32. Chapter 32
Chapter 32
VIVIAN
T hey take me to the hospital for evaluation, and then they tell me I need to stay for observation for a while before I can go. Declan stays right beside me, holding my hand. He’d been checked over, and because he hadn’t been inside the fire as long as I had, and because he is insistent on staying with me to the point of being an absolute asshole, they say he is all set. But still he stays with me. I keep shooting glances over to him.
He saved me. Again.
I am there for about fifteen minutes before Bailey comes barreling in.
“Oh my God, are you okay?” she asks, rushing to my side.
“I’m fine,” I tell her and smile as she looks me over despite my assurance . “Thanks for calling Declan,” I say to her softly. I’d asked Declan, when he had come back to me after refusing treatment, how he had known to come for me, and he’d told me about Bailey’s phone call.
Bailey’s eyes meet mine. “I was worried you’d sleep through it.”
“She would have,” Declan agrees soberly.
Bailey turns to Declan, having seemed to just notice him in the curtained area. “Thank you, Declan, for saving my girl.”
Declan is silent as he stares at Bailey and then he stands. “I’m going to get a drink.” He turns to me. “Do you need anything?” he asks me, his tone changing to something softer as he does.
I shake my head and then he’s gone.
Bailey watches him leave and then turns to me. “Holy in love with you, Batman.”
I roll my eyes. “He is not in love with me,” I say to her, completely agitated. “I’ve known him only a few weeks,” I remind her.
“I don’t care if you’ve known him for a minute; the man literally walked through fucking fire to save you.”
I want to tell her it is only because of the guilt from the other night, but I can’t bring myself to say it. Mostly because I don’t want it to be true. Then there is a small part of me asking myself if it is even true or if I am trying to sabotage something wonderful. I change the subject.
“What are we going to do, Bailey?”
“What do you mean?” she asks, completely confused.
I widen my eyes for emphasis. “Where are we going to live?”
“Oh, we’ll find a place,” she says, her eyes shifting.
“By tonight?” I ask her. Then my stomach drops as my real life filters back into my mind. “Oh my God, I have to work in just a couple of hours,” I realize in horror, looking at the time on the hospital wall clock.
“No, you don’t. I called you in,” Bailey says.
“Bailey! I have to work!”
“You can’t work tonight,” Declan announces, coming back around the curtain.
“I have to,” I inform him, disgusted that he thinks he can tell me what to do.
“No, you can’t. I just spoke to the nurse practitioner and she says you need to take at least two days off,” he informs me.
“I need the money,” I tell him. “I have to pay my—” I stop. I had been about to say my rent when I realize that I don’t have a building anymore to worry about.
“We’ll find a place,” Bailey says, reading my thoughts. “And just think, it won’t have sleazy Tim.”
Declan narrows his stare at Bailey at the mention of Tim, but he shakes whatever he’s thinking off quickly. “You can stay with me.”
Bailey and I both stare open-mouthed at Declan, then we exchange a look. “No,” I say.
“I have a two-bedroom apartment. My dad’s house is just next door. I can stay there and you two can both use my apartment.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Declan,” I say, shaking my head for emphasis.
Declan looks at me with his stony expression. “It’s free, and you have nowhere else to stay tonight. At least stay until you can find another place.”
I’m about to decline again when Bailey speaks up, “Sounds like the price is right, Viv. Thanks, Declan.”
I turn and give Bailey the how could you friend look but she just smiles sweetly at me. I silently fume over the next hour, until the nurse and nurse practitioner come in and check me over one last time and then discharge me. Declan leaves to get his car, and I take the opportunity to yell at Bailey.
“How could you say we would stay there?” I demand.
“Come on, Viv. You guys are dating and sleeping together. I mean, you using one of his beds to actually sleep in isn’t more intimate than that.”
“This is a lot to ask of someone, and I don’t know what the hell we are right now.”
“We didn’t ask,” Bailey reminds me, “he offered, and until we can find a better place, this is a good choice.”
I nod and reach down to get my backpack when a sick realization hits me like a punch. I feel tears come to my eyes, and Bailey notices immediately. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
I look up at her. “My backpack,” I whisper to her, emotion clouding my ability to speak.
Bailey’s face falls too. “Oh, sweetie,” she says, gathering me in her arms as I cry.
“What happened?” Declan’s deep voice demands as he appears around the curtain, sounding furious.
I lift my face to tell him and freeze. “Is that my backpack?” I ask, looking at the familiar bag in his hand.
Without a word, he places it on the stretcher next to me. “It might be smoky,” he says softly.
I look from the bag to him and can’t believe what I’m seeing. Is this real life, or am I hallucinating due to some sort of weird smoke inhalation side effect?
“Hey, you know what? I just remembered I need to check something for someone for a thing,” Bailey says. “Declan, what’s your address? I can meet you guys there in a bit.”
As they speak, I grab my backpack and open it, reaching my hand in. Everything in there is just as I had left it. I reach in the back and there are my clothes, exactly where I have always kept them. I pluck out a shirt and leggings and zip the bag back up, quickly putting the clothes on. By the time I finish, Bailey has left, and it’s just Declan and me.
We lock eyes for a moment. Declan goes to break the silence first, motioning to my bag. “Was everything—”
I rush to him and lock my arms around his neck and pull his mouth to mine. He wastes no time in grasping my head and returning my kiss. But almost immediately, we are interrupted when the curtain is flung open.
“Take it home, you two,” the scrub-wearing woman says. “We need the room.”
Declan and I break apart, he grabs my backpack then my hand, and leads me out to his car.
Ten minutes later, we pull up to his apartment. Again he takes my backpack and brings me inside. “So this is my room,” he says, pointing to a room just as sparse as the rest of his place, “and this is the guest room.” He points to the room across the hall, which is identical to his own.
“Thank you, Declan,” I say.
He nods. “You can stay here as long as you guys need,” he tells me. We didn’t speak the entire ride home, and now our last encounter of the kiss hangs in the air. “The bathroom is there, so I can give you some space to—”
“I grew up in foster care mostly,” I say, breaking into his welcome wagon speech before I lose my nerve. “You could be moved with, like, no notice. I was two when I went into my first foster home. I was malnourished and had a broken arm. My mother was a drug addict, who whored herself out for more hits, and my father… well, I didn’t really know him but he was a pimp who had a drug problem too from what I do know. He was killed trying to rob a bank.”
Declan listens, his expression unwavering as he takes it all in.
“They would take your stuff and throw it in a trash bag to move you from place to place. You could grow an attachment to something, and if they didn’t grab it to put in the bag, it was gone forever. When I was nine, I was in a great foster home—actually, that’s where I met Bailey—and they gave me my backpack. I had never really had a thing that was mine. Even the clothes were all hand-me-downs, but this backpack, it is mine. I finally had something that I could keep stuff important to me in.
“And so, since I was nine, I have kept all my things that I want to always have and never leave behind in that bag,” I say as tears fall down my cheeks. Declan reaches out and cups my face, swiping the tears away with his thumbs. “Sometimes my mom would get clean and take me back, but I hated it, because she was not strong enough to be sober and be my mom. So I would just end up in another foster place. And it always seemed like when I was finally in a great place, she would get her shit together and I would be ripped from there, and the next place would be just so bad.
“But I always had my backpack, and my things. That’s why it’s important to me, and why it’s so heavy. Because my whole world is in there, you know, just in case. And I can’t thank you enough for saving it for me.”
Declan pulls me into his arms and drops a kiss to the top of my head. “Thank you for sharing that with me,” he says. “I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that.”
“It’s okay; it’s my past. I’m going to make my life so much better. That’s why I push myself and work a lot. I need to make my life better than it has been so far. So I take classes and save money so that I can have a better future.” I lean back and look up at him, with one more thing I want to ask for, and again I want to not lose my nerve. I swallow. “Declan?” I say very softly.
“Yeah?”
“Will you shower with me?” I ask, biting my lip.
And without another word, Declan’s mouth is on mine and he is moving me backwards to the bathroom as his tongue worships my mouth.