Chapter 48
forty-eight
MAVERICK
“Have you seen Ez?”
Jo looks up from what seems to be a massacre, but I think used to be a tomato.
“What are you doing?” I ask, momentarily distracted by the angry woman holding a butcher knife.
“I was trying to make a salad, but tomatoes are fucking impossible to cut,” she practically growls while glaring at the red mush on the cutting board.
“I think that’s the wrong knife.”
“A knife is a knife. It’s sharp,” she says, but turns around and looks at the knife block behind her. “What’s this one for, then?”
“Well, it’s a butcher knife, so I’d say butchering.”
Jo lifts an eyebrow, considering. Then she starts swinging the knife around, sending tomato juice and seeds everywhere. She smirks, knowing exactly how much the mess is going to piss off Ezra.
“Woah there, angel. Let me have that.” I take the knife from her and place it in the sink. She mumbles something that sounds like spoilsport under her breath. “Have you seen Ezra?” I ask her again.
Jo sighs. “He’s out on the back patio. I left him there to think about his behavior.”
I can’t help laughing. “Did you put Ezra in timeout?”
She snorts. “Maybe. I just gave him something to think about.”
I leave her to clean up her mess and go find Ezra to figure out an entirely different mess. Opening the glass door to the backyard, I can see the chairs out there are empty, but I walk out to check anyway.
“Ezra?” I call. The only sound I can hear is the ocean.
Walking around the perimeter of the house, I keep calling for him.
“Ez!” I shout, starting to panic. His truck is in the driveway.
He’d never leave without saying anything.
The moment I think it, I realize it’s not true.
He’s left without saying anything before, and I spent eight years mourning him.
He wouldn’t do that to me again. He knows I wouldn’t survive it if he did.
“Maverick! What’s going on?” Jo asks, hopping on one foot as she puts her sneakers on.
Her coat is only on one arm, and her other shoe is untied.
She must have heard me yelling and rushed out.
Once she gets herself together, she throws something at me.
It’s my jacket. Seeing it makes me realize I’m freezing and soaked from the rain.
“He’s gone,” I say, my voice breaking no matter how hard I keep it together. It takes me several tries to get my jacket on. I know Jo is holding back from helping me, which I appreciate and hate at this moment.
Jo’s eyebrows shoot up, but then she quickly frowns. “There’s no way he left you.”
“He’s done it before,” I say, sounding pathetic.
“I was with him for a month before you got here, Maverick. I’m telling you, there’s no way Ezra left. Let’s go check the beach.” Jo holds out her hand to me, and I take it like the lifeline it is.
“He’s not there either.” My voice is thick with the tears I’m holding back. I know my grip on Jo’s hand is too tight, but I can’t help feeling like if I let her go, then she’ll leave too.
“Let’s go down and check. The rain is making it hard to see,” she says, pulling me with her down the stairs.
The rain wasn’t really obscuring my view of the beach, but I let her pull me along anyway.
Part of me was shutting down. Preparing for the anguish that was about to hit like a freight train when Jo realizes he’s gone again.
The stairs are worn and rusty from the weather. We probably shouldn’t both be going down them at the same time, but I don’t have it in me to let her hand go.
“Fuck!” Jo shouts, startling me out of my stupor. “Ezra!” Jo lets go of my hand and flies down the stairs at a speed that would worry me on a sunny day, but the rain has made them slippery.
“Jo! Slow down!” I call, following her as quickly as I can.
“Ezra collapsed on the stairs! Look down!” she shouts, not slowing her pace.
I do as she asks and stumble. I manage to catch myself on the railing before I cannonball down the rest of the stairs and take her with me.
I take a deep breath to steady myself and look down.
I hate that the stairs are the kind with holes in them so you can see beneath you.
It’s why I haven’t come down to the beach since the day I got here.
But I see what had Jo running. Ezra is on the stairs, almost halfway up, passed out and soaking wet.
“Shit!” I yell, running down the rest of the way to get to him, no longer caring about the height or if I fall. Jo is already at his side and shaking him by the time I get there. “Ezra!”
“He’s alive,” she says before I can even ask. Her shaking becomes more aggressive, and he groans, his eyes slowly opening.
“Come on. We need to get you inside and warmed up,” I say, pulling on his arm while Jo pulls on the other to get him sitting. “You need to help us, Ez. We can’t get you up all these stairs on our own.”
Ezra slowly blinks at me. His lips are blue.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he was hypothermic.
His hand is as cold as ice. I quickly shuck my jacket and get him into it with Jo’s help.
Once he’s situated, I swing one of his arms around my shoulders while Jo takes the other, both of us gripping his waist. These stairs weren’t meant for three people, and it’s worse with how large Ezra is, but we manage the first step.
“We can do this,” Jo says as much to herself as to me.
She keeps repeating it every third step.
Our progress is slow, with Ezra barely able to hold himself up and needing frequent stops.
At some point, I notice his head is bleeding, most of it being washed away by the relentless rain.
There’s nothing I can do about it until we get him off these damn stairs that I never want to see again.
I can watch the ocean from the window just fine.
“Call Darren,” I tell Jo the moment we stumble into the house and get Ezra half on the couch.
She doesn’t argue and quickly runs to get her phone and make the call.
I’ve never met the man, but I know he’s the one who helped with Jo’s leg and stitched up Ezra.
I strip Ezra down, getting increasingly worried about how cold and gray he looks.
Once I get him down to just his boxers, Jo is back.
“He’s on his way. He said to get Ezra in a warm bath, but not hot. We need to gradually raise his body temperature.” Jo is moving as she speaks, shouting most of it from down the hall as she starts the bath.
“Come on, Ezra. Just a few more steps and you can rest.”
Ezra’s eyes flutter. He doesn’t speak but manages a nod. His breathing is sluggish, and I don’t know where to find his pulse, but I have a feeling that’s not acting like it should, either. He kept losing consciousness on the stairs.
“I can’t lose you, so get up!” I yell at him as I pull him to his feet. He’s unsteady, but I’m there to hold him up. “Come on, baby. Just a few steps. You got this.” Ezra’s head lolls to the side, but he manages a shaky step.
“I’ve got you,” Jo says, running to Ezra’s other side and gripping his waist. “He’s so cold,” she whispers, looking around his body to meet my eyes. She looks as distraught as I feel.
We get him into the lukewarm bath easier than I was expecting.
Jo runs out of the room the moment Ezra is settled, but I’m too focused on him to ask where she’s going.
His lips are blue, but he’s not shaking, which I’m pretty sure is bad.
I watched a lot of random medical dramas with Belle while we were on tour, but I doubt they’re medically accurate.
Ezra used to talk about moving far away from the ocean.
We grew up in a beach town and the man hated sand.
Hated that it got everywhere and you’d be vacuuming it up for weeks after a single afternoon spent in the sun.
It didn’t help that during the hottest days, the sand would feel like lava on your feet, but the ocean was still the temperature of an iceberg.
I understood his disdain, so we would dream up our lives away from the beach.
Maybe in an artsy city or a small mountain town.
Sometimes it was a villa in Tuscany where he could work on his photography, and I would learn to make wine.
Always just the two of us and maybe a cat.
Neither of us wanted kids. We never wanted to share each other.
“Got them,” Jo yells, startling me. I was too busy watching the rise and fall of Ezra’s chest to pay attention to anything else.
“Got what?” I ask as she shoves a thermometer into Ezra’s mouth. Well, that answers that question. I watch her throw a silver cord into the water that’s attached to something red in her hand. “What is that?”
“Meat thermometer.” She grabs the medical thermometer out of Ezra’s mouth when it beeps. “Eighty-four. That means he’s moderate, which explains why he’s having trouble staying awake,” she says, more to herself than me.
“Is that why he’s not shaking?”
“I think so,” Jo says, showing me what she has pulled up on her phone. “Hopefully Darren will get here soon.”
“Should we have called an ambulance?” I ask, trying to loosen the grip I have on Ezra’s hand so I don’t hurt him.
“Darren said the closest one is thirty minutes from town, which makes it almost an hour from here. He was a better bet.”
I watch Jo as she keeps track of Ezra’s temperature and that of the water, slowly draining and refilling to increase the temperature.
By the time Darren arrives with a flustered Martha on his heels, Ezra is up to ninety-four degrees and shaking so violently that the water is mostly out of the tub.
Jo doesn’t even flinch as she continues to monitor Ezra and the water while discussing the next steps with Darren.
“You should let go of his hand or you both might end up hurt,” Darren says.
“Can’t,” I rasp, my emotions clogging my throat.
My clothes are soaked, both from the rain and the tub.
At least the water from the tub was warm.
A towel appeared around my shoulders at some point, which I suspect was courtesy of Martha, since I could hear another woman’s voice.
My eyes haven’t moved from Ezra long enough to check.
Once Ezra’s temperature reaches ninety-eight, we get him out of the tub and into dry clothes.
He’s able to walk on shaky legs with my help to his bed.
Or my bed I guess. There’s no way I’m putting him in the basement on an air mattress.
I petitioned to put him on the couch since there were no stairs, but Darren insisted he be in a bed so that he could set up an IV with less risk of it being pulled out.
The moment I have Ezra situated and Darren is finished, we all head down to the kitchen where Martha has made tea and cookies.
We must have been in the bathroom longer than I thought if she managed to bake cookies in that time.
Looking out the window, I realize that not only is it dark, but the sun is rising again.
I’m hit with such a sweeping wave of exhaustion, I have to sit down before my legs give out.
I plop down on one of the stools at the island and let my head slam onto the granite.
“Jesus, Maverick. Can we deal with one head injury at a time, please?” Jo says, sitting on the stool next to me with far more grace, but when I turn my head to look at her, I see the same level of exhaustion there.
My head flies up as I register her words. “Ezra’s head was bleeding on the cliff stairs.” I pause, not remembering seeing any blood after that. “I think.”
“He had a small laceration beneath his hairline. It didn’t need stitches, and I suspect any blood there may have been washed away in the tsunami that was your bathroom.” Darren smiles at me and grips my shoulder. “He’s going to be just fine. He’s lucky you found him and helped him when you did.”
I nod because that’s all I can manage with the sudden lump in my throat and burning behind my eyes. With one more squeeze, Darren lets go and turns to Jo.
“You have my number. Call me if anything changes overnight. I’ll be back in the morning to take out his IV.”
“Thank you,” Jo says, giving Darren a hug and then Martha.
“Call us if you need anything anytime, dear,” Martha says, patting Jo on the cheek.
I watch them both put on their shoes and jackets before leaving. The moment I hear the click of the door closing, I let out a sob. Jo is immediately there, holding me in her arms. Keeping me together like she always does. Or she always did, anyway.
“He’s okay, Maverick.” I nod into her shoulder, letting her warmth and the familiar scent and feel of her soothe me. “Why don’t you go to bed? You’ll be right next to Ezra if he needs you.”
Lifting my head, I search her face, not sure what I’m looking for.
All I see is concern and sincerity in her eyes.
“Okay,” I whisper and kiss the top of her head.
It was an action made of habit, and I hate the way she stiffens from the contact.
I’m too tired to think about that and still too worried about Ezra to stay away from him any longer.
I leave the warmth and safety of her arms and make my way upstairs to the man I almost lost again.