Chapter 32 #2
Aunt Jenny came storming back outside. Without so much as looking at me, she took the stairs down and climbed into the minivan.
The engine wheezed to life, and then roared as she dropped the gas pedal to the floor and tore out of there so fast the rear tires skidded.
Time seemed to slow as the van suddenly jerked several feet to the left.
Stella was standing in its path, her eyes widening as she realized she was about to get hit. I screamed—her name, or a warning, I wasn’t sure—but there was nothing she could do to avoid being clipped by the tail end, and then suddenly she was flying backward, her head cracking against the ground.
Fuck!
I leapt from the porch as Jenny took off down the road, still swerving. Stella lay in the dirt, the dogs closing in on her. I shooed them away and slid to my knees by her side. Her eyes were closed, head lolling in a boneless way that shot terror straight through my heart.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Was she dead?
“Stella.”
No response.
I grabbed her shoulder and was about to shake her, but thought better of it. What if something critical was broken and the slightest movement finished her off? I slid my fingers to her neck, feeling for a pulse and panicking when I didn’t immediately find it.
What had I done? What had I fucking done?
Stella was afraid of cars, and I’d forced her into one and dragged her up here to what, get killed by another? And god, after everything else I’d already put this woman through. This prickly, impossible, snarky, beautiful woman, who I once thought I hated but now—
Her pulse jumped against my fingers.
Relief swept through me, but that didn’t mean she was okay, just alive. She’d just been hit by a car, and while it hadn’t looked that bad, she was thinner and frailer than most. Her back might be broken. She might have brain swelling. How the fuck did I check for that?
I had no idea, but luckily, I knew someone who did.
I yanked my phone out of my pocket. One bar.
Please let me be able to make a call. I swear, I’ll never be mean to this woman again, I promised any deity who might have been listening.
I called Josh and put it on speaker. A few seconds passed before it finally started to ring, and I swear my heart stopped while I waited.
“Yello,” Josh said.
“Can you hear me?”
“Kinda. You’re breaking up a little. Are you on the shitter? You know your bathroom gets the worst reception in the apartment.”
“Is Aly with you, or is she on shift?”
“She’s here. Why?”
“Can I talk to her?”
“Seriously?” he griped. “I barely hear from you in weeks—weeks, Tyler—and the first time you actually call me first, it’s to speak to my fiancée?”
“I have an injured woman here!” I yelled. “Quit fucking around and give Aly the phone!”
“Oh, shit. One second.” I heard the sound of running feet. “Babe! Tyler needs your help, and before you say something sarcastic like I did, it’s serious.”
A scuffling noise came over the line, and then Aly’s voice. “Tyler? What happened?”
“She got clipped by a car and hit her head,” I said, hating the panic in my voice. “Now she’s unconscious. What do I do?”
“Call 911,” she said.
I hung up, called them, gave them our location and then called Aly back. “They’re on their way, now what do I do?”
“Call them back so they can talk you through it.”
“That’s what I called you for! They’re just an operator. You’re a fucking ER nurse.”
“Jesus. Okay, is she breathing?”
“She has a pulse.”
“Yeah, but is she breathing?”
“I don’t know!” I yelled, staring down at Stella’s slack-jawed face.
Aly went into full nurse mode. “Put a hand on her ribs and your cheek near her mouth. Wait to see if her lungs expand or she exhales on you.”
I did what she said, shaking with adrenaline, and just like with Stella’s pulse, it took me far too long to feel anything.
“She’s breathing,” I said, about to pass out from relief.
“That’s good,” Aly assured me. “Keep one hand on her ribs to make sure she doesn’t stop. What position is she in?”
“She’s on the ground. On her back. I didn’t move her.”
“Good. Don’t. Make sure her head stays slightly tilted back while she’s unconscious to keep her airway open. If she starts to gag at all, roll her sideways so she doesn’t choke.”
“Puking after a head injury is bad, right?”
“It’s not great,” Aly said, and I was grateful for her honesty. “Is it light where you are?”
“Yes, we’re outside.”
“Crack one of her eyelids open.”
Aly walked me through the steps of checking Stella’s pupils for responsiveness, and sounded relieved when I told her both of them contracted immediately and equally.
“Have you tried to wake her up at all?”
“No, I called you immediately.”
“Okay, next we’re going to try the shout-tap-shout method,” Aly said.
It involved shouting a person’s name, gently tapping them, and then shouting their name again. I was just gearing up to scream Stella! straight into her face because how dare she scare me this badly, when she started to wake up on her own, letting out a groan.
“I think she’s coming to,” I said. “She’s rolling onto her side. That means she didn’t break her neck, right?”
“I mean, you’d need X-rays to be sure—”
“Aly.”
“She probably didn’t break her neck. But she still needs to go to the hospital to get checked out.”
Stella made another low sound and blinked her eyes open.
I carefully brushed her hair back from her face. “Hey, Sunshine.”
Aly sucked in a surprised breath.
“Was that a pet name?” Josh whispered.
The sound of a slap came over the line, and then shushing.
Great, I was on speakerphone, too.
“Tyler?” Stella rasped.
“Ask her questions,” Aly said. “Simple ones.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Not Sunshine,” Stella answered.
I grinned, taking her immediate snark as a good sign. “What month is it?”
“August.”
“Who am I?”
“A bastard.”
Josh choked back a laugh.
“I’m hanging up now,” I told Aly.
“Wait!” she said, before giving me a list of instructions on how to handle Stella and what to watch out for in case her condition deteriorated while we waited for the ambulance.
I asked her to text it to me, thanked her, and hung up.
“Who was that?” Stella asked.
“My best friend and his fiancée,” I told her. “She’s an ER nurse. What hurts?”
“My whole body,” she groaned, her breathing picking up.
“What specifically, Stella? Come on, try to focus.”
“My head. My hip?” she added, sounding less sure. “My forearms from putting them out to try and block the van. Oh, god, I got hit by a car. I got hit by a car.” She burst into tears. “Am I okay?”
I couldn’t let her just lie there anymore, and since she didn’t say her neck or back, I pulled her onto my lap.
“You’re okay.” No thanks to me. “You’re not even bleeding, and she didn’t hit you that hard, just enough to knock the wind out of you.
You hit your head when you fell, but you were only out for a minute or two. ”
She sobbed even harder, and I didn’t know if it was because she was in that much pain or just traumatized.
“I hate you,” she said, trying to push away.
I held her easily, refusing to let her go, because for a second there, I’d thought I’d lost her forever. “I know.”
“This is your fault!”
“It is.”
She beat her fists against my chest, still crying, and I was glad, because it meant that she couldn’t have been hurt that badly if she was trying to fight me, right?
“I’m sorry,” I told her, pulling her close enough to drop a kiss on top of her head.
She punched me one more time and went still, her sides heaving, voice broken. “Why should I believe you?”
It wasn’t lost on me that she’d been forced to ask me that question multiple times. “Because I’m done lying to you, Stella. I thought you were dead. I thought I had gotten you killed, and it . . . shifted my perspective on things.”
She was silent for the longest moment of my life. “Finally realized that it’s actually you who’s in love with me, huh?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said.
I’d spent my whole life so full of hate that I didn’t know if there was any room in my heart for love.
But what I did know was that over the last several weeks, Stella had wormed her way into it against my will.
I’d told myself I kidnapped her because I wanted someone else to bear witness to everything I’d been through, everything I had lost, and maybe that was true, but deep down, I hadn’t wanted her to get caught or arrested.
I’d wanted a chance to explain myself. Had hated the look of loathing and disgust on her face when she realized what I’d done, like we’d suddenly been reset back to day one.
So I’d done what I did best. Acted in my own self-interest without a thought for what anyone else wanted or needed. I’d forced, coerced, and bullied because I’d spent so long treating people that way that I’d forgotten there was any other way to behave.
In the distance, the first wail of sirens cut through the air.
I stared down at the woman in my arms, with no idea how to move forward from here, only knowing I wanted to move forward with her. And from this point on, I’d do whatever it took to make that happen.