Chapter Thirty Cole
I’m on my third lap around the neighborhood when my phone rings.
It’s past midnight. I’ve been running for an hour. The cold air helps refocus my mind when it’s stuck on Hailey.
I slow to a walk and pull the phone out of my jacket pocket, expecting Tyler. My check-in for tomorrow morning is twelve hours from now, but Tyler has a habit of calling early when he can’t sleep.
It isn’t Tyler.
The screen reads Hailey.
I stop walking, feeling nothing but dread. If she’s calling me this late after all these weeks… I know it can’t be good.
I let it ring three times because I don’t trust my own voice. On the fourth ring, I clear my throat and answer it.
“Hailey?”
“Hi.”
It takes one word for me to know her voice is wrecked—hoarse and barely there. A slow and steady beep in the background catches my ear almost immediately.
“Where are you?” I’m already moving, my feet leading me back toward my car. “Hailey. Where are you?”
“The ER. My ER. Don’t come yet. Just listen.”
It takes every last ounce of self-control I have to force myself to stop. “What happened?”
“He found me. I went to the mall by myself, and he—” Her breath hitches, and then she lets out a soft sob. “He was waiting for me in the parking garage.”
In that moment, my entire world stops spinning. I am standing on a sidewalk at 12:43 in the morning, and the only thing I can focus on is the sound of Hailey’s broken breathing on the other end of this phone.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m alive.”
“Hailey…” Her name on my lips trails off.
“They’re keeping me overnight. Maybe a few days.” Another shaky breath. “I’m okay, Cole. I’m going to be okay. I’m on the good drugs and I’m talking to you now and I’m okay.”
“Where is he?” The question comes out more demand than question.
“They don’t know. He ran. They lost him, but there’s a warrant for his arrest now. They’re looking for him.”
“Hailey—”
“Cole. Listen, please.”
I snap my mouth shut, and wait for her to continue.
Fuck. I should be there. I should have been there.
“I’ve been lying here thinking,” she says, her voice strengthening a little. “I did everything right, and I’m in this bed anyway. The system isn’t going to save me from him. The next time he comes for me, I might not get back up.”
“You’re not going to have a next time.”
I won’t let him live to touch her again.
“I know.” Her voice doesn’t shake on this. “Because I’m calling you.”
The line goes very quiet again.
“Are you sure?” I ask. I need to hear her say it.
“I am sure. Yes.”
“Hailey, I need you to understand what you’re asking. Once I start, I’m not going to stop. Even if you change your mind in the morning, I don’t know if I can— I can promise a lot of things, but not that.”
“I know.”
“You’re not going to change your mind?”
“Mmm, no. But I’m going to make you a deal.”
“Anything.” I nearly fall to my knees at the thought of her asking me to help. I’ll do anything to help her right now.
“Don’t say anything. You don’t know what I’m going to ask.”
“I don’t need to know,” I admit. “I am willing to do anything you ask of me right now.”
“I am not handing this over to you.”
My eyebrow arches at that, and I shove my hand in my pocket. “Okay. And what does that mean exactly?”
“I want it done. I want him behind bars. But I am not just handing this to you and then disappearing. He’s not just your monster.”
“Okay…” I begin pacing back and forth on the sidewalk.
“He’s mine, Cole. The thing that literally waited for me in the dark. Whatever happens, I am the one calling the shots. Not you. Me. You do what I tell you to do, and you don’t do anything I haven’t told you to do.”
A long, slow breath leaves my body.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m yours. Whatever you say. I’ll do it the way you want it done, but I will not let you put yourself in a position to get hurt again. He’s not allowed to touch you, Hailey. You can’t ask me to let that happen.”
I hear her exhale. I’m not entirely sure it’s relief. It feels closer to permission. Permission to take his life if he tries to touch her again.
“Are you driving here?” she asks.
“You told me to stop, so I’m standing on the sidewalk, waiting for your next instruction.” There’s a hint of playfulness in my voice. We both need something to cling to right now.
She doesn’t hesitate to push right back, and I can hear the smile in her voice. “Don’t speed.”
“You know I’m going to.”
“Don’t get pulled over. We can’t have the police anywhere near us this week, Cole.”
I almost laugh. I don’t, but it’s in my throat anyway, because of course she’s already thinking like this. She is easily the smartest person I have ever met, and apparently she has just decided to apply that brain to the problem that is Lars Winters.
My little criminal.
I’m not entirely sure I’ll make it through this without completely spiraling and losing my mind, but I can find some peace in the fact that I have Hailey to ground me through it. I’m doing this for her. I’m doing this with her.
“I won’t get pulled over,” I tell her.
“Okay.”
“Hailey?” Now it’s my voice that’s cracking.
“Yeah?”
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”
There’s a long pause when all I can hear is the heart monitor beeping in the background.
“Just get here,” she says, refusing to acknowledge how I failed her.
“I’m coming.”
She hangs up, and I’m running for my truck.
…
What should have been a fifteen-minute drive to Memorial takes me less than ten.
The parking lot is mostly empty at this hour.
I park crookedly in a visitor spot and do not bother to fix it.
The automatic doors slide open for me. I’m immediately met by too-bright fluorescent lights and air that smells like the inside of every hospital I have ever been in: bleach, sickness, and plastic.
The short brunette woman at the registration desk looks up when she notices me approaching.
“I’m here for Hailey Brigham,” I say.
She glances at her screen, clicking around before finally asking, “Are you family?”
I don’t answer right away because the truthful answer is no and I am not in the mood to be turned away, especially when the patient in question works here and called me specifically.
Beyond the desk, a familiar voice says, “He’s with me.”
I turn to find Rachel standing in the corridor in a hoodie and sweatpants, red hair pulled into a messy knot, eyes red-rimmed but dry. She’s holding a paper coffee cup and staring at me with an assessing look in her eye.
“Rachel.” I half smile at her, unsure what to say.
“Cole.”
The receptionist looks between us until Rachel nods at her, prompting her to clack her fingers on the keyboard until a visitor sticker pops out of the thermal printing machine beside her.
Rachel just stands there, staring at me until I’m past the desk and into the corridor with her. We walk in silence to an elevator, and then she looks me up and down, stepping in front of me before I can press the call button.
“Stop. Before you go up there.”
“Rachel—”
“I am here because Hailey asked me to be here.” Her voice is quiet and very steady. It’s kind of fucking scary. “I am not on your side. I want to be very clear about that.”
I don’t answer, and instead I let her lay into me. I know I deserve it, and she deserves to be heard.
“But she made the decision to call you anyway,” Rachel says. “She’s a capable adult, and she gets to decide who she wants in her life. So I’m going to step out of your way. But I want you to remember that I’m doing that because it’s what she wants, not because I trust you.”
My response is soft. “I understand.”
“Do not make me regret letting you back there.”
Holding my hands up and shaking my head, I say, “I won’t. I promise.”
She studies me for another second, then steps aside, letting me press the button to the elevator.
“Floor four, room twelve,” she says. “She’s tired.”
“Thank you,” I exhale as I slide past her and step into the cab. She watches me until the doors close, giving me one final nod before she disappears.
Room twelve is toward the end of the first hall. The door is half open, and I push it open gently, suddenly scared to see her.
Visions of Emma come flooding back to me, and I feel like I’m reliving that nightmare all over again. I am reliving that nightmare all over again, I realize.
Her body is so small and fragile in the bed.
She normally looks so tall and strong… Lying in that bed with the blanket pulled up to her neck and her hair tucked behind one ear, she is small.
He tried to make her small.
Her left eye is purple and black and swollen most of the way shut. There’s a deep wound with stitches across her cheek and unmistakably finger-shaped bruises around her neck.
Fuck. It’s worse than I thought it’d be.
She turns her head when she hears me, moving so sluggishly it’s like the room is moving at a different speed than she is.
“Hi,” she says. The corner of her mouth lifts a fraction.
“Hi,” I manage, swallowing hard.
I cross the room to her, but I don’t touch her. I don’t think I can yet. Instead, I sit in the chair beside her bed, put my hands on my knees, and look at her face for a long time.
“You’re looking at me like I’m dying,” she says.
“I’m looking at you like he didn’t finish what he started, and I’m doing the math.”
“Cole.”
“Sorry.” I drag a hand down my face. “Sorry. I’m here. I’m okay. I’m here.”
“You don’t look okay.”
“I’m not. He put you in the hospital.”
Her hand moves on top of the blanket. Not toward me. Just out from her body, palm up, an offering. I watch it for a second.
I reach for her, and she immediately weaves her fingers between mine.
I raise halfway out of the chair to lean forward and kiss the top of her hand, resting my cheek on it before sitting down again. Her sad eyes break my heart. “Tell me what you need.”
“Sleep, mostly.” She’s already drifting. The good drugs are catching up to her now that she’s done the hardest part. Survived. “Tomorrow we’ll talk. About the plan. About the rules.”
“Tomorrow,” I confirm, gently squeezing her hand.
“Don’t do anything before we talk. I just needed to see you.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
She watches me through her one good eye for a few seconds until her grip on my hand goes a little looser.
“Stay,” she says. “Just till I’m asleep.”
“I’ll stay as long as you’ll let me.”
“Thank you,” she whispers as she snuggles her head into the pillow, letting her heavy eyelids close at last.
I sit with my hand under hers for hours, and I don’t move. I hardly breathe out of fear of waking her when she needs sleep the most.
Across the hall, another monitor beeps, alternating with the one in Hailey’s room. Down the corridor, staff members laugh together. And outside her window, the sky starts to go the bruised purple color it gets right before the sun comes up.
What the fuck am I going to tell Tyler? And Tracey? The entire fucking group will lose their shit if they find out.
When I finally leave, dawn has broken on the horizon and the hospital is coming back to life after another long night. Hailey is still sleeping, but I have work to do.
She told me not to do anything before we talk, but she didn’t tell me I couldn’t think about all the things I’m going to do to that vile piece of shit when we catch him.
Because we will catch him.
Or my name isn’t Cole Matthews.