Chapter 8
EIGHT
I don’t know if I’m fighting demons or I am the demon.
—Beau to Magnolia
MAGNOLIA
I was bone-tired.
So tired, in fact, that I would say I felt worse now than I did when Iris was an infant and keeping me up at all hours of the night.
“Pssst.”
At the sound that Iris made when she wanted my attention but didn’t want to talk, my mind finally focused.
I looked over to the living room to see Iris standing there with her backpack on by the front door with her hand on the knob.
“Is your bus here?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Yes,” she signed.
I walked quickly to the door and opened it for her, waving at the bus driver who was patiently waiting for my girl.
She always would.
Iris liked to take her muffins and cookies.
Sometimes she even slipped her a bottle of apple juice when I had the money to buy them from the store.
Which, admittedly, wasn’t very often.
I’d had a series of unfortunate events lately.
One, the washer and the dryer went out at the same time, requiring me to buy new ones.
Second, there was a plumbing issue in my house that I’d bought that’d required me to move out of said house for two months while all of the old plumbing was replaced. Not only did the repairs on my house cost a whack, but I also had to pay rent two months at an apartment.
Third, the fees for the private investigator that I had constantly running around to keep an eye on Cain McDuff had nearly tripled. With the price of fuel going up, they’d had to raise their prices.
Fourth, my car had broken down, and I’d had to buy a new one.
Fifth, the private school that I sent Iris to had increased their annual fees. And, seeing as she was doing so well in the school that she was in, I hated to move her.
Adding all that into the money that I put aside each month in case I needed to pay a lawyer to fight for Iris, I was Broke. Broke with a capital B.
Hence the reason I was so tired.
I’d had to get a second job.
Luckily, the job was fun and easy—most of the time.
I worked at the clinic in town as the receptionist.
They worked well with my schedule, as well as allowed Iris to hang out in the break room once she was done with school.
Ultimately, I’d lucked out with both of my jobs and my childcare situation.
I was sad that I wouldn’t be at the clinic for long.
It was too bad that I couldn’t keep the same job after I retired from soccer. I loved the people and the environment. I thrived in chaos.
Today was a clinic day with a light practice in the late afternoon.
Tomorrow was our second-to-last season game—the second-to-last of my entire career—and I was really looking forward to it. It was against the first-place team in the league…and my old team.
It was bound to be exciting, if not a little sad.
I’d liked the players there, but not the coaching staff.
I’d probably have retired there had it not been for them.
Iris had just gotten to the end of sidewalk when a revved engine caught my attention.
Heart in my throat, I could do nothing but watch in horror as the car sped down the street, heading right for Iris.
“Iris!” I called as the bus driver started to lay on their horn.
The car didn’t slow.
I started running, knowing that I couldn’t get there in time but not caring.
“Iris,” I repeated.
It all happened in slow motion.
Iris stepped off the sidewalk, right in the path of the speeding car.
The car’s driver swerved at the last second as Iris finally saw the car.
She turned at the last second, and the car clipped Iris’s backpack as it squeezed past Iris and the bus.
Iris’ tiny body whirled like she was doing a triple axel and she landed on the curb, crying out.
I got to her in the next instant.
“Iris, honey,” I cried, tears pouring down my cheeks.
She started to cry.
It was the best and worst sound I’d ever heard.
Beau arrived like an avenging angel.
He was dressed in his lumberjack best—jeans, black tee, plaid long-sleeved shirt and boots.
He stomped into the emergency room like he owned it and demanded to know where Iris was.
I hadn’t called him. I had no idea how he’d heard.
But I was so glad that he was there.
“Here.”
He glanced toward me, and his shoulders visibly relaxed.
He tapped the nurses’ station twice with his scarred knuckles in apology and headed my way.
“What happened?”
My face hurt from crying.
I’d done it nonstop since I’d gotten here.
Iris was okay.
But she was freaking the fuck out because there were so many people and harsh lights. It became really obvious really quick that they would have to sedate her to treat her.
That was what we were discussing now.
I explained the situation that I was speaking about with the doctors, and Beau blew out a frustrated breath, but pulled me into his side. “Have you tried turning the lights down?”
I relaxed against him, unable to do anything but give him all my weight. He switched our positions, pulling me into his side so my front was pressed against his. He turned us slightly so we could both still see the doctor, but didn’t try to hide his need for touch.
“And the beeping on the monitor?” He jerked his chin toward the monitors that were beeping away above Iris’s head.
“Oh.” The nurse hurried into the room and muted them immediately. “I could stop that.”
We both watched Iris visibly relax, her face bruised from hitting the curb, now settling into relaxed lines.
“Lysander, my brother, had to come to the ER like this when he broke his femur,” he said.
“Had to have surgery on it. We had to pretty much give him a quiet room,” he explained when the doctor looked at him questioningly.
“They moved him to the back of the ER where they put psych patients? Apparently it’s quieter back there, and away from the hustle and bustle of the ER. ”
“We can move her for sure, too.” The doctor was nodding along. “I don’t think anything too bad is wrong. But I don’t want to miss something.”
I nodded against Beau’s chest.
I didn’t want them to miss anything either.
Jesus, I was still witnessing the horror over and over in my brain.
I…
A hand closed around my own as he pulled away. “I’ll go sit with her, okay?”
I licked my lips and felt the loss of his heat like a punch to my soul the moment he let my hand go. “Sounds good. Thank you, Beau.”
He winked as he left, taking a little piece of my heart with him.
I hadn’t realized how much I needed him until he was here.
“Her father?” the doctor asked.
I shook my head. “No. Just a really good friend of mine.”
One of the best.
I would never admit this to Merrill, but Beau was what made it bearable not having her around.
“Wow, she’s actually talking to him.”
I glanced over to see Iris signing away, as if her long-lost friend had shown up and everything was okay in her world.
I knew Iris loved me.
However, she lit up when she was around Beau.
“I’d like to get an MRI of her head,” the doctor continued. “She’ll for sure have to be sedated for that, though. I can give her…”
The next few minutes he talked about what he wanted to do. What meds he would prescribe her.
It was decided that she’d be sedated for the MRI, which would be read immediately in case anything else had to be performed while she was still sedated. If everything checked out okay, they’d go ahead and stitch up her head where she’d hit the concrete curb, then they’d release her.
For the next several hours, Beau stayed at our side.
The two of them watched a documentary on African lions on Beau’s phone and I just watched them, content to do so.
I was so relieved that Iris was okay, that I hadn’t watched her die in front of my eyes, that I wasn’t jealous at all of the attention that she was giving Beau.
Hell, she was practically in his lap as she spoke to him.
The only thing keeping her in her own chair was that she needed Beau to be able to see her hands move.
A throat cleared and I looked behind me to see Gentry and Black along with the bus driver.
My eyes filled with tears.
She walked toward me and hugged me. “She’s okay?”
“She’s okay.” I sniffled and hugged her back. “She doesn’t even have a concussion. They sewed her head wound up and said she’d probably be stiff and sore for the next few days.”
“Good.” The bus driver, an older woman in her late fifties, pulled away with her eyes dripping with tears.
“I am so sorry,” she whispered.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “It was that black car’s fault.” I looked to the two officers. “Did you find anything?”
I felt heat at my back and knew Beau was there.
“We didn’t find anything, no,” Black admitted.
“All the houses on that street have no cameras. Yours didn’t pick anything up.
They didn’t have a front license plate, either, so the dash cam on the bus didn’t pick anything up.
There are only the witnesses to the event.
We have the car’s description and know that a woman was driving.
We’re canvassing the neighborhood for that vehicle, but since the road you live on is a cut-through street from highway to highway… ”
“You’re not holding out much hope of finding it,” Beau guessed.
“No,” he admitted. “I’m sorry, darlin’.”
“It’s okay.” I scrubbed at my face.
“Do y’all mind if I go say hi?” the bus driver asked. “I brought her a little muffin.”
My heart melted. “She’d love to see you.”
The moment she left, Beau changed. “Now that you talked about the legal side of what you can do, let’s talk about the not-so-legal. There’s no fucking way that those houses don’t have cameras.”
“Apollo’s on it,” Gentry murmured.
“Good,” Beau said fiercely. “Because there’s no way in hell I’m letting this go.”
“We have a BOLO—be on the lookout—on the car,” he explained.
“There was a single person on the road that heard the commotion. I think Magnolia was screaming and turned to look. She was old as fuck, though, and she can’t remember if she saw an S or an 8 or an I or an L.
So we have a number of combinations it could be.
But the other officers in my department and three other departments within a fifty-mile radius are also looking. ”
I tilted my head left and right, feeling it crack and pop as I did.
The men continued to speak in low tones, but I was just…done.
I had no more energy left.
I had no more desire to do much more of anything but curl up in a bed beside Iris and just…sleep.
I’m sorry, Rose.
My nose started to sting as I once again felt tears fill my eyes.
There I was, almost letting the child she entrusted me with die.
Die right in front of my eyes.
I was failing Rose.
I was…
Beau wrapped me up in his arms again, then said something over my head that I couldn’t understand because I’d once again burst into uncontrolled sobs.
I had no idea how much I’d needed him.
Not until he was there.