36. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
ETHAN
T he room is dark and smells like antiseptic. It’s silent at first, but as I blink and shift, a loud cheer erupts.
“He’s awake.”
“Fucking finally.”
“Trio.” A chuckle. “Get it? Because you were shot three times.”
A scoff. “Lame.”
“What the fuck?” I grit out, scanning the crowd clustered around me.
“All right, all right. Everybody out. You can have your fun later,” a familiar voice demands.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, but when they do, I’m pretty sure I’m hallucinating.
“You, Ethan Michael,” a woman who can’t really be Victoria says, “had me worried half to death.” She leans in and places a chaste kiss to my cheek. “Can you believe that not one person in your family bothered to call me after you were shot? I had to hear about it from Daddy, and he only knew because he keeps a reporter on his payroll.”
She sits next to me, the movement sending a sharp pain through my chest and shoulder. What the fuck happened? The last thing I remember is staring into Kinzie’s eyes. A tug of a memory begins to form, but it’s cut off when there’s a loud knock at the door.
“Hello. I heard somebody was awake.” A tall brunette pulls back the curtains and shuffles her way toward me. “My name is Layla. I’ll be your nurse until Hailey arrives.” She walks around the bed and checks the various machines on either side before tapping on the screen of her tablet. “On a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst pain you’ve ever felt, how are you feeling?”
I groan. “Ten.”
“We’ve got you hooked up to IV pain meds, but we can increase the dosage if you’d like.”
“Oh, no, we can’t do that,” Victoria answers for me. “They’ll make him groggy, and we need him as lucid as possible. We’ll have an interview team up here in the next hour so he can make a public statement and take some photos.”
Layla frowns, her brows pulled low. “A what?”
“He needs to make a public statement telling the community that he’s okay and that he wasn’t responsible for the death of Everett Whatever-His-Last-Name-Was.”
“I’m sorry,” the nurse says, “but he just underwent extensive surgery. He’s in no shape to speak to the media. He still needs a lot of rest.”
“It won’t take long. He can rest afterward.”
Straightening her spine, Layla asks, “And who are you again?”
Victoria extends her hand and waves it in front of the woman’s face. “I’m his fiancée, Victoria Donnely. As in, Senator Donnely’s daughter. The same Donnely who funded the surgical unit of this hospital.”
A surprised cough escapes me, sending shooting pains through my body. Fiancée? How long was I out for? Where’s Kinzie? Fuck. Was she nothing but a dream while I was unconscious?
Layla holds a cup filled with ice-cold water close, aiming the straw toward my mouth. Expression flattening, she zeroes in on Victoria. “Let me be frank, Ms. Donnely. I don’t care if your father is the president of the United States or the Dalai Lama. The media will not be speaking to Officer Tate until we have his pain under control and he’s well rested.” She sets the water cup on the rolling table next to my bed. “But please thank your father on behalf of the staff here at Hope Island Memorial Hospital.” With that, she places her tablet under her arm, adjusts my IV, and saunters out of the room.
“The nerve of her,” Victoria huffs, her brow creasing.
“Victoria,” I say. “Why are you really here?”
“You were shot. I had to be here.” She gets up from the bed and maneuvers around the room until she reaches the window. Pulling the curtains open, she says, “If they won’t let the media in here, I’ll go down there and address them myself.”
There’s no love in her tone. There’s no hint of warmth or compassion.
But Kinzie? The look in her eyes when she broke off my engagement with Victoria was full of so much emotion. Surprise when she realized it was me, but also the heat and fire that stretched well beyond anything I’d ever felt with another person. With Kinzie, even if she’s not willing to share her thoughts, they’re there, in her eyes, telling me exactly what I should know and how far to push her to open up. With Kinzie, one look is like watching a million feelings unfold. Like glitter bursting from a balloon.
“You broke up with me,” I croak.
“That was all a misunderstanding. A mistake.” She adjusts her dress, swiping a hand down the length of it. “But I’m here now. We can pretend the whole wedding cancellation thing never happened.”
“Victoria,” I say again, swallowing hard.
“Shh.” She places a finger to her lips. “Save that energy for the media. You’re going to need it. If we can get you into a wheelchair, and I sit on your lap, we can really play up the hero thing. If anyone asks about our breakup, I’ll tell them you’re the love of my life. That I was having pre-wedding jitters.”
Hero? Love of her life? My gut twists. None of this makes any sense. “Victoria. Do you think you were having pre-wedding jitters?”
The silence in the room tells me everything I need to know.
I’m not broken up over it. I was never really in love with her either. She filled a void in my life the same way I did for her.
She shouldn’t settle for the sake of appearances. This breakup was what we both needed. It’s what I should tell her. Instead, my mouth overrides my brain, and I mumble, “I’m in love with Kinzie,” before sleep pulls me under.
The next time I open my eyes, Jill is sitting in a chair, staring out the window. When I clear my throat, she looks up.
Her face brightens, and a smile tugs at her lips. “Good morning, sleepyhead. How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been shot,” I croak out, scanning the room to see who else is here.
“Victoria is gone, if that’s who you’re looking for. Seems as if you grew a pair and put a nail in that coffin.”
I scowl, which only makes her smile bigger.
“You told her you were in love with Kinzie. She was so pissed. She went on and on about it. ‘It’s been less than a month. How could he have possibly fallen in love with somebody else in less than a month? And what kind of hussy steals a man while he’s still engaged?’”
I choke back laughter I know will hurt like a bitch if I let it escape. “A hussy?”
Jill snorts. “She flipped out. It took the nurse and two security officers to escort her out of here.” She licks her lips and glances out the window, then turns back to me. “But do you want to hear the best part?”
I don’t answer. She’ll tell me anyway.
“The camera crew that she hired caught it all on camera. Not your declaration of love, though I’m sure they have footage of it somewhere, because Victoria was screaming about it when the big, hunky security guard dropped her ass to the ground.”
I blow out a long breath and let her words sink in. “Kinzie. Is she here?”
Jill’s smile drops, and her entire being deflates. “Scoot over,” she says, standing and stepping up next to me. “She left while you were in surgery.” Her voice is quiet, subdued, as she eases onto the mattress beside me. “She got one glimpse of Victoria and split. We’ve all texted her, but she hasn’t responded.”
The pain that clutches my chest at the thought has nothing to do with the GSW I sustained.
“Did the two of you ever talk?”
Head resting on the elevated mattress, I turn to study my sister.
“About what happened when you left for the Marines?”
“The miscarriage?” I ask. Why am I not surprised that she already knows? “She told me the other night.”
Jill stares at me far too long before saying, “Is that it?”
“What do you mean, is that it?” I tense but immediately force my muscles to relax. Fuck, that hurts. “That’s a pretty fucking big deal, don’t you think?”
Her lips tighten into a tight line.
“What?” I ask again, my heart rate picking up.
“She didn’t tell you about the cancer or the hysterectomy?”
If I’d been physically punched in the gut, it would have hurt less than the emotions that flood me. “Cancer?”
She nods. “She found out when she had the miscarriage. She had to have a complete hysterectomy. She always wanted a big family, and now she can’t have that. She acts like she’s okay, and maybe she is, but that, my dear brother, is a pretty fucking big deal.”
I gulp down the acid in my throat. That’s it. That’s the reason Kinzie shut down on me the other night. That’s what we were going to talk about before she was taken and I was shot.
“You two have something special. When you get out of here, I expect big things. Do you understand me? You didn’t take three bullets for nothing.”