Chapter 17
Ande : I swear nothing in this world smells better than the person you love.
Shayne : Have you ever walked past a Cinnabon ?
— Text between Ande and Shayne
SHAYNE
I’d been released from jail, a.k.a. the hospital.
Okay , that might be an exaggeration.
I’d released myself.
I wasn’t too sure why. All I knew was that I was having a really fuckin’ hard time breathing there.
If I’d known what I know now before I left, I probably would’ve stayed my ass put.
But all I could think about, the longer Quinn was away, was his assurance that we would make it. And how he wasn’t asking me my opinions.
In one day, I’d been hit in the face by a door, assaulted by a police officer I knew hated me, gone to the hospital and found out that I had a baby living inside of me who hadn’t made it, and been told that my life was about to change by the man who had wrecked my entire world.
Anyone , and I do mean anyone, would’ve been overwhelmed.
And Atlas being there was the final straw.
He was treating me like I was his brother’s beloved girl, and not someone he’d thrown away years and years ago. He was talking about Quinn’s new place. How I would make it a home. How Quinn had built it with me in mind.
Needless to say, when he’d gone to the bathroom, I’d gotten dressed in my bloody clothes and walked out.
Which led me to now.
My purse was useless.
Why was it useless?
When Ande had brought it to me, after having stopped by to grab it along with my cell phone, I’d been happy to know that I wasn’t stranded.
Only , after a quick visit to an ATM to grab cash—because I knew I could hide longer with cash— I’d found out a few very hard truths.
One , I couldn’t go home because the house was now an official crime scene.
Two , not only had the police department seized all the accounts that my brother was a part of, but apparently mine, too.
So , no money meant no hotel.
Hence , why I was now parked in a Cracker Barrel parking lot, right next to a truck stop.
I’d already used the showers in the truck stop to wash away the blood from my ordeal earlier and had changed into the only set of clothes that were in my car.
Now , I was lying on the back seat, wondering what the hell I had done to deserve this kind of life.
Was I a bad person in my previous life?
Had I done something to someone, once, that had caused Karma to deliver a shitty existence to me over and over again?
When would enough be enough?
When would my dues be paid?
When would I wake up, and this crazy ass life be over?
I didn’t want to end my life.
I just wanted a new one.
I wanted one where I was married to a man who cherished me. Who always, always chose me over everyone else. I wanted two kids, a house with a white picket fence, and a dog.
I wanted a life that I would love.
Not the one I was given.
I rolled over and felt the tell-tale sign of blood as it started to seep out of me.
I’d luckily had pads in my car, because the moment I’d walked out of the hospital, the blood had gotten much heavier.
If it kept going, I’d need to change again.
But I couldn’t force myself to stand up.
I couldn’t think about why I would need to change soon.
I couldn’t think about what had happened to put me in the position I was in now.
I couldn’t think about anything or anyone.
All I could do was stare numbly as the cash price on the sign for fuel changed over and over again.
Something moved outside the door, and I looked up to see a familiar blond head move into my field of vision.
And something overtook me.
Something strange and all encompassing.
I got out of my back seat, threw the door open so hard that it knocked into the woman standing in front of it, and snarled.
“ You are not here right now!” I insisted.
Elliette grinned. “ Oh , but I am.”
“ You are not,” I snapped, thinking about the gun I had in my back seat. “ Leave .”
“ I’m sorry, but this is a free world.” She smirked. “ What happened? Get kicked out? Can’t go home? No money to buy a hotel room for the night?”
I gritted my teeth. “ Seems like you know it all, don’t you?”
“ I know that your accounts are all frozen,” she smiled. “ They’ll be that way for a while until the investigation decides you are either guilty or innocent. I’m going with guilty, though. You don’t have a gang member running drugs out of your house and not know a single thing about what’s going on.”
So I buried my head in the sand.
Sue me.
It was easier to pretend that my brother was an upstanding citizen if I didn’t pay attention to anything he did.
Hell , half the time I didn’t even look at him so I wouldn’t see something that I wasn’t supposed to.
“ Sorry to disappoint you, but I did my best to ignore anything and everything that was going on.” I shrugged. “ I am innocent.”
She snorted. “ You’re not.”
I fisted my hands. “ I am. But you’re not.”
She rolled her eyes. “ And how is that?”
“ You took a life tonight.”
Her brows rose. “ I don’t remember hurting anyone besides you.”
“ Exactly ,” I snapped.
Her brows rose. “ I’m afraid you’re not making sense. That concussion you have going on is doing things to your brain.”
“ I was pregnant,” I told her bluntly. “ You hurt me so badly that I suffered a miscarriage.”
Something in her eyes changed. An unhingedness that had me taking a step back.
“ You what?” she asked.
I didn’t say anything, choosing to stay silent.
Maybe it wasn’t the best thing in the world to confront her like…
She ran at me like a linebacker.
One second, I was upright, and the next I was slamming against my car at a breath-stealing velocity.
My back hit hard and I felt my head snap back, all the oxygen fleeing my lungs.
Yeah , definitely not the best thing to do, provoke her.
But before another hit could come, I heard a scuffle.
Stunned , I slid against the car until I was on my bottom and stared at the two people on the ground.
Quinn had Elliette on the gravel pavement, stomach on the ground, with his body straddling hers.
He had both of her hands behind her back, and he was easily subduing her while Elliette tried everything in her power to get free.
Quinn looked completely unfazed.
“ Get off of me!” she screeched. “ I did nothing wrong!”
“ You might actually have convinced others of that, but not me after catching you attacking her in a Cracker Barrel parking lot,” he stated calmly.
Too calmly.
The one and only time I’d seen him this deadly quiet was the day he’d walked in on two boys cornering me in a bathroom in high school. He’d already graduated at that point, and he’d been outside waiting to pick me up since my car hadn’t started that morning.
When I’d taken too long to come out, he’d come in, and found me there, two boys blocking me, and one of them trying to stick their hands down my pants.
He’d calmly knocked both of them out, then we’d left the school grounds just far enough that he could call the cops.
“ Quinn ,” I said quietly, worried now that he was overly angry.
I’m sure some of that was my fault.
Had I not left, I would’ve been at the hospital safe, and he wouldn’t have to find me to save me.
Jesus , I was a trainwreck.
Quinn looked over at me, cataloged me for injuries, and reached for his phone.
He called and had just hung up when the first police officer arrived.
I looked over, unsurprised to see his mom pull up.
“ Mamasauce ,” I said quietly.
Mamasauce , aka Garnett Carter , looked over at me and did the same cataloging of injuries that her son had just done. Once she decided I was okay, she walked to the woman on the ground and hiked her thumb to the right, indicating that Quinn needed to let her go.
Quinn got up, and Elliette rolled over, spitting mad, and kicking.
“ Don’t ,” Garnett ordered harshly. “ Quinn was a whole lot nicer than I would’ve been had I walked up on that scene. Now , you can calmly walk to the police cruiser, and I’ll take you in, or you can do it the hard way. Which , might I add, will end up with you in the cruiser anyway, just hurting after.”
Elliette gritted her teeth and wisely stood up.
Quinn and Garnett both tensed, likely waiting for Elliette to run. Yet , she didn’t. She calmly walked to the back of the police cruiser and waited for Garnett to open the door for her.
Once the door closed, Garnett walked to me and calmly helped me to my feet.
She tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear, and I felt my eyes well with tears.
“ You okay, my baby?” she asked.
Garnett was the mother I never had.
Even though her son and I had broken up all those years ago, she didn’t allow that to affect our relationship at all. She and Ande continued to treat me like part of the family, even if I tried everything in my power not to be around any of the Carter boys.
Meeting Garnett and Ande for lunch? That was more than acceptable. Doing anything at all at their place? Absolutely not. Because if I saw one brother, I saw them all.
Every last one of them resembled each other, and sometimes the rugged good looks of the Carter men hurt my heart.
“ I’m okay,” I lied.
I probably wasn’t okay.
As it was, my heart was still pounding, and I was having trouble breathing.
“ Good ,” she pulled me in for a hug, and I felt something shift in my chest.
The breathing got harder, but I stayed where I was, feeling lightheadedness start to creep in.
“ All right,” she pulled away. “ I’ll get this one to the station. I’m assuming that you’re taking her back?”
“ If they’ll take her,” Quinn grumbled, arms crossed.
That was, sadly, true.
Usually when a patient left AMA , the hospital washed their hands of them.
But I doubted that would be the case this time. I was a medical worker, even if all I did was fly the plane that got the nurse and the patient to the hospital. Not to mention, there were all of the Carters who were in that hospital just as much as a nurse would be, it felt like.
“ Love you, Mamasauce ,” Quinn said as he opened her door for her.
I had to lean against the car again when I felt my legs start to shake.
Quinn waited until Garnett was gone before turning back to me, a look of concern crossing his face at what he saw there.
“ Shayne , honey,” Quinn said. “ There’s something wrong.”
I blinked, looking at him in surprise. “ What do you mean?”
He pressed his hand to my chest. “ You’re breathing pretty heavily.”
I was.
But I’d accounted that to him being near me.
He always took my breath away.
“ Sure ,” I said. “ But that happens when you’re around.”
If I’d been thinking clearly, I would’ve never said that. Him knowing that he undid something inside of me was completely different than him assuming.
He didn’t smile, though, like I expected him to. “ Honey , I think we need to go back to the ER .”
I groaned, a wheeze leaving my throat before a coughing fit soon followed. “ I don’t want to.”
“ I don’t think you get a choice this time, Soleada .” He scooped me up, closed the door to my SUV with his hip, then walked me over to his cruiser.
After depositing me into his passenger seat, he got on the road, driving with his lights on but no sirens.
My heart sped up, but not because we were going fast.
Because Quinn was right.
There was something wrong with me.