Chapter 42
Chapter
Forty-Two
FALLON
"Mrs. Reid?"
A man's voice pulls me from sleep and it takes me a second to remember where I am.
The fluorescent lights burn too bright overhead, that sterile hospital smell sharp in my nose.
I blink hard, forcing my eyes to focus on the waiting room around me—plastic chairs bolted to the floor, outdated magazines scattered across side tables, the low murmur of a television playing the morning news.
"I'm sorry," I say, sitting up straighter in the chair. My body protests the movement, stiff from hours of sitting in this uncomfortable position. My neck aches. My back throbs. I feel like I've aged ten years overnight.
The doctor stands in front of me, still in his surgical scrubs, a clipboard tucked under one arm. He looks tired—that particular exhaustion that comes from hours in the OR fighting to keep someone alive.
"Is he okay?" I ask, because that's what a wife should ask. That's what a woman who loves her husband would want to know first.
"We just finished surgery." He sits in the chair beside me, movements careful like he's had this conversation a thousand times before.
Like he's learned to gauge how much information people can actually process when they're this exhausted, this shocked.
"He's stable now, but his injuries are extensive.
Multiple fractures—bilateral metacarpal fractures to his right hand, several broken ribs, nasal fracture.
He had significant internal bleeding that we had to repair, and he sustained severe trauma to the genitourinary region, specifically testicular rupture and penile fracture. "
The clinical words wash over me like a wave I can't quite feel. Broken hand. Broken ribs. Broken nose. Destroyed genitals. So many injuries. So much violence done to one body in a single night.
I should feel something. Horror. Fear. Grief. Anger. Something.
But I sit here in this plastic chair with fluorescent lights burning overhead and I feel... nothing. Empty. Hollowed out. Like someone scooped everything human out of my chest and left only this careful shell behind.
My husband almost died tonight and I can't muster even one tear.
What does that make me?
"Can I see him now?" I ask, because that's what a loving wife would want. That's what I'm supposed to say, supposed to do.
"It's going to be a few more hours before we even get him into his room," the doctor explains, voice gentle like he thinks I'm fragile, breakable. "And many more before he wakes up. If you want to go home, maybe get some rest and come back, you can. There's nothing you can do here right now."
I nod, not sure what I should do, what a real person—a real wife—would choose. My hands move automatically, pulling my phone from my sweater pocket. The screen lights up. 5:03 AM.
Five in the morning. I've been here all night.
"Thank you," I tell him, standing because that seems like the right response.
"You're welcome, Mrs. Reid." He stands with me, that professional sympathy still warm in his eyes. "I'll come back and check on him later today and update you on his condition."
"Okay." The word comes out flat. Emotionless.
He leaves and I make my way outside in a daze, feet moving on autopilot through corridors that all look identical, following exit signs until cold morning air hits my face. The parking lot stretches dark and mostly empty under streetlights starting to pale against the approaching dawn.
I find my car. Get in. Start the engine.
But I just sit there, hands on the steering wheel, replaying everything.
Daniel came home Sunday afternoon and I tried to act excited to see him, tried to smile like I'd missed him, like I was happy he was back. But it was harder than ever to pretend now. Now that I've had a taste of freedom. Of Kade. Of what it feels like to be happy.
He wanted sex that night. Of course he did. But I'm on my period and that disgusts him—blood is too messy, too real for Daniel Reid's pristine world. So I was saved from that particular violation.
It's funny how different they are. Where Daniel is disgusted by my period, Kade devoured me while I was bleeding. He didn't let it get in his way at all. Didn't care about the mess or the inconvenience. He just wanted me.
Monday was normal. We both went to work—him to the DA's office, me to the school. I got dinner ready when I got home, the routine so automatic I could do it in my sleep. Set the table. Check the time. Position myself in the kitchen where he likes to find me.
But Daniel was late.
I texted him to check in but he didn't answer. I saved his food, covered it with plastic wrap, cleaned the kitchen until it gleamed. Then I got ready for bed because what else was there to do?
I probably should have been more worried. Should have called the office or checked with his secretary. But I have a hard time caring about anything to do with him anymore, and I was honestly just thankful he was gone. Thankful for the silence. The absence of fear.
It was after I got in bed with a book—Jane Eyre again, always Jane Eyre—that I got the call.
The hospital. Clinical voice. Professional sympathy. Your husband has been in some kind of accident. He's in the emergency room. You should come now.
I threw on a sweater and ran to my car, drove here in the dark, ended up sitting in that waiting room all night until just now.
And through it all, through every hour of sitting in that uncomfortable chair wondering if my husband would survive, I felt... nothing.
I pull myself together and pull out of my parking spot, heading home through streets starting to fill with morning traffic. A nap sounds so good. I need sleep. Need to call the school and let them know I won't be in today.
Need to figure out what kind of person can hear their husband almost died and feel nothing but relief.
"How is your husband?"
I hear Trish's voice and look up to see her at the door to my classroom, concern softening her features.
"He's pretty rough," I say, forcing my voice to stay steady, "but he's in the clear now."
"You know you can take some time off." She crosses the room and stands beside my desk, hand reaching out like she wants to touch my shoulder but thinks better of it. "You didn't have to come back so soon."
"I know. He's heavily sedated though and sleeping all day, so he doesn't even know I'm there. And I'd rather stay busy."
Secretly I wonder if I should try harder to act more caring. Shouldn't I be devastated? Shouldn't my husband's near-death have wrecked me?
"Okay, well, just remember if you need time you can take it."
"Thanks, Trish."
"You're welcome." She pauses, studying my face like she's trying to read something written there. "Do you want anything to eat? We're running to the deli."
"No, I'm just going to read these papers." I place my hand on a stack of my students' stories on my desk.
"Well, I can bring you back a sandwich or a salad or something if you want."
My stomach picks that moment to growl, betraying me.
She smiles. "What do you want?"
"A club sandwich would be great."
"You got it. Be back in just a bit."
"Okay, thank you, Trish."
"Anytime." She disappears out of my doorway.
Twenty minutes later I'm unwrapping the cellophane from my club sandwich when I feel him—that electric shift in the air that only happens when Kade enters a room.
The atmosphere changes, pressure building like a storm rolling in.
Then I hear his footsteps in the hallway, that confident stride I'd recognize anywhere.
I look up from my desk and just the sight of him floods me with comfort so profound it makes my chest ache.
The relief is immediate and overwhelming, and right on its heels comes the guilt, sharp and vicious.
My husband is lying sedated in a hospital bed and here I am feeling safe because my eighteen-year-old student walked into my classroom.
The sandwich turns to sawdust in my mouth. I set it carefully back in the container and reach for a napkin, wiping away evidence of the appetite I suddenly don't have.
"You should finish that." His voice carries across the empty classroom, low and certain.
But food is the last thing I want right now. What I want is impossible—to have him hold me, to press my face against his chest and breathe him in until the world makes sense again. Except we can't. Not here. Not anywhere, really, but especially not here where careers end and lives implode.
My eyes start to water for the first time since the hospital called yesterday morning. The tears surprise me with their timing, their wrongness. I'm not crying for Daniel. I'm crying because Kade is standing ten feet away and that's somehow both too close and impossibly far.
"What's wrong?" He moves toward my desk before I can stop him.
I look up at him through blurring vision and the next thing I know he's kneeling in front of me, right here in my classroom where anyone could walk in and destroy us both with a single photograph.
"You need to go to your desk." My voice comes out strangled, desperate. "If someone sees you—"
"I don't give a fuck." His hand settles on my knee, warm and solid and real.
When my eyes land on that touch, I see his knuckles—bruised purple-black, split open in places, swollen to twice their normal size. Panic spikes through me. I reach for his other hand without thinking and it's the same. Worse, maybe. The knuckles are torn raw.
"You." The word catches in my throat. I can't finish the thought. Can't make my mouth form the accusation, the question, the horrible understanding crystallizing in my mind. Oh my god, did he do that to Daniel?
He stands abruptly, jaw so tight I can see the muscle jump beneath his skin. "Nobody is going to hurt you ever again."
I stare at him in absolute shock, the classroom tilting sideways.
Before I can process or respond or do anything except sit frozen in my chair, a couple of students wander in, backpacks hitting the floor, taking their seats like nothing earth-shattering just happened. Like my entire world didn't just crack open and rearrange itself.
Kade gives me a look that says this is not over, eyes dark with promises I'm not ready to hear, then walks to his desk with that same easy confidence. Like his hands aren't destroyed. Like he didn't just confess to attempted murder in one sentence.
My mind is racing in circles that go nowhere.
He did this. He almost killed Daniel... for me...
because Daniel hurt me. The reality of it crashes over me in waves I can't sort through.
Relief wars with horror wars with something that might be gratitude or might be love or might be both twisted together until I can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
I don't know how to feel about any of this.
Don't know what it means that part of me—the darkest, most broken part—is glad.
The bell rings, signaling the start of class, but I can't teach. Can't stand up there and talk about metaphor and symbolism when real violence just walked through my door wearing Kade's face.
"We're just going to have silent reading today," I announce to the class, voice steadier than I have any right to manage. Professional. Controlled. Like I'm not fragmenting into pieces at my desk. "If anyone needs a book you can borrow one from my bookshelf."
I pull the stack of student papers toward me, acting like I'm grading.
But I'm not paying attention to the words on the page.
The sentences blur together, meaningless strings of letters that might as well be in another language.
My eyes track across lines without comprehension, seeing nothing but Kade's split knuckles, Daniel's unconscious face, the impossible situation I've created.
My phone vibrates against my desk, the buzz loud in the quiet classroom. I glance at the screen, seeing it's from the unknown number I still haven't saved—couldn't risk Daniel finding a contact labeled "Kade" in my phone.
I open the message with shaking fingers.
Unknown: Talk to me Peaches.
I stare at those four words for a long time, thumb hovering over the keyboard. What am I supposed to say? The cursor blinks, waiting. I close the message without responding and set the phone face-down, heart hammering.
A few minutes later it vibrates again. I shouldn't look. I do anyway.
Unknown: Please say something.
The "please" breaks something in me. I close the message again and shove the phone into my desk drawer, hands trembling so badly I nearly drop it. Out of sight. Like that will help. Like I can hide from what's happening.
What am I supposed to say? Thank you for almost murdering my husband? I'm terrified and relieved and don't know which feeling is worse? I think I might be in love with you and that makes me complicit in whatever this is?
The period stretches endless ahead of me, forty more minutes of sitting here pretending to function while Kade watches me from across the room.