Chapter 9 Sloane
Sloane
Coat? Check.
Purse? Check.
Car keys? Check.
Twenty hours after the shift from hell began and it finally looks like it’s ending.
I always feel like a fraud when I put my civilian clothes back on.
Like I’m only pretending to be a functional member of society.
Someone who shops at The Gap and remembers to color-coordinate their jacket to their handbag.
I’m most at home in my scrubs, but people tend to look at you funny if you do your grocery shopping in a pair of blues.
“Night, Sloane. You working tomorrow?” Jerry, one of the orderlies, is here almost as much as I am. He’s a young guy, twenty-two perhaps, with a growing family to feed. Works every hour God sends.
“Sure am, Jer. Catch you for some coffee?”
He grins. “Count on it. I’ll need it after tonight.”
I’m within sight of the exit when I start to get nervous.
This is where it always happens. The fourteen-foot stretch between the reception and the entrance is like some kind of magical hot spot.
Nine times out of ten, something or someone will charge through that door while I’m heading for the exit, and I end up having to turn right back around.
Ten feet.
Five feet.
I hold my breath.
I’m at the door. Seattle’s autumn wind buffets me, whipping my hair up as the doors slide back to reveal a clear night sky beyond, a bruised shade of royal blue.
I breathe a sigh of relief. I did it. I’m free and clear for a whole seven hours.
I’m going to spend every single one of those seven hours in bed. It’s going to be amazing.
I’m in my car, pulling out of the parking lot, when a souped-up black Camaro screeches around the corner, nearly colliding head-on with me. Shit. Brakes. Brakes! brAKES! We both swerve, and the asshole buzzes my paintwork. The Camaro’s horn blares as they speed on by.
I can’t see whoever’s at the wheel, but they’re panicking. There’s only one reason a car would tear at breakneck speed into a hospital lot, and that’s because there’s an emergency. I reverse so hard my tires smoke.
The Camaro roars up to the sliding doors I just left behind, and a wave of regret washes over me. I might as well kiss those seven hours goodbye. Damn it, why am I such a glutton for punishment?
Thirty seconds later, I’m parked and back inside the building.
A nurse is calling for assistance over the PA system, and a guy dressed in black hunches over a child on the floor.
A blood-soaked blanket lies abandoned by his side.
He slaps the child, the little girl, in the face, and I drop down beside him, not thinking.
Grabbing him by his wrist. I shove him hard enough that he topples sideways and lands on his ass.
“Move away from her. Let me see.”
He makes a choking, guttural sound as I quickly assess the little girl.
She’s not as young as I first thought, but she’s tiny.
Her pale blond hair is dyed pink with blood.
The insides of her wrists are torn to shreds, and it takes me a full second to compose myself.
She really meant it when she did this to herself.
“How much blood did she lose?” I check her pulse, bending down to place my ear over her mouth.
Any breathing sounds? Faint but there. Pulse is thready but present, too.
I look up, still waiting on my answer. The guy who brought the girl in is propped up by his elbows, staring at me with his mouth open.
His eyes are huge, the color so dark it’s almost black. Looks like he’s in shock.
“Listen, I really need to know how much blood she’s lost,” I tell him.
“I—I don’t know. She was in the bath.” He whispers the words so quietly I can barely hear him.
The front of his T-shirt clings to him, hugging his chest. So he found her in the tub, went in and fished her out.
Suresh Patel, one of the on-call doctors, arrives on scene a second later and we get the girl onto a gurney.
Her body temp is low, her stats uneven. She’s a coin toss at best.
I’m sucked back into the hospital as I work over the small woman. Hours pass. We replace liters of blood and end up having to wrap the girl in four blankets before she finally picks up enough for us to attempt surgery to fix the mess she’s made of her wrists.
It’s five in the morning by the time I go looking for the guy who brought her in. I find him sitting in a corridor, elbows resting on his knees, head resting in his hands. He looks up and sees me, and then does the damnedest thing: He gets up and starts to walk away. Fast.
“Excuse me. Hey!” He stops but doesn’t turn around straightaway. He waits a beat, like he’s building up to it. “I need some details from you about your girlfriend. You can’t just leave her here to wake up alone.”
Finally, he turns. His jaw is clenched so tight the veins in his temples throb with the flow of his pulse.
He just stares at me. His shirt has dried out now, but it’s still clinging to him in the most distracting fashion, the arms of the material rolled up one turn to reveal strong, tattoo-covered biceps.
Ink in black and blue and red surges down his arms in waves.
His almost-black hair is spiked every which way, tousled, still wet.
Delectable. I kick my own ass when I realize I’m checking him out.
You’re mad at him, Sloane, remember? He was just leaving. Going to walk right out of the door.
“You think you can at least give us some history before you vanish into the sunset? Or sunrise,” I say. He blinks at me, then folds his arms across his chest. He opens his mouth to say something but stops himself. Scowls. He turns toward the door, clearly still thinking about bolting. Bastard.
“On second thought, if this is because of you, then maybe you should go,” I say.
There are no bruises on the girl’s body, but I’ve seen enough cases of domestic violence to know that it’s not always physical.
A broken spirit can be just as damaging as a broken bone.
This guy could have made his girlfriend’s life so miserable that she simply wanted to end it.
The scars on her arms tell a story, too.
This wasn’t the first time she’s tried this.
Tall, Dark, and Handsome glares at me with a fury that makes me rethink my suggestion. He faces me properly, like he’s committing to sticking around now, and finally speaks. “No,” he growls. “I’m not her boyfriend. And I’m not leaving her.”
My stomach lurches. That…
That voice.
Holy…
I press my finger to my lips, scrutinizing every last square millimeter of him. “Do I know you?” I whisper.
A cruel smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. “No.”
Relief floods me, but my body won’t accept it. “I swear I recognize your voice.”
“I was born here. We all sound the same, sweetheart.” He continues to deny it, but with every word my stomach twists a little further.
I hear that voice in my dreams. I’d know it anywhere.
I’m not wrong. I am so not wrong. This… this is him.
The guy who brought in the tiny, broken girl is the very same guy who tied me up and fucked me senseless two years ago.
The guy who took my virginity. His brooding eyes burn into me with such intensity that I know he’s just waiting for me to realize.
“I—I need to know who your friend is,” I stammer, and he smiles. It’s a breathtakingly wild and treacherous thing, seeing this guy smile. The gesture’s so sharp it could flay a man alive.
“Her name is Carrie.”
“Insurance?”
He shakes his head. His eyes never leave mine. “I’ll pay.”
“You’ll need to go speak to reception. Give them your credit card details. And your name.”
He smirks, looks down at his shoes, and then raises his eyes to mine again so that he’s looking up at me from under those dark eyebrows. “I’ve got cash. And you don’t need to know my name. Better you forget I was ever here.”
He steps back, arms still folded across his chest, and I act without thinking. A part of me is already wondering where the nearest phone is so I can call the cops, but the rest of me follows him down the corridor. Damn, stupid body.
“Wait! I—don’tmakemedothis!”
He smirks. “Do what?”
“I don’t know! I—it was you. Admit it. Admit that it was you.”
His smirk vanishes, replaced by a cold and calculating stare. “I didn’t hurt Carrie.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
He pouts, and any remaining doubts I might have had are banished just like that.
Those lips—I may not have seen them in the dark, but I sure as hell felt them.
He’s the guy. He sees it now. Knows that I know for sure.
“Maybe I do know what you mean. That doesn’t change the fact that you should forget I was ever here.
Best for everyone involved. You don’t want to know me, sweetheart. ”
His arrogance is freaking unprecedented. I take four hurried steps and stab my index finger into his chest. “You!”
Up this close, he’s so tall it’s frightening. “Me,” he agrees.
I ask him the one question that’s been burning in my mind for the past two years. “Did you have anything to do with Eli’s death?”
He looks away, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth. That’s a yes if ever I saw one. “Let’s just say… Eli and I had a disagreement.”
“Fuck! I knew it. Did you take Lex’s paperwork?”
He’s like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One minute he’s standing there, watching me like I’m a genie and I might disappear in a puff of smoke any minute, and then he’s pure, raw anger.
He grabs my wrist and moves lightning fast, shoving me roughly back against the wall.
The corridor is empty at this time of morning, so I’m completely alone.
Vulnerable. His hand closes around my throat, just tight enough to terrify the shit out of me. “You like feeling like this, Sloane?”
Hearing my name come out of his mouth makes my eyes well with tears. He’s known who I am all along. I shake my head. “No,” I gasp.
“Then you need to treat Carrie. Make sure she gets better. I’ll be coming back for her in two days.
Don’t let the goddamn shrinks near her. Don’t let Psych get ahold of her, or I’m gonna be seriously pissed.
” His body presses up against mine, and he’s like a wall of muscle and testosterone.
I’m too frightened to do anything but nod.
Something changes, then. I could be fooling myself, but I think I see his eyes soften. “Do you remember?” he whispers.
I nod again.
“And when you close your eyes?”
I know what he’s asking. “Yes.”
“Do it, then. Close your eyes.” His grip tightens a little around my throat, making me gasp. I take one long hard look into the bottomless depths of his eyes and then, just like the last time, I do as I’m told. I close my eyes.
His lips brush lightly against mine, and my mind stills.
His breath comes fast, ragged, and hot against my mouth.
It has the most devastating effect. What the fuck should I do?
Should I lean in and kiss him? Should I knee him in the balls?
He blows all argument right out of the water when his tongue darts out and trails over my parted lips, carefully, lovingly, like he’s tasting me.
I react on impulse. I rise on my tiptoes, leaning in. He doesn’t kiss me, though.
“Two days, Sloane. Two days and I’m coming for you,” he whispers.
The next thing I know, I’m sinking to the floor. When I open my eyes, all I see are his black boots walking away.