Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
“Ange!”
But there was nothing.
Hope moved the phone from her ear to see if the call was still connected, but it wasn’t.
With trembling fingers, she called Angelica again, but it went straight to voicemail.
She called again, and nothing. She glanced at Eva sleeping in the bed next to hers.
She sent a text to Rex and told him to come to her room immediately.
Then she called Angelica again.
Still nothing.
Rex’s name flashed across her screen. She answered immediately.
“I don’t know what’s wrong. Something’s wrong. I don’t know what happened.”
“Slow down,” he said. “I need context.”
“I-I was on the phone with Ange, and then there was a really loud crash, and she’s not answering. I-I think she got hit by a car. But I don’t know where she is, and Eva’s asleep.”
“I’m coming.” Rex hung up.
Hope stood up and paced the room back and forth, calling Angelica one more time before she gave up and called Lyric. Angelica had mentioned that she wasn’t driving, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t in the car. Her heart hammered when Lyric finally answered with a groggy pull in her voice.
“Hello?”
“Where did Ange go?”
“Cadence took her out for dinner.” Lyric sighed heavily. “They didn’t go far. Wait…”
Hope held her breath and raced toward the door when there was a knock at it. She opened it, finding Rex in no shirt and loose gray sweatpants. She shook her head, tears in her eyes, as she held the phone to her ear.
“The car registered an accident.”
“Location, Lyric!” Hope’s patience was wearing thin, and she didn’t have a lot to begin with. “Where is she?”
“I… She’s only half a mile away.”
“Get another car. I’m coming with you.” Hope hung up the phone and stared at Rex.
He opened his arms to her, and she immediately collapsed into them. He rubbed a hand up and down her back in a soothing motion, and Hope breathed deeply. She needed this more than she’d known.
“Lyric doesn’t know anything, but the car was in an accident, and I think Ange was in it.”
“Then go, Hope. I’ve got Eva, don’t worry. Just…keep me updated, and I’ll let production know when we know something.”
Hope nodded, her face still buried in his chest. She forced herself to step back and wipe the tears from her eyes.
“I’m so scared.”
“I know,” Rex whispered and brushed his thumbs over her cheeks. “But we don’t know anything yet. She could have just dropped her phone somewhere. So go find out what’s going on and then be scared.”
She smiled at him. He was always so good with crisis moments like this. She nodded and stepped back into the room to slip her shoes on. She snagged a hoodie as she escaped out of the room without even a second glance. She headed straight for the lobby and met Lyric there.
“She’s not answering her phone,” Lyric said.
“Not for me either.”
They walked rapidly together toward the parking lot. Lyric led the way to another black SUV and unlocked the doors just as they got there. She put her phone into the cupholder and pointed at it. “Tell me where to go.”
“Yeah.” Hope picked it up, her heart in her throat as she gave directions.
Lyric hadn’t lied when she said it wasn’t far.
But it was through the winding streets. Hope and Lyric saw the lights at the same time.
Hope dropped the phone into the cup holder and pulled her seatbelt off before Lyric even found a place to park.
One cop car was parked at an angle, but people filled the street and sidewalk.
As soon as the car stopped moving, Hope jumped out and raced toward the accident. The scent of burning rubber hit her and singed the hairs in her nose. She ran hard, skidding to a halt when she saw Angelica sitting on the curb a few feet away from the car, her hair curtained over her face.
“Ange!” Hope kneeled down and touched Angelica’s shoulder, getting her attention.
Blood streamed down the side of her face, over her cheek and onto her shirt. It matted in her hair. Hope’s fingers trembled as she reached up to touch it lightly and see where the cut was, but it was so dark outside that it was hard to see anything.
“Are you okay?” Hope asked.
Angelica didn’t answer.
“Ange!” Hope said with a little more force in her voice. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I think.” Angelica breathed heavily, her eyes closing and then opening again slowly. “I… I don’t really know what happened.”
“That’s okay. We can uh… we can figure that out.” Hope looked around. The cop was in the other vehicle, leaning through the door and not paying any attention to Angelica.
Sirens reverberated through the street as Lyric skidded to a halt on the other side of Angelica and gasped.
“Jesus, Ms. Shields. You’re really cut up.”
Angelica breathed slowly, but she didn’t say anything. Hope kept her hand on Angelica’s shoulder, needing the connection to keep her centered. Cadence stumbled toward them from the bar. Hope pointed.
“Go ask Cadence if she knows what happened.”
Lyric looked over her shoulder and scowled. But she got up to walk in that direction. Hope focused back on Angelica and turned her cheek so that they could look into each other’s eyes. “What do you remember?”
“Nothing. I… I was in the car, then I was here.”
“She needed help getting out.” A bystander came forward, hands in her pockets. “I made her sit down because her leg is clearly broken, but she doesn’t seem to be feeling it yet.”
“It’s broken?” Hope furrowed her brow and then looked down at Angelica’s leg, which definitely wasn’t right. The lower part of her shin was sitting at an odd angle.
“She tried to walk on it, and it was… I made her sit down and not move.”
“Thank you.” Hope looked up at the woman. “Do you know what happened?”
“No one was on the street when it happened. But from what I can see, that car hit her car. Probably a drunk driver.”
The blood wasn’t continuing so the cut on her brow couldn’t have been that deep. But the lack of memory was certainly concerning.
An ambulance arrived, parking in the middle of the street while another police car pulled up along with a fire engine. The whole world was coming out for this one, weren’t they? Hope settled onto the curb next to Angelica and tried to get a better look at her now, but it wasn’t helping any.
“M-my arm hurts.” Angelica looked at Hope, but she didn’t really seem to be registering what was happening or why.
“Which arm?”
“This one.” Angelica pointed to her right arm and then dropped her hand into her lap. “The air bags went off, and they had to cut them to get me out because they didn’t deflate.”
Well, that was more tracking information than Hope had thought she’d get.
She pulled at Angelica’s wind jacket to try and see her arm.
As the fabric moved from her skin, she was shocked to find cuts and bruises already forming along the back side of her arm.
But the jacket itself was still completely intact.
“Where did you get this from?”
“Probably the airbag,” the good Samaritan said with a shrug. “She’s not wrong. They all went off.”
Hope sighed heavily and brushed her fingers just under the injury. Angelica was going to be in a significant amount of pain tomorrow, and for the next week at least. Lyric and Cadence came back, and the scent of alcohol hit Hope hard. They were both drunk.
“Lyric, go get a medic, would you? Someone needs to look Ange over.”
“I’m fine.” Angelica waved Lyric off.
Lyric sent Hope a concerned look, but Hope shook her head. “Get the medic.”
“I’m fine, really.”
“You absolutely aren’t, and don’t even try to convince me otherwise. The pain should be hitting you soon, and then you’re going to regret saying that.” Hope looked up to Cadence. “Where were you?”
“I was uh…”
“She had a date.” Angelica sighed heavily and shook her head. “Lyric was supposed to come get me.”
“You weren’t driving?” Cadence asked.
“She doesn’t drive,” Hope answered. She put her hand on Angelica’s shoulder to hold her up slightly. She was blinking hard, like it was a struggle for her to stay focused and upright. Where the hell was the paramedic when they needed one?
“Oh look, they’re arresting the other driver,” Cadence muttered under her breath.
“Perfect.” Hope didn’t even bother to look over her shoulder. She only had eyes for Angelica.
Finally, someone came over to check Angelica over. They must have asked Angelica a hundred questions, but she couldn’t answer more than a handful of them. Hope frowned, but when they told Angelica that she’d need to go to the hospital, she wasn’t surprised.
“I’ll be fine, really,” Angelica repeated, waving off the paramedic.
Hope sighed heavily. “I’m pulling rank, Ange. You’re going to the hospital to get checked over, so we can talk about how the rest of this week will go. You need a doctor’s approval to return anyway.”
“Says who?” Angelica tossed a glare in Hope’s direction.
“Says everyone here right now,” Lyric chimed in. Cadence added her nod. “Hope will go with you, and I’ll take Cadence back.”
“They can start to sort out what tomorrow’s going to look like.” Hope brushed Angelica’s hair out of her face and pushed it behind her ear. “And I’m not giving you an option.”
“Fine.”
The ride to the hospital was short and sweet. Hope sent a text to Rex to update him, but then she focused primarily on Angelica. Getting her transferred to the stretcher had been a chore, and it was clear the pain from the accident was setting in.
Hope held Angelica’s hand as they moved the stretcher out of the ambulance and into the emergency room.
She wasn’t going to leave Angelica’s side for a second.
Through getting settled in a room, another round of checks, and X-rays of not only her leg and ankle, but her arm and wrist and head, they finally found quiet.
Angelica closed her eyes, resting into the bed that she wasn’t getting out of. “Who’s watching Eva?”
“Rex,” Hope answered. Why would Angelica be worried about Eva? Why would that be the first question she even asked?
“Isn’t it your week?”
“It is, but I called him…” Hope trailed off. She wished Angelica would look at her, that they could have some sort of actual conversation, not just about whatever they were doing here, but about what Angelica had shouted at her in the car right before the accident.
But she didn’t feel as though now was the time either.
“You should be with her,” Angelica yawned.
Hope shook Angelica’s arm lightly. They’d said not to let her sleep, at least not just yet. The doctor had to come check her out, but everyone was damn certain that she had a concussion on top of everything. “You need to stay awake, Ange.”
“You don’t call me Angel anymore.” Angelica turned her head to look at Hope. “Why is that?”
Hope frowned. Maybe that head injury had done more damage than she’d realized. “Because you told me not to.”
“Oh. Right.” Angelica swallowed hard and turned back to look up at the ceiling. “I’m so tired.”
“You can’t go to sleep yet.” Hope squeezed her arm lightly.
“Where’s Eva?”
“She’s with Rex,” Hope answered again. “And she’ll be fine with him. He knows how to handle her. I’m worried about you right now, and no one else.”
Angelica nodded slowly, her eyelids fluttering shut again.
Hope clicked her tongue. “Nope, stay awake.”
“Knock, knock!” There was a gentle knock to accompany the words on the glass door to the room.
Hope straightened her back as the doctor finally came into the room, staring down at a computer in his hands, followed by two nurses. “We have the results of the X-rays. Looks like you broke your leg.”
Hope could have rolled her eyes, but she held back. No one thought that Angelica’s leg wasn’t broken.
“Your wrist and head look good though, and your arm.” He flipped through his screen. “You’ll need a few stitches on that cut, and because of the alcohol in your system, I’d like to admit you for at least one night for observation with your concussion.”
Perfect.
Hope bit her cheek, looking from Angelica to the doctor. They seemed to be in a stare down, but based on Angelica’s state, she was damn sure that she wasn’t going to win this one.
“You’ll need to stay off your leg for a few weeks. You’ll be in an air cast. Then in a few weeks we can re-evaluate if you can start bearing weight on it. And I’ll need to reset it.”
This was bad. Hope wasn’t even sure how much of this Angelica was understanding. She’d probably have to repeat everything in the morning when she was with-it more. Angelica nodded at him.
“The nurses are going to start an IV and put some topical on your head so we can get that stitched. Then we’ll reset your leg and move you to a room.”
“Ange, I’m going to be right back. I need to talk to Josef.”
“Don’t tell him how bad it is.”
“I’ll try not to.” Though she wasn’t exactly sure how she was going to avoid that one either. Hope stepped out of the room. Her phone was nearly dead, which wasn’t going to help with planning for tomorrow and the rest of filming. She called Rex first, letting him in on what was happening.
Then she called Josef.
Which she absolutely hated to do.
“Hello?” His groggy voice echoed through the phone.
“We’ve got a problem. I’m at the hospital with Ange…”
It took her a full thirty minutes before she managed to get off the phone with him, and in the end, he seemed far more concerned about what the headlines were going to say than Angelica’s health.
If they had been friends at one point, that was far over by now.
Hope bit her lip, debating on making one more phone call before she begged Lyric to bring her a charger.
But if anyone could keep Josef off the warpath, it’d be Logan. And he had asked Hope to keep him in the loop about everything. Calling him, she shrugged. What harm would it do in the end?
When she got back to the room, Angelica was asleep on the bed with an IV in her arm and her forehead already stitched up and cleaned. They were holding her leg as they pressed it into the air cast. Hope sat down in the small chair next to the bed and crossed her legs as she waited.
“She’s good to go for now.” The doctor cleaned his hands in the sink. “I’ll check on her again before she goes upstairs into an overnight room.”
“Thank you,” Hope mumbled. She ran her fingers through her hair and reached out for Angelica’s hand. Now she had nothing else to do other than think.
And worry.
And repeat those words in her head.
I fucking love you.
Because Hope had no idea that was how Angelica had felt. Not once had she indicated that what was between them was anything more than attraction and sex. Never had they talked about what they felt or where they stood with each other. And Hope never would have guessed that Angelica was in love.
That they both were in love.