Cassidy
Groaning from the excruciating headache, I peeled my eyes open, wondering why in the hell I passed out on the couch instead of making it to my bed.
Except when I finally opened my eyes, I saw my parents staring down at me.
“Mom? Dad? Why are you in my house?”
Mom burst into tears, and Dad rushed over, picking up my hand. I instantly winced at the pain from just the single touch.
“It’s okay, honey. You’re alright,” Dad said reassuringly, brushing my hair back from my forehead, just like he did when I was a little girl and was sick.
“What are you talking about?” I croaked.
God, I really needed some water. But as I rolled my head on the pillow, I realized two things. One, my house did not have white walls. And two, I did not have plastic pink cups anywhere in my house.
“Where am I? And why am I in this itchy gown?”
Slowly, sensations started coming back to me.
A numbness throughout my whole body became clearer by the second.
The white of the room grew brighter, along with light shining in through the large windows.
And there was something covering one eye that I only now realized was possibly a bandage.
Either that or I was a pirate, and this was a new look for me.
I was going with that as panic rose in my chest. It was better than the alternative—that I had lost an eye and was now going to sport an eyepatch for the rest of my life.
Although that was very similar to the pirate thing.
“Pirates wear eyepatches because they lose an eye,” I said, my panic threatening to suck me under.
“What, darling?”
“Pirates wear eyepatches. And my body is numb! Do I have a wooden leg as well?”
I could hear the monitor kick up a notch as the world spun around me. I was in a hospital. I had a patch over my eye. My body was numb. This was like a bad dream. A very bad dream in which I was now going to have to start walking around saying “Argh, matey!”
Which wouldn’t be the end of the world since that was a really cool phrase, but this was not how I wanted to spend the rest of my life. There was a difference between playing out scenes from a book and actually becoming the character.
The door swung open and Caroline strode in, a large smile plastered on her face as she rushed over to me. Right behind her was Sam, except he came to the other side of my bed, practically pushing my dad out of the way to get to me.
“Shh, oh honey, it’s alright,” Caroline soothed.
“I don’t wanna be a pirate!” I cried.
It was only then that I realized tears were streaming down my face and the wetness was building around my neck. Oh God, was I paralyzed, too?
“Honey, you’re gonna have to calm down. You’re not a pirate,” she chuckled.
“But…I have an eyepatch and my body is numb. Please tell me you didn’t fit me for a peg leg!”
Caroline chuckled, reaching over to something on the side of the bed. “Me thinks the pain meds are a tad high, matey.”
An ungodly wail slipped free from my throat at her words. As tears blurred my vision, I could have sworn I saw a gold earring in my father’s ear. And my mother wore a blue and white striped shirt. God, I really was on some weird pirate ship.
“Sweetie, you are not a pirate,” Caroline whispered. Then her fingers were peeling at the patch on my face, revealing the faintest hint of light. “There, you see? It’s just a bandage to protect your eye.”
I sniffled as the light grew brighter and brighter. I couldn’t see fully, but the light proved that I wasn’t going to be blind.
“What about my leg? I can’t feel anything.”
“That’s the pain meds,” she chuckled. “And no, you don’t have a wooden leg, but it is broken.”
Broken. I had a broken leg. And a bandage over my eye.
“How much did I drink last night?” I whispered.
“Nothing, baby,” Sam murmured, pressing a kiss to my hand.
I looked at him strangely, wondering why on earth he was in here, kissing my hand when he vowed not to let anyone in town know that we were sleeping together.
Craning my neck in his direction, I whispered as best I could. “You’re doing a shitty job of hiding the fact that you’re sleeping with me.”
His shoulders shook with laughter as a smile graced his lips. But instead of feeling happy, I was confused as hell, and I was pretty sure my face said What the fuck is wrong with you?
“I’m pretty sure everyone in town knows about the two of you after last night,” Caroline smiled.
“Why?” I asked as a horrible feeling crept over me. “What happened last night?” My gaze swung to Sam’s as a million thoughts ran through my mind. “Please tell me we did not do something really public.”
His eyebrow quirked in amusement. “Something really public?”
My eyes shot to my parents before returning to him. “You know.”
Again, a twitch of amusement crossed his face. “Nope. I don’t know.”
Narrowing my eyes, I hated him in this moment. “S-E-X.”
“I’m pretty sure your parents can spell,” he mused. “And no, we did not have sex in public.”
“Oh, thank God.” My body sank into the bed with relief. I’m not sure how I would come back from that one.
“I would never share you with anyone,” he rumbled, his low voice sending shivers down my spine.
Not that I could really feel them, but I knew they were there. Every time this man spoke, it did something to my body that felt unnatural and way too right all at the same time.
But that was beside the point.
“Wait, what am I doing in this bed? Why are you all here? And why is Mom crying? Did someone die?”
That only made Mom cry harder, and that’s when Dad turned and pulled her into his arms. Damn. Someone did die.
“Sweetie,” Caroline said gently. “You were hit by a car last night. Do you remember any of that?”
I stared at her for a moment, a million thoughts racing through my mind, but only one bubbled to the surface. “Well, considering I thought I had a peg leg and an eyepatch, I guess not.”
But my head was still pounding, and now that she mentioned it, it was like the other aches in my body were making themselves known. I felt stiff, like I needed to lie down and sleep after falling off a roof when trying to hang my lights. Only about ten times worse than that.
“You were walking out of Seafood & More when Alyssa was attacked,” Sam said, his thumb rubbing a soothing pattern on my hand.
Did he really think that was going to stop me from freaking out? I watched his thumb circle again and again, but it did not have the desired effect. Panic was engulfing me.
“You ran for help, and a car pulled out and ran you over.”
“Technically, you were hit by the car and thrown from the windshield,” Caroline corrected. “That’s where all the cuts came from. And the broken leg.”
But even as they explained it, I continued to watch his thumb go round and round on my skin. Maybe it did make it better. I didn’t feel like crying. I wasn’t scared anymore about becoming a pirate.
All in all, I mostly just wanted to go back to sleep.
“Oh,” I settled on.
“Is there anything I can get you, sweetie?” Caroline asked.
I shook my head, then glanced up at my parents. “I don’t suppose you could stop crying?”
When I woke the next time, thankfully, I was alone with Sam in the room.
“Did I run them off?” I asked, groggily.
“And then some,” he smirked. “I believe your mother ran out of here in tears.”
Groaning, I shifted in bed, trying to get more comfortable. Not that I could with my leg in a giant stabilizing cast. “When do I get this thing off?”
“When the swelling goes down, you’ll get the real deal.”
I huffed in annoyance. “And then what?”
“Six to twelve weeks.”
I looked down at my leg and sighed. “This is going to really suck.”
“Look on the bright side, you’re not dead.”
I felt my lips twitch in amusement at his words. It probably shouldn’t be funny, but since I didn’t really remember anything, I couldn’t be too upset about the way it happened. At least my eyepatch was gone.
“So, tell me, do I look fuckable to you right now?”
“You always look fuckable.”
“I’m sure. I think the eye really does it.”
“Oh, definitely. But I think I actually liked you better with the pirate patch.”
I sighed, wondering how I actually looked, though I hadn’t had the courage yet to ask. I could only imagine I had bruises covering my body and stitches that made me look like Frankenstein.
“So, how soon until I get to go home?”
“Another day. But then you’ll have to come back for the cast once the swelling goes down.”
“Yeah, but you can break me out, right?”
The smirk that slid across his lips was just a tad too devastating for the way I felt.
“If you could not smirk at me, that would be great.”
“Why? You don’t like me teasing you?”
“Not when I can’t climb on top of you and fuck you,” I said just as my mother walked into the room and gasped.
“Cassidy!”
“Well, that was unfortunate timing,” I muttered.
“If you were still living at home, I would wash your mouth out with soap!”
“Mom, I think we both know that I have sex.”
She spun around in horror, covering her mouth like she would throw up.
“Maybe lay off the sex talk around your mom,” Sam whispered.
I sighed heavily, my eyes drifting closed again. I was so tired. No matter how much I slept, I was always ready for another nap.
“I’m going to ask Caroline to lower the meds,” Mom said. “My daughter would never say these things if she wasn’t high as a kite!”
As she stormed out of the room, Sam leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my lips. “Get ready for a lot of pain.”
“Well, it serves her right. I’m not a kid. Of course I have sex! And I like it!”
A low chuckle came from behind Sam, and when he shifted away, I saw Maverick standing in the doorway. “Well, that explains why she stormed out of your room.”
“What do you want?” I grumbled.
“How ya doin’, Cass?” Maverick’s eyes were soft and kind, a contradiction to his usual jovial demeanor.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I just got hit by a car,” I muttered.
“Well, you did, so I guess I can look at you like that if I want.” He came in further, taking a seat beside me. “So, what do you remember from that night?”
“Not a single thing.” It was disturbing to not have any clue what happened, but I thanked God that I didn’t remember. I had a feeling the events would play over and over in my mind, driving me insane.
“What’s the last thing you do remember?”
I thought back, but got the same discombobulated memories that I always had when I tried to remember. “I’m not sure. Everything’s fuzzy. I honestly don’t know what happened when. Everything’s out of order.”
“Okay, well, let’s take it back to the last—”
“I don’t want to know,” I snapped, already tired of the conversation.
He shifted uneasily, his eyes flicking to Sam’s. “It’s important we have all witness accounts.”
“Well, since I don’t remember anything, I can’t exactly be a witness, now can I?”
“Cassidy—”
“What do you want from me?” I snapped, my anger barely holding on by a thread.
I wasn’t myself right now. My anger was on a hair trigger, and my emotions were all over the place.
I was drugged up, and when the drugs stopped working, I was in excruciating pain all over from having a car slam into my body.
My head hurt like a bitch most of the time, which was why I tended to stay asleep as long as possible and ignore the rest of the world.
And now Maverick wanted to draw me out of what little comfort I had and make me try to relive the accounts of the night that put me in this very position.
“It was Austin,” Maverick finally said. “We have video footage that proves it was his car.”
His car. But not proof it was him. “So, you can’t be sure it was him.”
“It was him,” Sam growled.
“But it won’t hold up in court,” I assumed. “Because you can’t prove he was behind the wheel.”
“He ran,” Mav said. “That’s proof enough for me.”
But it wasn’t proof enough for the system. If they couldn’t get him because of a technicality, that meant he was still a threat.
Wait…
“He ran, which means he’s still out there.”
My heart kicked up a notch at the realization.
“He is, but we’ll catch him.”
That didn’t seem very likely at the moment. Not when he had already gotten away with so much. Were we really supposed to have blind faith in the police? I’d known Mav all my life. He was a good guy and a great police officer, but Austin didn’t follow the law.
Mav was bound to it.
“That’s why we need anything you can remember. Did you ever feel like he was watching you? Did you ever see him following you?”
I shook my head, then looked at Sam, both of us remembering the same night. “He was at my house on Thanksgiving,” I whispered. “Mom and Dad invited him over, and he got in a fight with his brother.”
“Wyatt?” Mav asked, writing down some notes.
“Yes. He’d made some crude comments to me, and everything escalated. My door was smashed, and there were broken dishes all over the place.”
“I’ll talk to Wyatt. Maybe he knows where his brother would go. Or maybe he helped him escape,” he said, getting to his feet.
That didn’t seem right. It didn’t align with the way he came to my house and offered to fix the door, paying for everything. Then again, I had a severe headache and probably wasn’t thinking clearly.
“I don’t think he had anything to do with it,” I said after a moment. “There were also some times that I thought someone was outside my house or the shop.”
I felt Sam stiffen beside me.
“I assumed it was you.”
“Why would I—” His words cut off before he could finish that sentence. We both knew why he would be sneaking around my shop or my house. It didn’t take a genius to figure out, and Mav quickly caught on.
“Well, I’ll look into it and let you know. If you start to remember, please call me. We need everything we can use against him.”
I nodded, but honestly, I wasn’t about to sit around hoping to remember the accident. I knew the details would help, but did I really want to remember the terror I must have felt? Maybe I didn’t even see it happen. Maybe I didn’t feel a thing.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked, bringing me out of my thoughts.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You seem a little rattled.”
I cocked my head at him. “If you’d been in an accident and didn’t remember a thing, wouldn’t you be a little rattled?”
“Point taken.”
Sighing, I rested back against my pillows. “Break me out of here, Sam. I don’t think I can take another night in here.”
“I’m not sure your parents would be too happy about that. Your mom is already making plans to move in and help you around the house.”
My jaw dropped at his words. “When did this happen?”
He smirked at me. “While you were sleeping.”
“Well, it’s not going to happen. There’s no way I’m allowing her in my house. Not even for one night.”
A grin twisted his lips as he leaned back in his chair. “We’ll see about that.”