Chapter Twenty-Six
Rachel leaned forward in her hospital bed as the certified nursing assistant propped a pillow behind her head and then checked the amount of saline in her IV.
At the door, past the curtain that separated the double room, the veteran, take-no-prisoners staff member who’d written “Anne” on Rachel’s patient board, called back to her.
“Looks like you have a handsome visitor out here,” she said. “A very late visitor, who we hope won’t stay long.”
Rachel sat up straighter and swiped at her hair to push it back from her face, her heart racing.
She didn’t know why she bothered fussing.
Mick had already seen her at her worst, and after the fit she’d thrown at the fire scene, she’d guessed he would never speak to her again.
She still wasn’t sure what she would say to him if he did.
But the man who rounded the curtain turned out to be her brother instead. She let out a yelp when she saw him. “Oh my gosh, Riley. How did you find out I was here? When did you get…out?”
Already, tears were threatening, so she took a few deep breaths, trying to hold them back. It was bad enough that he had to see her like this, but it would be worse when she told him that his house had been destroyed because of her.
“You didn’t think they’d keep me there forever, did you?” he said. “Those beds are in high demand, so they tossed me. I told you they were going to the last time we spoke.”
“Oh, I forgot. I’m a terrible sister.”
“You’re a great sister, other than that you were hanging out at my house and ended up trying to roast marshmallows in the living room.”
She lowered her head. “Riley, I’m so sorry.”
“We can talk about it later. But for now, are you okay?” He pointed to the monitors. “What did the doctor say?”
“That you’re going to have to keep me around for a while,” she said with a grin.
“Well, that’s tough news, but I guess I’ll have to take it.”
She held her hand out to him, but when the tube of her IV caught on the bed’s plastic side rail, she offered him the other hand. Smiling, he stepped forward and took it. She lost the battle with her emotions as tears welled in her eyes.
“You look so—” She reached up to touch his face, but he stepped back and preened.
“Buff? Gorgeous? Ultra masculine?”
“Stop it.” She brushed her damp cheek on the shoulder of that ridiculously oversized hospital gown. “You look…healthier.”
“Now, that wouldn’t take much. I was a broken shell.” He cleared his throat and pushed back his shoulders, his eyes damp. “But I want to thank you for taking me there.”
He clapped his hands as though to announce that the topic was closed and then pointed from her IV to the machine monitoring her heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature.
“Looks like I got out in the nick of time.”
“They just kept me for observation because of the smoke inhalation.” Then she lowered her head, the tears coming hot now. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kept looking. You told me not to do it. And now…the house.”
“I know. Rachel, it was just a house. One we shouldn’t even have—” He stopped and shook his head hard.
“But you warned me—”
He raised a hand to interrupt her. “The only thing that matters today though is that you’re okay. I don’t know what I would have done— You and the girls…you’re all I have…”
At that, her brother moved to the window to look out at the dark sky. Her heart ached with the truth of it. It was the same for her though a voice inside told her she could have had someone else as well. She squashed it since it hurt too much to listen.
“I wasn’t there to pick you up. How did you even get home? And here?”
“I had help.”
As if he’d timed their entrance, Carly and Carissa bounded into the room, both holding out candy bars. They scrambled past her brother and right up on her bed, forcing her to shift her arm so one of them wouldn’t dislodge her IV.
“Uncle Riley said you had a fire.” Carissa said, already fumbling with her candy. “Can we eat them? Please?”
“Maybe in a little bit.”
Carly glanced over from her snack, her gaze intense. “Did you get hurt, Mommy? Mr. Mick said you’re okay. But please don’t play with matches anymore.”
Mr. Mick? She had to force herself not to ask as Riley had already turned back from the window and was watching her closely.
“I won’t play with matches,” she said, holding back a grin. “Promise.”
Her breath hitched when Mick rounded the curtain as though he’d been chasing the girls.
He gave both adults apologetic looks. “Sorry. Kept them out of here for as long as I could.”
“And bribed them with candy, I see.” Riley pointed to the evidence. “Would have done the same thing myself.”
Mick turned his head to look at her. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Their gazes held for a few heartbeats before Rachel lowered hers to her right hand and touched her finger to the tube taped on the back side. Her chest ached more than it had all day.
Rachel pointed back and forth between the men. “You two came here together? How do you even…?”
Riley answered for them both. “Technically, it was four of us.”
She lifted her chin and gave Riley the mom look.
Mick took a step toward her. “Your brother and I had a talk after I got back from the police station.”
“Police station? How long have I been in here?”
“A few hours.” Mick stuffed his hands in his pockets. “They arrested a suspect for the fire at your father’s house.”
“You mean all of this could be over?”
“At least the part about the fires, I guess,” Riley answered for Mick.
Her pulse increased on the monitor as details flooded her thoughts, too complicated and interwoven to be unraveled with a single arrest. “But we still have to figure out—”
“Yes, we’ll have a lot to make sense of,” Riley said, “but not today.”
“He’s right,” Mick said. “You should get rest so you can come home tomorrow.”
Her brother stepped over to the wardrobe, where the nurse assistant had helped her store her clothes in a plastic bag. “But would it be okay if I get your keys so I can take the girls there? It seems like you might need childcare, and I need a place to stay. The garage gets a little cold.”
Her gaze flicked to Mick’s and away, but her attentive brother didn’t miss it.
“Bet there’s a story there.”
Mick stared at his feet. Rachel’s cheeks burned, probably giving more hints away.
“Yeah, take the keys. You’re in charge.”
While her brother fumbled in her purse, she gave him a cautious look. This wasn’t a perfect time for him to take on extra responsibilities as someone so newly sober, but, for tonight, they had no choice.
“Well, let’s take the girls out to the waiting room lounge so they can eat those candy bars.” Riley pointed to Mick. “Could you take them out there? I’ll meet you in a minute.”
The twins popped off the bed and followed Mick into the hall. No one mentioned that they could have easily nibbled on them right in the hospital room. Riley stepped to the side of her hospital bed, rested his hands on the rail and leaned in close.
“Give the guy a chance, okay? You’re so hard on everyone, except me.”
“You don’t understand. The stuff he made me leave in the fire might have helped prove—”
He shook his head until she stopped. “Mick already told me. But it doesn’t matter now. We’ll just have to figure out another way.”
“There might not be…”
His lips lifting in a sad smile. “Remember when we were kids, and I said you were the dumbest girl I ever knew?”
She drew her brows together but nodded.
“If you let this guy go, you’ll prove I was right.”
* * *
Mick braced his hands on the sides of the hospital room’s doorframe and then propelled himself inside. He wouldn’t have the chance to say everything that was on his mind tonight, but since he might not get another opportunity to talk to her, he planned to have his say.
When Mick stepped around the curtain, Rachel stared back at him, her hands gripped together on top of the blanket. He pulled a chair closer to the bed and lowered into it.
“Thanks for bringing my brother and the girls here.” She squeezed her hands tighter. “And thanks again for…everything earlier.”
His throat filled, but he forced himself to smile. “It still pains you to say we saved your life, doesn’t it?”
“It’s just that…everything’s so messed up in my head.”
“I still don’t think you recognize that you really could have…died today.” Mick hated that his voice broke on the word. He needed to stay in control, no matter how much it hurt.
“I do get it.” She gestured to the tube in her hand and then to the developing bruises on her arms, where he’d secured her to the ladder for her own safety.
“You could have left your whole family behind,” he continued, straining to hold his composure. His voice sounded steady in his ears, though his mind raged. You could have left me, he wanted to shout, but he kept it inside where it festered and burned.
“I know. I know.” She shook her head. “I just wish—”
“You’ve made it pretty clear what you wished.”
“It’s just that there was a letter in the box to Riley and me. My dad admitted that he was guilty of some of the crimes but said not all of the things we’d learn would be true. He also said he wished he could have confessed and protected us at the same time.”
Mick didn’t miss that she’d stopped calling Stan by his first name. That was something. “You see? Just like we thought, he was trying to protect you.”
He didn’t mention that he’d been the one to suggest it. “At least you got to see the letter and know it existed. You might have to let that be enough.”
“I want to. I do. But I can’t.”
That was the crux of it. Mick accepted the truth that stood between them. He couldn’t take back the decisions he made at the fire scene—no, wouldn’t—and she couldn’t forgive him for them.
“I want you to know that given the same set of circumstances, I would have made the same choices I did today.” He lifted his shoulders and lowered them. “Other than that I wouldn’t have participated in your rescue at all.”
She’d been staring down at her hands, but at the admission, she looked up, her brows knitted together.
“Don’t you get it? I’m in love with you.”
She stared back at him with wide, shocked eyes. His own reaction was no less extreme, his chest aching as though he’d yanked the words right from his center and left all the torn flesh behind. This wasn’t how he’d pictured telling her. Or how he’d hoped she would receive the message.
“And because I’m in love with you, I had no business trying to be the hero by participating in your rescue. Everyone knew it. I set a terrible example for my whole crew.”
She swallowed visibly and opened her lips a few times as if she planned to respond. Then she closed her mouth and lowered her head. It was the first time since he’d met Rachel Hoffman that he’d struck her into silence, and pain sliced through him that it had taken his confession of love to do it.
But it gave him an opportunity to say more, and he was already on a roll, so he took advantage of it.
“You said I was trying to make up for the losses back in Chicago. Maybe you’re right.
Maybe I’ll always be trying to repay my debt for that.
But at least I’m making something good out of a horrible situation.
What you’re doing is just the opposite. You’re trying to destroy the future to make up for the past.
“You don’t think you deserve to be happy. But you do. Someday I hope you find someone you can really put your trust in. Without fear or strings or escape hatches.”
With tears falling down her cheeks, she nodded. He hoped she would contradict him, would say everything that had happened that day didn’t matter, and there was still a chance for them. Instead, she said nothing at all.
His heart heavy, Mick stood, but he had one more thing to say.
“You didn’t have a choice over some of the bad things that have happened to you. Losing your mother and your father. Then the perfect father you thought you had. Even the jerk who abandoned you.”
“This time, I want you to know you had a choice.”
* * *
It took Rachel about thirty seconds to realize what a big mistake she’d made. The same thirty seconds required for Mick to stride out of the room and out of her life.
What had she done? She’d just pushed away the best thing that had happened to her since the birth of her daughters and the possibility of a future with someone who loved her, someone she loved, because of records that had gone up in smoke.
Papers that could never bring her father back or make him the perfect person who’d lived only in her imagination, no matter how much mitigating proof they would have found in those boxes.
She tore at the tape on her IV and considered yanking it out and chasing him down the hall. But what would that prove? To him or her daughters?
You’re trying to destroy the future to make up for the past. Mick’s words taunted her, the truth in them as clear as the nursing assistant’s red handwriting on that dry-erase board.
He was right. But to whom was she still trying to prove herself?
Her father was gone. Nothing she could do would change that.
Riley wanted what was best for her, too, even if that meant entrusting his only remaining relatives to the man who had already taken his job.
And Mick loved her, enough to want her to be happy with someone else if she couldn’t be with him. Given the choice, her heart longed forhim. She knew it with the same certainty that she’d had, realizing that someone in Mount Isabel was keeping secrets.
She wanted him, and she hoped he still wanted her, despite the thuds of his footsteps that had carried him away. Somehow she had to make this right.