Chapter 19 Lara
Lara
I sucked down giant gulps of air like I hadn’t been breathing at all for the last four minutes.
In the distance, lightning scratched giant white tears through the onyx sky. A storm was close, but it wasn’t quite here yet, and I needed to get out of that tent. Away from what Callum had found. Away from Calder’s probing stare and a different truth it threatened to uncover.
A cult. Rachel had joined a cult. And Ian . . . I’d lost them both—failed them both.
“Lara.” Calder came up behind me but stopped a pace away. I hated how he knew I needed the space.
“I’m sorry. I just need a minute,” I managed.
“I’ll take one with you,” came his deep reply, and I shivered.
I could ask him to leave, but he wouldn’t. And then there was the tiny, broken piece of me that didn’t want to be alone.
It felt like he knew that, too.
My arms banded over my middle, my hands curling into the sides of my shirt.
Thunder boomed again. “They don’t have storms like this in Phoenix,” I said, watching the tapestry of the angry sky unfold.
I didn’t want to talk about Rachel right now. Or the cult. Or what was going to happen. Or what I could’ve done—should’ve done. I kept . . . losing people. Because I wasn’t enough. Because I hadn’t done enough.
“How do you mean?”
“The storms in Phoenix, they’re . . . empty.” It took me a minute to decide on the right word. “Maybe it’s the desert or the dry heat, but the thunderstorms always feel like they come from a place of desperation. Like they’re trying to draw something from nothing.”
“And here?”
I sucked in another breath, tasting the particles of pre-storm energy on my tongue.
“Here, they come because nature is . . . too full. Full of energy and charge and power. Too full to contain, so it has to be set free.” I exhaled, closing my eyes as I added, “Don’t tell Callum. I’m sure he’ll disagree. My theory isn’t backed by science.”
“Callum would disagree even if it were,” Calder replied ruefully. “Another example of something too full of . . . energy to contain.”
Taking another deep breath, I confessed, “I miss this. The storms. The energy in the air. It’s like . . . breathing in lightning. Energizing and grounding at the same time.”
I was rambling, but I didn’t care. Like the storm, I had too much pain bottled up inside to hold it all in.
“Not even nature can carry it all.”
My pulse stumbled. We were talking about the weather—the quintessential superficial conversation starter. Except nothing about this felt superficial or quintessential at all.
“Yeah,” my voice cracked.
“Do you miss Phoenix?”
No. The thought came unbidden.
“I don’t know.” And I didn’t want to talk about this. So then why had I brought up Arizona in the first place? Because I couldn’t carry it all, either.
“When do you have to go back?”
“Take the time for what it can be, Lara. Until the lawsuit is settled, we can’t have you here anyway.”
“I don’t,” I said, unsure whether my voice had ever sounded so small.
His head cocked to the side, and I could feel the rush of energy in my direction.
“What do you mean, you don’t?”
My breathing sped up, carrying me like a runaway train back to those moments. Those split-second, life-changing moments that day in the emergency room. The sounds. The machines. The screams.
A shudder racked all the way along my spine, trembling the truth up to my lips.
Maybe it was the storm’s crescendo. Maybe it was the vastness of Wyoming, which promised to swallow me up and rock me in its mountainous cradle.
Or maybe it was just Calder. His steadiness laid like bedrock around me, silently promising to withstand the excess of my own storm if I would just let loose. If I would just trust him.
“I don’t know if I still have a job,” I said, annoyed that I sounded purposely evasive, but on the inside, it felt like I was trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with my eyes closed and a noose around my neck, tightening with every connected piece.
“I won’t know if I still have a job until the lawsuit is settled. ”
I closed my eyes, wishing it was raindrops and not tears that dangled, cold and merciless, onto my cheeks. I hadn’t talked to anyone outside the hospital—couldn’t. Hipaa. Hospital policy. Lawyers.
But here . . .
“What happened?” His low voice carried from behind me. Just like the heat of him did.
Another bolt of lightning shredded the sky. Closer now.
“Someone died.” The words were wrenched out. “Because of me.” The pain, the guilt, almost took me to my knees.
He was quiet, and then I felt the warm grip of his palm on my shoulder, directing me to turn toward him.
“Tell me.” There he was. The gorgeous director. Except I didn’t hear a command from his lips, but a promise: Let me help you carry this.
“It was late—early, actually. 2:43 in the morning.” When I blinked, I could still see the clock on the wall just as I’d seen it that night—and just like I’d had to include in what felt like endless recounts of my report. “A patient was brought in by ambulance. A young kid.”
Not really. Ian wasn’t that much younger than me, but he looked like he was. Like he’d only just dipped his toes into the vast pool of his life.
“The police were with him. I was told they’d pulled him off a sidewalk downtown because he was tripping.
His pupils were dilated. He smelled like Brandon’s trailer.
He wasn’t coherent. Mumbling. Stumbling.
Hallucinating.” Closing my eyes, I could see him now.
Every detail. His clear blue eyes. The goldfinch tattoo on the side of his neck.
“I went to take his vitals and told the nurse working with me to grab the Narcan in case we had to administer. I followed protocol. I took his pulse. It was erratic but there, and he seemed to be drifting into a stupor.”
I stopped blinking, recalling the whip and whirl of his heartbeat like a wild stallion that wouldn’t settle.
“I told my nurse to start him on IV fluids, and at the first prick of the needle, he went wild. He grabbed the needle—grabbed her arm.” I started to shake.
Big racking shakes, with panic and fear detonating like I was still in that moment; the only difference was, in that moment, I’d kept the earthquake inside.
Calder’s hand tightened on my shoulder, anchoring me back to him and the comfort of his steady gaze.
“The nurse, my friend Hailey, she started screaming. I yelled for help, but I couldn’t wait, he was going to hurt her . . . I lunged across the hospital bed, forcing him back with my own weight. She got free and then he let out this . . . unearthly roar and then came for me.”
My eyes shuttered, unable to hold up the wet weight of my tears as they fell. At that moment, I wouldn’t have known it had started to rain, except that when I looked at Calder, I saw droplets staining him, too.
“He didn’t look that strong, but the meth in his system .
. .” I gritted my teeth. After how many times I’d had to go over this chain of events, it should’ve been easier to recount.
“His elbow landed in my stomach, and then he grabbed my face and shoved me so hard I fell back, smacked my head against the wall.” I winced, recalling how it had felt as though my skull had split in two.
“I opened my eyes and looked at him . . . that last moment, I stared into his eyes . . . and then he went into cardiac arrest.” I swallowed.
“I tried . . . but it didn’t matter. He was gone. ”
“That’s what wakes you up at night,” he murmured, his hand sliding from my shoulder to the side of my neck as though he saw I needed help holding up the weight of my guilt. “Ian.”
My breath caught when he said his name, and I felt myself nod, wishing that the nightmare ended there. Unfortunately, it didn’t.
“It turned out, he wasn’t homeless. He was twenty-three and from a wealthy family local to Phoenix.
He ran away because his parents wanted to send him to a rehab program and was staying with friends.
They were at a bar and he snuck off, got too high, and then got kicked out.
Anyway, his parents . . . they said I killed him.
” My throat was so tight, I could barely speak.
“That because I’d restrained him and he’d tried to get free, it was too much strain on his heart. ”
“While he was high on meth? And what do they think the police or security would’ve done?” His voice was calm, yet his eyes were anything but.
“I know I did the right thing.” A protest of bitter laughter bubbled out. “Funny how that doesn’t seem to make a difference.”
All the reports. The autopsy. The video footage. The witness accounts. Everything but a parent’s grief had cleared me of wrongdoing.
“I couldn’t save him,” I said, not needing to speak loudly, because his face was right in front of mine.
Cool air dumped into my chest as Calder framed my face with both hands, my gaze hostage to his.
“I’m sorry.”
I watched a fat droplet of rain land on the bridge of his nose and run down all the way to the tip. I was grateful for the rain. It made me feel like I wasn’t crying alone.
And I was grateful for Calder because he didn’t try to explain away my guilt or grief. He didn’t try to soothe it with kind words or placating promises that this would get better.
Instead, his hand slid around the nape of my neck and pulled me to him, the other wrapping around my back like the root of a tree trunk, anchoring me to the warm bedrock of his embrace as sobs finally claimed me.
He held me in the rain. In the storm. And let it soak him, too.
“I couldn’t save him,” I repeated over and over into his chest, his steady heartbeat echoing back. Thump, thump. I know. Thump, thump.
It’s okay.
I hadn’t cried. Not like this. I’d been too afraid of what it would do—afraid it would drown me. But the way he held me, I knew he wouldn’t drag me under, so I finally let the tears fall.