25. Ellie
Ellie
I'm already running so fast, I almost crash through the hospital doors as they hiss open, my heels skidding on the tile as I fail to stop in time before I slam into the reception desk.
The woman behind the plexiglass glances up with a frown, a phone pressed between her ear and shoulder. She raises a finger to tell me to wait.
"Marney Waterson," I say. "She came in by ambulance. Overdose. Where is she?"
She keeps her finger up without looking at me again.
I grip the edge of the counter hard enough to hurt.
"Please." My voice cracks on the word. "She's my mother. Please, where is she?"
She finally sets down the phone. Her face shifts slightly as if the name finally rang a bell.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but the senator has given explicit instructions that no one is to go upstairs right now. Immediate family only, and he—"
"She's my mother," I interrupt with a laugh that sounds a bit hysterical to my own ears. "How much more immediate does it get?"
She pauses and I can tell from her face that this isn't a matter of hospital policy so much as Todd's orders. Even now, that son of a bitch is controlling who gets access to her.
"Miss, I understand you're upset, but I can't—"
Kade's hand settles at the small of my back.
I didn't even hear him come up behind me. He steps forward, easing me a half step to the side, and when he speaks his voice is low and pleasant. It's also completely foreign, a voice I have never heard out of his mouth before tonight.
"I'm sure we can work something out," he says, dripping that Aiden Winthrop charm, and a folded stack of bills appears on the counter under his palm like a magic trick.
He doesn't even glance down at it. "The senator is under a lot of stress.
I'm sure he didn't mean for his stepdaughter to be left sitting in the lobby while her mother fights for her life.
That wouldn't play well in a news cycle, would it? "
Her eyes flick to the bills, then to the camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling that Kade's body is, conveniently, blocking.
"Fourth floor," she says. "ICU. Take the elevator on the left."
The money disappears into her scrub pocket.
Kade's hand is already on my elbow, steering me toward the elevators, and I don't remember pressing the button but the doors are closing and my reflection in the brushed steel doesn't look like me.
My mascara is smeared, my hair already mostly loose from its perfect updo.
"Breathe," Kade murmurs.
I breathe for five in, five out. It doesn't help.
The doors open on a corridor of pale tile and fluorescent light, and Todd is standing at the end of it with his phone to his ear and his free hand shoved into his tuxedo pocket like he's waiting for a valet.
He spots me and his jaw tightens. Then his eyes land on Kade, and his senator smile slides back into place so smoothly I want to claw it off his fucking face.
"Ellie." He pockets the phone. "Mr. Winthrop. I wasn't expecting—"
"Where is she?" I don't even recognize my own voice.
Todd's smile doesn't falter, but his eyes do. He steps closer, lowering his voice, and puts a hand on my shoulder.
"Your mother humiliated me tonight," he says quietly. "In front of three major donors and a photographer from the Tribune. Do you understand what that's going to cost? What we're going to have to spin our way out of? She's—"
"She overdosed, Todd."
"Yes, and she made a scene."
"She almost died," I hiss, realizing there is literally no part of this man that's human.
His fingers tighten on my shoulder. I feel the press of each one and my body shrinks the way it always does.
And then Kade is there.
He doesn't shove Todd because he doesn't have to.
He simply steps between us, a calm insertion of his body into the space between me and Todd, and Todd's fingers slip off my shoulder.
Kade is taller. Considerably. I don't know how I never noticed how tall he's gotten before, but he looks down at Todd with a polite, untroubled expression and puts one hand, lightly, on Todd's forearm.
"Senator." The voice is still Aiden Winthrop's pleasant, mildly amused tone. "I think what my date is trying to say is that she's worried about her mother. Which is understandable, given the circumstances."
"This is a family matter, Mr. Winthrop."
"And I'm here to support the family." Kade's hand doesn't move from Todd's arm. "You've had a long night. Why don't you take your call? I'll stay with Ellie."
It isn't a question. Todd's eyes narrow like they do before he hits someone. I brace myself, because I have watched a hundred men back down from Todd Waterson but I have never seen Todd Waterson back down from anyone.
Todd's phone vibrates in his pocket. He takes it out, glances at the screen, and frowns. He doesn't want to fight in front of a Winthrop. Not in a hospital corridor where anyone with a phone could be recording.
"Of course," he says stiffly, and the smile returns. "Ellie, darling, I'll be right back."
He walks down the hall toward the waiting area, phone already at his ear, and he doesn't look back.
My knees wobble before Kade's hand finds my elbow again, steadying me against the wall.
"Five minutes," I whisper. "Then he'll be back."
But five minutes pass. And then ten. And then twenty. Todd doesn't come back. For all I know, he's left the property to deal with his phone call. Probably his publicist already planning the damage control before we even know if Mom will survive this.
I sit on one of the vinyl chairs and Kade sits next to me, his knee pressed to mine. At some point I start counting the ceiling tiles, and at some point I lose count. Sometime after that, a doctor in pale blue scrubs pushes through the double doors and says, "Family of Marney Waterson?"
I stand up too fast and the floor buckles beneath me.
"Me." My voice comes out small. "I'm Ellie, her daughter."
The doctor looks me over and doesn't seem enthused about telling me whatever it is she has to say. "There's another waiting room where you might be more—"
"Just tell me."
Kade's hand slips over mine, engulfing it.
"Your mother is stable," the doctor says.
"But she's in critical condition. We've induced a medical coma to give her body a chance to recover.
There's significant organ damage, particularly to the liver and kidneys, and we're seeing patterns consistent with long-term substance dependency.
Benzodiazepines and opioids, as well as alcohol.
Can you tell me, does that match what you know of her history? "
"Yes." The word comes out raw and defeated. "Yes. For years. As long as I've been alive, probably. Maybe before."
"Prescribed?"
"Some of it, yes." I swallow hard. "Probably not all of it."
Kade's voice cuts in steadily. "What are we looking at in terms of recovery?"
The doctor turns to him, grateful to have someone asking structured questions, and I tune it all out.
I can't hold onto anything but the sight of her on that floor.
The words the doctor speaks next are just buzzwords floating around without context.
Hepatic function. Dialysis. Kade nods through all of it, asking follow-up questions while I lean against him because he's the only thing keeping me upright.
"She can have one visitor right now," the doctor says finally. "Immediate family only. Just her daughter."
Kade squeezes my hand, then lets go.
"I'll be right here," he says. "Go on."
I follow the doctor through the double doors, but I might as well be walking in a dream.
Every bed in the ICU is an island of machines. My mother is in the third one on the right, and for a second I don't even recognize her.
They've washed the makeup off. Her hair, the careful honey-blonde she dyes every six weeks to match Todd's preferences, is damp and pushed back off her forehead, and without the foundation you can see the hollows under her eyes, the yellow tint at her temples.
Her mouth is cracked on the corners around the plastic tube that makes her breathe, and I think about how she'd hate that, and scold me for not finding a tube of Chapstick somewhere in this hospital and putting it on her right now, even while she's unconscious.
"Mom," I whisper.
I sit down in the chair beside the bed and take her hand. Her fingers are cold. There are old bruises fading on her wrist, purple turning yellow, shaped like a thumb.
I don't know when I started crying. My face is wet and my shoulders shake and I grip her hand too hard, I think, but she can't feel it.
She can't feel anything, which is what finally breaks me.
The thought that for the first time in years she is somewhere Todd can't reach, and she had to almost die to get there.
"Please wake up," I say. "Please. I'll figure it out. I'll figure everything out, just please."
The door eases open behind me and I don't turn around.
"They said only me," I say.
"I heard."
Kade pulls up the other chair and sits anyway.
"They told you to stay out there."
"This isn't even the worst crime I've committed tonight, Ellie."
A small, weak laugh breaks out of me, and then I fall apart. I lean into him and he catches me, one arm around my shoulders and the other cradling the back of my head. I press my face into the lapel of the tuxedo that still smells like the ballroom and come unglued in his arms.
"It's okay," he murmurs into my hair. "You can cry."
"That could've been me." I don't mean to say it, but it comes out anyway. "That could be me in that bed and it should have been."
His hand tightens in my hair. "No," he says firmly, gently. Gentler than I've ever heard his voice. "That's not true, Ellie."
"I should have done something," I say, ignoring him because the words are just tumbling out now. "I should have done something years ago. Before it got here. Before she—"
"Ellie."
"I knew, Kade. What kind of daughter does that make me? I knew and I just…"
"Ellie." He pulls back just enough to see my face, his hands coming up to cup my jaw, thumbs brushing under my eyes where the mascara is running. "You did everything you could. You did. You came to us. You found us, and now we're going to fix this. I promise you."
I shake my head. "You can't fix her."
"Then we fix everything around her. We get her out and we get her clean. We burn Todd Waterson's entire fucking life to the ground and we help her rebuild a new one without him. You understand?"
I nod, because I don't trust my voice to speak.
"Look at me."
I already am, but I make myself focus. His gray eyes are close and fierce as they lock onto mine.
"I'm going to protect you," he says in that firm, gentle voice. "Both of you. I promise."
I believe him, that's the fucked up part. After everything that's happened, all the years in between us, I have never felt safer than I do with the four most terrifying men in this city.
But they were my boys first.
And if this hellish night has taught me one thing, it's that they still are.