Chapter 25
The bus station in Los Angeles was busier than she would have expected, given the time of day.
There were several lines at different counters, people staring up at the schedule screens, and others fighting with vending machines.
Cami took stock of it all, overwhelmed and nervous as she tightened her fingers on the shoulder strap of her duffle bag.
According to the website, there was a bus headed to Tennessee that left at seven that night.
It would be a two-day trip, with a transfer in Dallas, and it would only get her to Cookeville, not Baxter.
She’d have to figure out something else to get the rest of the way, but it was less than ten miles.
Totally manageable, even if the trip was a hellishly long time to spend in a cramped bus seat. At least the buses all had Wi-Fi now.
But she hesitated to book a seat. After all, why should she go back to Tennessee?
She had some friends there, sure, but they’d barely spoken since she left for Santa Monica.
Other than her background, she had nothing tying her to that tiny little nothing town.
She could go anywhere. Hell, her cost of living would drop significantly no matter where she went.
She’d always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. Maybe she should head to Arizona.
She supposed the upside of being overwhelmed with choices was that it took her mind off her other problems. There was a silver lining in everything.
She sank onto a bench seat in the center of the station and pulled out her phone to check her bank balance.
She had a bit of savings, enough for first month’s rent somewhere that wasn’t Los Angeles, but she’d have to put the bus ticket on her credit card.
Maybe she could find some coding work to do on the bus ride, so it wasn’t wasted time.
The Grand Canyon was as good a place as any.
She stood and shuffled her things over to the ticket line, behind a teenager in an oversized pair of headphones and a skinny woman in her thirties wearing a baby in a backpack carrier.
The baby blinked at her, wide blue eyes full of curiosity, then shoved its fist into its mouth to gum on.
The teen had just wrapped up his purchase and the mother stepped up to the counter when Cami’s phone buzzed in her pocket.
The accompanying jingle of her ringtone sounded a second later, and she pulled the phone out to ensure she didn’t want to speak to whoever was calling.
There were only two people she could imagine wanting to speak to her instead of just texting.
It was neither of them. It was Tristan.
She frowned. Her insides grew cold with trepidation. It was probably nothing. Tristan just couldn’t get ahold of Lenny and no one was there to cover Cami’s shift. No big deal.
She tapped the green button on screen. “Hello? Tristan?”
“Cami?” Tristan’s voice sounded odd through the speaker of her phone. Likely just because she’d never spoken with him over the phone before. They’d only ever texted about work before. “Hi.”
“Hey. I’m kinda busy.” The woman in front of her was passing a credit card to the teller, wrapping up their transaction. “What’s up?”
“Oh. Uh.” There was a pause as Tristan seemed to gather his thoughts. Cami huffed, hoping to spur him to blurt out the reason behind the call. “You need to get to Santa Monica Medical. There’s been an accident.”
“What?” The words didn’t compute at first. They were sentences that should have made sense, but her brain couldn’t string them together at first. “What kind of accident?”
“Lenny was hit by a car, Cami. I don’t know much, but I know it’s bad.”
She was quiet for a long moment. The mother in front of her left the line, and the teller called her up, but Cami blinked, dazed.
Her fingers had gone numb. That had happened once before, she remembered, when she’d been told of her grandma’s death.
What a strange reaction to bad news. Maybe she should ask a doctor about it.
“Cami? You still there?” The strangeness hadn’t faded from Tristan’s voice, but she recognized it now as intense worry. He was barely holding it together.
“How bad?” she rasped.
“I don’t know. He couldn’t tell me much, he just asked me to go get Holmes and—”
Her hands had gone clammy, and her quaking fingers made her fumble the phone, barely catching it before it clattered to the dirty bus station floor. “You’ve got Holmes?”
“Lady, are you gonna go?” A man behind her gestured at the confused teller. Cami stepped out of line, barely registering his irritation.
“Yeah, he’s with me at the store.”
Her jaw hurt from gritting her teeth. She forced herself to relax. “Tristan,” she snipped. “Close the store. Go home.”
“No, I can’t. She wouldn’t want me to.” He inhaled sharply, like he was using air to rein himself in. “Just get to the hospital, okay? Go. You need to be there, in case she—”
“Don’t say it.” She heaved up her duffle once more. “I’m on the way.”
Cami was out of the Uber before it had made a full stop, and in the hospital as the driver wished her goodbye.
She didn’t like hospitals; never had, even before she’d spent all those years shuttling Grandma in and out of Baxter General.
She couldn’t even blame it on her mother’s accident, since she’d been too young then for anybody to think bringing her along was a good idea.
She’d never seen Mom or Grandpa in the hospital.
They were alive one moment and in their caskets the next.
It may have been the smell. Hospitals all stank the same—like stale air and disinfectant.
She’d been counting the seconds it took her to get there in downtown traffic.
The Uber had been faster than walking, but only barely, and precious minutes were wasted as she tried to get her bearings and locate the information desk.
A nurse with a poofy bun on the crown of her head gave her cursory directions to the emergency department, and it was a struggle for Cami to keep from running through the corridors.
The nurse manning the desk in the ER took her information, then leveled a look at her. “Are you family?”
Cami opened her mouth, the habitual no ready to fall out, and stopped. That was the question, wasn’t it? Biologically, sure, she was family. And that’s all the nurse meant. Plus, if she said no, they wouldn’t let her see Lenny. “Yes,” she said finally, lips pursing. “I’m her granddaughter.”
She was given a room number and a vague gesture down the hall. When she turned to look, she hesitated.
Lenny was hurt, but they hadn’t left things well.
Cami had packed all her belongings into the only bags she owned, and it was, at least in part, because Lenny had lied to her.
She’d lied big, and the fact that she was in the hospital now didn’t change that.
But she couldn’t leave Santa Monica not knowing if Lenny was okay.
Whatever else had happened between them, Lenny had taken care of her, and she deserved some of that in return.
Straightening her spine, she started down the hall, only to stop mid-step when Des emerged from a doorway near a large, industrial rack of linens.
Her heart, which had been thudding along irregularly ever since she got Tristan’s call, gave a gallop against her ribcage.
For a fraction of a second, it occurred to her to turn around, to find a bathroom to hide in until he was gone, but he angled toward her almost as if he had sensed her presence.
Wherever he’d been about to go, he halted, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans and stretching the fabric tantalizingly across his thighs. He watched her, waiting.
She crossed the remaining space between them with far less reluctance than she felt, keeping her posture straight and refusing to let her steps falter. When she stopped just out of his reach, she crossed her arms over her chest.
“Cami,” he greeted. She made the mistake of meeting his gaze, and caught his glistening gray eyes flickering over her mouth and body. He lingered on the bag slung over her shoulder, then pulled his gaze away, glancing into the room he’d exited.
“What are you doing here?” She’d intended it to come out sharper than it did. Instead, she just sounded tired.
He paused, but she couldn’t tell if he was hesitating to answer or if he just thought she should have known already. Finally, he said, “I was with Lenny when she was hit.”
There was a beat as she processed this. Then: “What?” Why would he have been with Lenny? Unless he was pressuring her to sell the store. “Were you leaning on her to sell? Did you upset her? Is that why—?”
“No, Cami.” He exhaled a quick, irritated breath.
“No, I did not get Lenny hit by a car. We were discussing—calmly—the possibility of her selling, and Holmes saw a squirrel and bolted. He ran across the road. Lenny ran after him. The driver had dropped a cigarette in his lap and looked down to brush it off. He plowed right into her.”
All the breath went out of Cami at the visceral image. Stomach acid burned in the back of her throat. “Is she—?”
Des’s expression softened, some of the annoyance leaking out. “She’s okay.”
The relief that swept over Cami at those two small words was so intense, she swooned and had to put out a hand to lean against the wall. He shifted, like he was going to reach out and steady her, but thought better of it, his fingers curling against his palm instead.
He cleared his throat. “She has a concussion, some fractured ribs, and a broken leg. She’s pretty beat up. She’ll need surgery to reset her leg properly, but she should recover just fine. She’ll just need to take it easy for a while.”
“Not frigging likely, Desmond!” Lenny’s voice, strong if a bit scratchy, blared from the room next to them. He rolled his eyes. “It’s my leg that’s busted, not my ears. I can hear you two nattering about me.”