Chapter 23 #2
Or actually follow through with what I’d told his doctor I wanted?
I had a feeling that no matter what I chose, I’d probably end up being in the wrong somehow. And if that was the case, I might as well follow what my heart wanted.
Getting up from my chair, I nodded to the nurses behind the desk before slowly pushing through the doors heading down to the ER. The noise of a bustling hospital greeted me almost immediately, causing more tension to stiffen my body.
As I made my way down the short hallway, it opened up into a large wing with medical staff coming and going from beds lined up against the walls and facing outward. Patients were either lying down on them or sitting up, all with varying stages of trauma or sickness being tended to.
There weren’t any room numbers I could see listed on the wall over the backs of the beds. On the left side of the wing, I spotted another nurses station and headed for it.
“I’m looking for room 207.”
The nurse’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “Name?”
“Uh, Marlow... Knight?”
She typed more, her head shaking. “Honey, he’s up in the recovery wing. Not down here. You need to go to the elevators and go to floor two. He’s in one of the private rooms up there.”
I held back a sigh.
Why did I have a feeling his doctor did that shit on purpose?
Clearly, I wasn’t out of the woods yet of whatever kind of hazing he was still interested in inflicting on me. “Thank you.”
Pushing away from the desk, I found the elevator and took it to the second floor, thankfully, much quieter than the one below it. I felt the tension ease out of me with each step down the hall, a plaque on the wall pointing to which side I’d find Marlow’s room on.
Laughter trickled into the hallway when I approached it, familiar and warm.
His door was already open, the curtain above him pulled back while he relaxed into his bed.
Machines were hooked up to him on either side, their silent graphs pulsing with his vitals that looked strong and relatively healthy.
Marlow’s right leg was wrapped in thick ace bandages up to his hip, a splint underneath it to keep it in place for the time being.
He had his opposite side’s arm in a sling, also wrapped up in ace bandages.
His gown was parted at his chest, only loosely tied at his hip that made it drape dangerously low.
More bandages covered him there as well but weren’t as intense looking as his leg and arm.
On the right side of his bed, reclining in one of the visitor chairs, was Dr. Montgomery. “Oh, look. He actually did show up.”
Marlow’s neck snapped as he turned his head toward the door, his eyes going wide.
Without a word, he lifted his good hand toward me, making a grabbing motion with it.
It was hard to push away from the doorway, my guilt fighting to strangle me with every step I took into the room of the man I allowed to get hurt under my watch.
I wasn’t interested in hearing whatever excuse or explanation anyone was willing to give me to diminish this horrific feeling inside of me.
It didn’t matter if all of this was an accident.
Marlow got hurt and that was more than enough for me to blame myself over it.
His lifeless body flashed inside of my mind, causing me to stop dead in my tracks.
I thought he was dead. I thought I was belaying down to recover his dead body.
Marlow frowned. “Come here.”
My eyes began to sting.
My hands were still raw from how hard I’d ripped into those pricker bushes to free him, Talos shouting at me when he noticed Marlow pulling in deep, labored breaths.
How careful we’d had to be when laying him down because we had no way to tell how badly he’d hit his head or if he’d snapped his neck and was now paralyzed.
“Blake. Come here.” He made another grabbing motion.
Blinking hard out of the memories, I drew my hand up to brush against his fingers.
Alive. He was alive. I needed to keep reminding myself.
He tugged me forward in a surprising show of strength, practically collapsing me on top of him as I stumbled and fell onto the side of his bed.
“Careful,” Dr. Montgomery snapped. “The wires aren’t there for show.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Marlow dismissed playfully, his hand coming up to cup my jaw immediately. “Don’t listen to him, he’s just grouchy he got called in on his day off.”
He slid his thumb across my cheek in the same way I’d done for him in the mountains. A small smile played on his lips, not at all tinged with whatever pain had been coursing through his body while we waited for the helicopter to arrive.
Relief shot through me, hard enough to spring more tears to my eyes.
Marlow’s soft grunt was followed by him quickly swiping his thumb under my eyes, catching whatever he saw brewing there.
“You would be, too, if you heard the police scanners going off with an emergency airlift from Wakefield.” Dr. Montgomery’s tone flipped back into being bland, no longer tinged with the residual anger he’d yelled at me with only moments ago.
Marlow glanced over at him. “Stop listening to the police scanners on your day off.”
“I think a ‘thank you, Silas’ is more appropriate in this situation seeing as I sewed you back up nice and neat after all of your guts were spilling out of you.”
“They were not!”
“Tell that to the search and rescue team who had to pack your wounds before you got to me.”
That made me wince.
It had taken so long for us to get into contact with search and rescue, to the point where I’d all but given up before Talos had finally gotten a damn answer from our SOS.
We had no chances of moving Marlow up the side of the ravine carefully, and with no way of knowing the extent of his injuries, I wasn’t willing to move him an inch from where we’d found him.
So many hours had been wasted on us trying to get help; precious moments Marlow needed that were the difference between life and death.
We’d gotten so damn lucky with the way he’d fallen, most of the brush clinging to the side of the mountain having slowed his descent before he actually hit hard ground.
Marlow pulled me against his chest, burying his face into my hair. “Don’t listen to him, he’s being fucking annoying. I’m okay.”
I wasn’t sure whether he was doing all of this to make me feel better or himself.
At this point, I had no shame left in me to be embarrassed about the blatant displays of PDA in front of his friend, especially when my ear pressed up against his chest and I heard that healthy beating of his heart hammering back at me.
Dr. Montgomery, Silas, snorted. “Whatever. We’ll see how Avery feels in the morning. He was too tired to argue with you earlier before he left.”
Fingers threaded through the hair at the nape of my neck, pulling just enough to soothe me.
“He’s not suing.”
“We’ll see.”
Honestly, it would surprise me if we weren’t sued.
I wouldn’t fight it. I’d give Marlow whatever his friends were asking for, save for shutting down the entire property. That I’d have to fight, if only to try and protect my granddad’s legacy he’d worked so damn hard to build.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I’d never forgive myself if out of the thirty plus years Austin Adventures had been in business, I got it shut down in five.
Though at the same time, wouldn’t that be my karma?
Letting Marlow get hurt so badly he nearly died?
Maybe this was all the universe’s way of punishing me for being careless. For allowing myself a sliver of happiness and reckless abandon and getting myself tangled up in a man I had no business even entertaining, let alone holding a conversation with long enough to actually develop feelings for.
Marlow was in a different league of his own and wasn’t meant to be down in the dirt with the rest of us. He was a bird that was supposed to be sailing free on whatever breeze drifted on by, carrying him to whatever heedless destination he happened upon.
I was tied down to a single entity. Living and dying under my family’s legacy.
“Blake...” Marlow’s voice softened. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
His gentle laugh only served to make my eyes leak more, wetting the bandages covering his chest.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Don’t be. What did you say to me? ‘You have nothing to be sorry for’. Same goes for you.”
I shook my head.
“Yes,” he replied, tugging at my hair.
How could he still want to be around me after all of this?
Why was this man so damn forgiving?
No one else would be acting half as happy to see me if they were in his shoes. In fact, they’d probably send their family after me to try and beat me up in the hallway for risking their family member’s life like that.
Marlow was such a damn enigma. One I doubted I’d ever fully understand.
His bright light was a warm and basking glow that anyone in their right mind gravitated toward immediately. Protecting something precious like that was important above all else.
“Hey, how about this,” he suggested. “I’ll talk Avery out of suing you if you come back to my place to take care of me.”
“You’re blackmailing him?” Silas drawled.
“It’s not blackmail. It’s an offer.”
“Spoken like a true finance scumbag, bro.”
“Wow.”
The funny thing was Marlow didn’t even have to try and blackmail me.
I’d go willingly, wherever he asked. No questions beyond whatever information he wanted to give me.
I’d done the same when I’d teased him with the idea of joining him up at the peak and packed my things the second he’d given me the green light to go to him.
“Don’t you have a manservant to take care of you?” Silas asked. “Oh, sorry. Butler.”
“He’s on vacay. I sent him to Cancun since I was going to be in Wakefield for six weeks. I can’t call him back now when it’s only been two weeks.”
“Speaking of which, you owe me.”
“Uh, no. Try again. I lasted way longer than a week. You owe me.”
“The bet was—”
“That I lasted a week,” Marlow finished. “Which I did. I lasted almost two. It’s not my fault it was cut short.”
“I’m sure it was much easier to occupy your time when someone was warming your bed. To me, that seems like cheating.”
“No way. I won, fair and square. Now fork over the savings account.”
“Fuck off.”
Lifting my head up from Marlow’s chest, I quickly swiped my hand under my eyes before looking at him. “You... actually want me to go home with you?”
His eyes snapped back to me, lighting up immediately. “Yes.”
How easy it was for him to be so honest. To want things and ask for them with no regard as to how painful a potential rejection might be. That was a quality I heavily admired in Marlow, one I found myself lacking most of the time.
To be wanted by someone like him... what did that mean for my future?
How easily could I start to forget about my responsibilities and allow myself to fall into his spell like I so desperately wanted to?
Back at camp, it seemed straightforward and uncomplicated to deny wanting anything outside of sex and getting off with him. I had so much to do that it gave me little time to reflect on my own feelings when they came to Marlow.
Cradling his broken body while Talos frantically called for an SOS, and now here, seeing the aftermath of his life being saved, was putting so much into perspective for me that it was getting harder and harder to ignore what was blatantly right in front of me.
I wanted Marlow in more ways than just sex.
Believing he’d died had destroyed me. My heart only shakily putting back the pieces once his lungs drew in that first gasping breath in my arms, hope blooming for the first time since I’d unclipped myself from the belay and stumbled through the brush after him.
Why chance fate when it was clearly giving me a second offering?
My granddad, Talos, my staff, the kids, they could forgive me eventually for spending the rest of the season with Marlow.
“Okay,” I breathed out.
Marlow’s grin was blinding. “Excellent. Blake, you’re going to love my house. I have an indoor pool.”
I tilted my head back to press my ear to his chest again, closing my eyes while the healthy thumps of his heart beat back at me.
Marlow’s alive.