Chapter 4 St. Luke’s #2
Adrian clears his throat. “Where is she now?”
Carol gestures toward a set of double doors with a keypad.
“She’s in a monitored unit. However, there are a few procedural steps before you can see her.
She knows you’re here… she knows that we can eventually discharge her into your custody if that’s what she decides…
but the hospital insists on following protocol first. I’m sure you understand. ”
I understand that, if she doesn’t bring me to Lucy and soon, I’m gonna fucking lose it.
Adrian knows. He lays his hand on my sleeve. “We’d be happy to.”
Carol nods, then looks past us, and that’s when I see him. Fuck me. How did I not notice him before?
A squat, older man in a white dress shirt and pressed khakis is leaning against the far wall like he’s bored; you could mistake him for someone else simply waiting except for the gun on his belt.
Hands on his hips, eyes scanning the room lazily, I’ve had enough dealings with the police to know that he’s nowhere near as disinterested as he appears.
Carol’s expression turns apologetic, though I know that’s bullshit, too. “Detective Hargrove has a few questions. Standard protocol, given the circumstances.”
Given the circumstances, huh? Yeah. I know what that means.
Translation: she fell from a height, there’s no clear story about how that happened, and someone wants to cover their ass.
I take one step forward, then another, until the obvious cop straightens slightly.
His gaze flicks over me, assessing. I know what he sees.
I’m at least two decades younger than him.
Four inches taller. Beneath my hoodie, I’m built from a lifetime of using a punching bag while imagining it has Jack’s face on it.
No visible bruises. No visible guilt. I don’t have any scratches that might’ve come from a fight to the near-death. Still, he’s taking my number, trying to figure out what I’m doing here, when he says in a clipped voice, “Julian Fairchild?”
Here’s hoping he didn’t run that fucker’s license before he came down to the hospital. “Yeah.”
He holds out a hand with a small notepad tucked behind it. Unlike Adrian, I don’t shake hands. I wait for him to push it, nodding when he doesn’t.
“Your wife,” he says instead, testing the word like he wants to see if I flinch to hear it, “was admitted to this hospital six days ago after a four-story fall from a hotel balcony.”
My stomach turns over and I have to clench my jaw together to keep from hurling. Fall… that’s what they think happened.
I know better.
“Which hotel?” Adrian asks.
The detective glances at Adrian’s suit like it offends him. “I’m sorry, sir. And you are?”
Adrian ignores the attitude in a way that I can’t. “Adrian Collins,” he says. “I’m Mr. Fairchild’s employer. He works for my company, and it was my office that his wife called to try and reach him.”
That’s the story we’re going with, at least. Adrian figured that the patient advocate would convince herself that she misheard me when I called myself Dallas, so he’s using his first name and his mother’s maiden name to pretend he’s the one who first called the hospital back.
I guess it works because she doesn’t call BS on Adrian, and neither does the detective.
“The Stanton,” he says instead. “Like I said, it was the fourth floor. She was in a suite registered only as a cash-paying guest. No ID on file which is why they couldn’t identify her until now.” He pauses for a moment, lip curling slightly. “The hotel management is… discreet.”
“Convenient,” I mutter.
The detective’s dark eyes cut to me. “Security cameras are on-site. But not all of them were operational. The footage we do have shows your wife entering the building the night before. She wasn’t alone.”
Damn it. I knew this was coming. I’m convinced that Lucy would never jump so that means she had to be with someone—
“Who was she with?” I ask.
“Male,” the detective says, glancing at his notepad.
“Early forties, give or take, though it’s hard to tell because he was careful not to get much of his features on camera.
We do know he had a slim build and dark hair peppered with gray.
He was wearing a suit like your boss here.
They entered together. She fell the next morning, and he left alone in the rush after she hit the ground. ”
Obviously.
My jaw clenches hard enough to ache as I fist my hands at my side.
Adrian’s voice stays calm. “Do you have a name for the man?”
The detective’s eyes shift to the side, and that tells me everything before he even answers. Because it’s not me, it can’t be me based on the description, though I bet he really wanted it to be.
“Not yet, sir. We were hoping that her husband might be able to help us out with that.”
I’m prepared for this, too. “No,” I say. “I mean—my wife and I are estranged.”
There.
The lie slides out smooth as silk.
Adrian’s gaze darts to me, and for half a second, I see approval. The best liar I know, if he thinks I come off as believable, then I’m golden.
The detective scribbles something. “Estranged?”
“Yes.” I keep my tone steady. Controlled. “We’ve been separated for a while now. She wasn’t… she wasn’t staying with me. And if she was with someone else…” I swallow the lump in my throat. “We were separated.”
“Yet she called your work. The number that Ms. Boulanger called earlier was the only outgoing call on Ms. Wright’s phone.”
I glance at Adrian. My ‘boss’. “That’s what they tell me.
I had no idea that she was hurt, but if I did, I would’ve been by her side the moment she arrived at the hospital.
” My voice rings with such honest truth, not even the suspicious detective can deny it.
“That’s where I should be now, instead of dealing with this.
Estranged or not, Lucy is my wife. I want to see her. ”
“Julian is eager to cooperate,” Adrian cuts in smoothly. “He’s also eager to ensure his wife’s safety and privacy. Given her medical condition, Detective, I’m sure you understand that pressuring her with questions right now would be… unethical.”
The detective’s eyes narrow on my cousin. “I’ve spoken briefly to Ms. Wright and her care team. Without being able to remember what happened that night, all we have to go on is the limited footage and the evidence we found at the crime scene. She’s the best wit we have.”
“Yes, but she doesn’t remember. And Julian was at the office with me the morning she fell. He can’t possibly be a suspect.”
“Well, no—”
“So I can’t see any reason why he should be kept away from his wife a moment longer.” He smiles at the patient advocate hovering nearby. “If you would, Ms. Boulanger? Please bring Julian in to see his wife. I’ll stay with Detective Hargrove and see if I can answer any more of his questions.”
The detective looks between us, weighing his options. I get the vibe that he doesn’t like us. But there’s an amnesiac woman in a hospital bed, and after nearly a week being here alone, someone has finally come to see her.
He huffs. “Fine. But I’ll need a statement about that morning.”
“Of course, Detective.” He gestures down the hall, in the way which we came. “Why don’t we step over there and handle the statement now?”
The detective hesitates. “Yeah. Let’s do it. Ms. Boulanger? If Ms. Wright remembers anything, you come get me. Yeah?”
The patient advocate nods, then waggles her fingers at me. “Right this way, Mr. Fairchild.”
The doors beep when she swipes her badge. The hallway beyond is quieter than the waiting room, the murmurs from those waiting replaced by squeaking shoes and non-stop beeping.
I follow behind her. My steps are too fast. My pulse is too loud.
Carol glances at me out of the side of her glasses. “Be prepared. She may not recognize you.”
“I know,” I grind out.
“She’s frightened,” she continues softly. “She’s been asking questions. About who she is. About… why no one came.”
My throat tightens hard enough to burn. That fucks me up more than anything because no one…
no one came to see her. I understand why her husband wouldn’t.
If the real Julian shoved her out of the fourth-floor window, he would stay away, hoping that his handiwork ended Lucy.
It was only a lick of luck that saved her.
The room she was in opened up on the back of the hotel.
After she fell, it seems as though she landed on an awning below.
The impact broke her fall enough that she would’ve walked away with only bruises if she hadn’t landed roughly on her upper back—and her head.
It was her lungs that took the brunt of the hit.
A pulmonary contusion is what the advocate explained to me on the phone.
It’s why she was in a medical coma, why she was intubated.
And though she must’ve hit her head, they’re still not sure why she can’t remember what happened to her or who she is…
which means she has no idea that I’m Dallas Collins.
She has no idea that I’m not her husband.
And maybe I’m the biggest fucking bastard in the world because I’m going to use that.
As we pause outside of an open door, my nervous fingers dip into my hoodie pocket. I pull my phone out. Jabbing the screen, I pull up the locked album that I’ve tortured myself with for the past five years.
The one that keeps all of the pictures of me and Luce.
I look different. Younger. Softer. Happy.
The woman glances over at me, eyes darting to the screen. She relaxes a little to see proof that I really do know Lucy, that the photos of her with a big grin, her arms wrapped around me prove that we were happy together once.
I stare at the screen for a moment, and Carol lets me.
When I was twenty-five, I would’ve killed to make Lucy Wright my bride.
My old man beat the idea into me that I’d have to get hitched eventually if I wanted to rule the Order, but the part of Dallas Collins that he couldn’t reach…
the part of me that managed to hope despite knowing it was pointless… that part wanted her.
She was too good for me. I always knew that. The light to my darkness, I didn’t see the blood on my hands when I touched her. She was my salvation—and when she refused my proposal with tears in her eyes, she was my ruin.
And then she married Julian Fairchild. A man a decade older and a part of the Order’s old guard, my father arranged the match and gave her away.
She went. To protect me, perhaps, to save my position in the Order, to keep my father from following through on his threats to arrange an accident of my own for me…
Lucy left, and I was too shackled to this fucking town to follow after her.
Instead, I died that day. Oh, I’m still walking.
I’m still kicking. But the kid I was, the foolish romantic hidden beneath the hardened shell of my exterior, I knew that life wasn’t worth living without Dandelion in it.
I died, and I got the black spade tattoo—a symbol of death—on the side of my throat to commemorate the occasion.
The last time I saw Lucy, she kissed that spot before saying her final goodbye.
I marked it purposely so that everyone could see, then had my father threaten to cut it out of my skin because, according to him, Order members were only allowed to mark their bodies with the society’s brand and nothing else.
And some of the Owed wonder why I don’t seem to give a shit that Jack Collins died. Hell, if I’d had the guts to do it five years ago, I would’ve. Maybe then I could’ve saved Lucy from her fate.
Maybe then I could’ve saved Mom…
I didn’t. I couldn’t. But Lucy… this is my second chance.
And I’m going to take it.
Lucy. Fuck me, it’s Lucy. It really, really is.
The patient advocate murmurs that she’ll wait by the door, on the other side of the curtain. If Lucy needs her, just shout. I nod, waving her off, and gaze across the room as Carol shuts the curtain closed behind us.
It’s been five years. Unlike Adrian’s fixation with Loni, I had to stop cold turkey.
She was so far out of my reach, it just made sense.
She wore another man’s ring, slept in another man’s bed, and as soon as Julian had her, he made sure to whisk her out of Harmony Heights so that I couldn’t sit like a sad, sorry sack of shit, moping outside her window.
I know my dad put him up to it. He gave him a position on the other side of the country, a way to expand the Order’s reach outside of the fucking idyllic town that suffocates and chokes me at the same damn time.
“Dandelion.”
She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t recognize me.
I barely recognize her.
She’s smaller than I remember. Paler, too. Lost in a tangle of IV lines and starched white hospital sheets, her once-stormy, now dull grey eyes too big in her face as she watches me approach hesitantly.
“Lucy… it’s me. Dallas.” Because fuck it. I’m not Julian. I’m Dallas, and even if she doesn’t remember me yet, I’m hers. And then, as I walk further into the hospital room, I gaze down at my Dandelion and tell her the lie I’ve wanted to make true for the last five years. “Your husband.”