lips. “And you always keep your promises.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “All that was a long time ago.”
“Sometimes it feels like a lifetime.”
He hadn’t meant to bring up the past, though it was always present between them, a hovering ghost that gave neither of them any peace. Changing the subject, he focused on the here and now. “What kind of car was it?”
She frowned. “Big. Dark color. SUV. I don’t know. I can’t really think right now.”
Bennett rose to his feet. On impulse, he leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead. It was an innocent gesture, utterly lacking in any carnal thought or intent. Even then, it was still electric. Touching her, being so close to her, it was salt in the wound.
“I’ll let you know what I find.” He stepped back from the hospital bed and headed for the door and the looming shadow of Clayton Darcy.
“I told you I’d let you know how she was,” Clayton reminded him coolly.
Not in the mood to be taken to task, Bennett cocked an eyebrow at him. “Because a Darcy is as good as their word, right?”
“This is trouble—you are trouble for her.” Clayton made the statement dispassionately, as if matters were always that simple, that black and white.
“I’m not here for trouble. I needed to know she was okay and a secondhand account wasn’t good enough. Just because I haven’t knocked the shit out of you, doesn’t mean I won’t. I’m not a scrawny kid anymore and any advantage you had a decade ago is long gone now,” Bennett replied firmly. He wasn’t going to be bullied by them. The Darcy money and the Darcy name had kept him from the one thing he wanted most in life and he was done with it.
“I’m not threatening you, Bennett.” Clayton kept his cool. His voice never rose and his expression remained calm. “I’m just stating the obvious. I know you loved her. I know she loved you. But neither one of you could have handled the shit storm that would have rained down on you if you’d been allowed to go through with your harebrained plan.”
“We’ll never know. You and your worthless asshole of a father made sure of that.”
“I asked you to leave that night,” Clayton said, “and when you wouldn’t, I made you leave. If I hadn’t, Samuel would have put a bullet in you. Mia didn’t need that. She’d lost enough already.”
Bennett sneered at him. “Am I supposed to thank you for that?”
Clayton moved toward him. “You were kids who thought you could live on love. You had no job, no prospects, no way to support her. Mia’s never known poverty. Did you really want to be the dickhead who not only introduced her to it but forced her to live in it?”
That statement echoed the doubts and recriminations that Bennett had battled for the last ten years. He met Clayton’s questioning gaze directly, his jaw clenched and fists tight. He hated having the smug fucker in his head. “Is there a point to this conversation or are you just gonna keep wasting my time?”
Clayton cocked his head to one side and then said simply, “You’re not a broke kid anymore, and Mia’s not a wide-eyed little girl. So what the hell is stopping you now?”
Bennett didn’t have an answer for that. Habit. Fear. Resignation. There were a dozen excuses, but not a one of them was enough . “You and I both know Samuel would never let it stand.”
Clayton shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “If you want her, go after her, and leave Samuel to me.”
“What kind of game are you playing?” Bennett demanded. The swirling mix of anger and hope inside him left him reeling, unsteady. It wasn’t a feeling he liked.
“No games. I’ve only ever done what I thought was best for her. That’ll never change.”
Bennett didn’t say anything else as Clayton moved past him and into Mia’s hospital room. Of course, he didn’t need to. Clayton had dropped the bomb and walked away.
“Goddamn the Darcys,” he muttered as he made his way toward the stairs. He needed out, he needed to think, and above all, he needed to figure out if he was willing to take the risk of letting Mia rip his heart out again.
As Bennett left the hospital, his mind was preoccupied with the conversation that had just taken place with Clayton, and honestly, with Mia. She was always taking up space in his mind, whether he wanted to admit it or not. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but he sure as hell believed in hauntings. There was no other way to describe how she made him feel.
Focused on her, on the turmoil that was churning inside him and eating him up, he didn’t notice the dark SUV parked at the back of the parking lot, partially in shadow and all but invisible in the night.
Climbing behind the wheel of his truck, Bennett headed for his house, the lonely solace of the big bed he’d be sleeping in alone. Except for Slick, he thought with a smile. The dog would be there, snoring and farting all night, whether he liked it or not.
Easing the truck onto the road, he was nearly at the end of the street before the black SUV pulled out of the hospital parking lot and followed him at a distance.