SCARLET
The last thing I expected to find after prying open my swollen eyes was a stranger standing at the foot of the bed.
For a split second, I was sure I was dreaming and was ready to close my eyes again and hide from the world.
Grayson was gone. He could have saved Mom, or maybe he couldn’t have and only told himself otherwise.
I still didn’t know what it all meant. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Sleep was easier.
Suddenly, my supposedly imaginary friend cleared his throat, and I realized this was very real.
My eyes flew open, and any thoughts of a hangover were quickly swept aside.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, holding up his hands while his green eyes widened.
“I knocked for a couple of minutes and became worried when I didn’t get an answer. ”
Vaughn. It was Vaughn, who, of course, would have a key to get into the suite.
Now, I regretted falling onto the bed without bothering to take off my dress.
Then again, maybe not, since it would have meant being discovered half naked.
It was bad enough my makeup had to be all over my face after the crying I did last night, finally falling asleep after weeping for what felt like hours and very well could have been.
“I guess I really passed out.” Glancing at the clock, I almost gasped in surprise. Nine thirty already? It didn’t feel possible that I had slept for so long.
Finally, reality started to trickle in, and I realized what this was all about. With a sinking heart, I looked up at him, running a self-conscious hand under my eyes and picking up smudges. “I guess this is when I leave, right? He told me it would all be settled by now.” I couldn’t say his name.
“No one is going to kick you out.” He seemed genuine, even if his voice was a little tight. His body language screamed awkwardness, but then, who wouldn’t at a moment like this?
“But I still should go, right? I understand.” How is he? Where is he? Why couldn’t he do this himself? So many questions, all of them clamoring to be heard.
Vaughn slid a hand into his inside breast pocket. “I have something for you. Grayson gave it to me last night.”
Even hearing his name was painful, but what hurt worse was accepting the envelope Vaughn held out. “He gave me a few other things for you, but said I should let you read that first,” he explained. “I can wait out here for you, in the living room. Take your time.”
He only thought he wanted me to take my time. Really? I was so overwhelmed, I wasn’t sure I had it in me to do more than stare at my name printed so carefully in black ink on white paper. I’d fall asleep weeping over Grayson, convinced I hated him, hurting and screaming into the pillow.
Now, here I was, fighting for air, my heart fluttering wildly.
First, I opened the envelope, throwing my legs over the side of the bed and placing the paper on the nightstand, staring down at it when my hands shook too hard to read what he’d written.
Scarlet,
I asked Vaughn to give you everything you’ll need after tonight. He has the account information, bank cards, passwords to log in, and the location of your car. I am going to bring all of this to an end so you can be free to start again. I hope you understand someday why things had to be this way.
Dominic has to go. I’ve arranged a truce with my dad for tonight. He has his reasons for helping me, and I have to trust he’ll make good on his word. Still, I like to have a backup plan. I wanted to be sure someone could explain everything to you in case I couldn’t be the one to do it.
I want you to know that when I leave you tonight, the way I need to, it’s the last thing I want to do.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished things were different.
How I’ve wished I was different, too, but then I couldn’t have kept you safe when you needed me if I were anyone other than myself.
And if the only good thing I do in my life is clear the way for you, then that’s fine because you’re worth it.
Take the money and go wherever you want to go. Don’t be afraid of turning into anyone other than yourself, whoever that turns out to be. You can choose for yourself. It’s up to you now.
If it helps, know that I love you.
This is the only way I could think to give you the life you deserve.
Live it well.
Grayson
Know that I love you. I read the words again and again, my heart so full it could burst, tears rolling down my cheeks and cutting through the stains left behind last night. He loved me. Whatever he did, he did it because he loved me.
Which launched me off the bed and across the room so I could fling open the door.
Vaughn waited by the windows, typing something into his phone.
He slid it into his pocket when I entered the room.
Is that guilt on his face? “Where is he?” I demanded, panting for air.
He loved me, and he was on his own somewhere, and I needed to find him.
“Excuse me?” Vaughn asked with a silent laugh.
“Please, don’t stall. Where is Grayson?” I asked again, this time with a whine in my voice. I was that desperate and overwhelmed by emotion. He loved me. “What did he do last night? I have to find him, please. Help.”
“I don’t think that’s what he wants, Scarlet.” He ran a hand over his sandy blond hair, sighing deeply. “Grayson gave me instructions, and I want to honor them.”
“You’re talking about him like he’s dead.”
That was when he did the worst thing imaginable. He winced.
I crossed my arms over my stomach because I would have sworn somebody kicked me in it. No, it wasn’t possible. I wouldn’t believe it. “What did he do? Where is he?” I whispered, shaking, ready to be sick.
Releasing a breath, he slid his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “He wouldn’t want me to tell you.”
“But—”
With a scowl, he snapped, “Let me finish. He wouldn’t want me to tell you, but he’s wrong. From what I understand, he got out of surgery a couple of hours ago. He was badly injured in a fight.”
I couldn’t stand around and wait to hear more.
I had a direction now, a purpose. “Give me five minutes, then take me to him. Please. I have to see him.” Before Vaughn could say anything, I was out of the room and unzipping my dress, scrambling for something else to put on, my head spinning and my heart thumping, pumping determination through my veins.
Whatever happened, it happened because he loved me.
Did he honestly think I was going to stay away?
Within twenty minutes, we stood outside a glass-walled room in the ICU.
Vaughn held a quiet conversation with a doctor before joining me, standing by my side as I stared tearfully into Grayson’s room.
He looked so small in the bed, so helpless, tubes in his arms and sensors on his chest, sending a tangle of wires to a machine beeping rhythmically behind him.
He had to live. He just had to.
I refused to accept any other outcome. How could I live through it if he didn’t make it? Just seeing him like this left me swaying and biting my tongue to keep from screaming at him to please wake up.
“He came around briefly when surgery was over,” Vaughn told me in a quiet voice. “But since then, he’s been unconscious. The knife came close to his bowel and nicked his kidney. He lost a lot of blood. In the end, though, he was very lucky.”
“Who brought him in?” I asked, catching fresh tears with a trembling hand. I’d washed my face before leaving the suite, but I probably looked like hell just the same.
“A couple of his guys. One of them called me,” he explained. “Grayson did some work for me not long ago, and he must have told them to call me if things went wrong.”
“Did they tell you… anything else?”
I looked up in time to see him shake his head. “No. No details.”
I would have to wait for Grayson to wake up, and I would. They could drag me out of his room if they wanted me to leave. There was nowhere else I wanted to be.
As it turned out, I wasn’t alone with him the entire time.
Around an hour after I camped out in an armchair next to the bed, an older man appeared on the other side of the glass wall between us and the hallway.
Tall, handsome, if a bit weathered. Well-dressed, if a little disheveled, like he threw on the first things his hands landed on without bothering to check if it was ironed.
He looked like an older version of the man in the bed.
Our eyes met. His head tipped to the side in a way that told me he knew who he was looking at.
I knew him too. There was only one person he could be. My blood ran cold even as my face went hot. So this was the man who changed my life by murdering my mother, whether he meant to do it or not. I had spent years paying for his sin.
I couldn’t keep him away from his son, though that didn’t mean I had to share the room with him.
When he entered, I stood, ready to trade places, looking anywhere but at the man who symbolized everything that had gone wrong.
“I’ll give you your time with him,” I mumbled, tucking my hair behind my ears with trembling hands.
“No, no,” he insisted. “Please. I wanted to see him for myself and make sure he’s hanging in. A phone call isn’t the same.”
Good for him. A real Father of the Year candidate.
“I hope you understand why I wouldn’t want to be here with you, just the same.
” My voice was cold, barely holding back the years of anger, questions, and pain I had stored up deep in my heart.
Slowly, I lifted my gaze to find his features pinching together in pain, and somehow that pain gave me the strength to keep going.
“You did a good thing by helping Grayson last night, and you helped me by doing it, but it doesn’t erase everything else.
You took an innocent woman’s life, and you destroyed mine. ”