Desiring an Angel, page 23
part #1 of Missing Link 3 Series
All of which would never be invited to step into our home again save Wyatt, Garrett, and Haley. At least the three of them had welcomed Sky and acted…normal. Real. I’d never appreciated three people so much in my entire life.
Sky and I had collapsed on our bed, clutching at each other in silence. Both too worn out to discuss the events of the night, we’d agreed to rest and talk in the morning.
Bad enough we’d had a horrible evening…to have Nora show up on our front step uninvited, being judgmental and mean before I’d gotten out of bed…my hackles had raised, and the acid from anxiety and anger made for one unhappy stomach.
My disappointment in Rhett’s behavior still lay fresh in my mind while driving, my insides raw from what seemed like a million emotions. Too many to count, too many for peace of mind.
Exhaustion.
Sorrow.
Annoyance.
Anger.
The thought of having to confront Rhett with the truth tensed my body to the point of pain as I made my way downtown. He would be pissed. Heartbroken—at least I hoped he still cared after I’d told him to leave the night before.
Pain lanced through my abdomen.
“Shit.” I clutched the steering wheel tighter, swallowing rapidly.
My stomach turned upside down, and vomit spewed from my lips all over my lap and dashboard. I jerked the wheel to get off the road, the force of my heaving hazing my vision.
Tires squealed.
A massive crash of metal registered half a heartbeat before something smashed into my head and stole consciousness from my mind.
Someone hollered.
I could barely blink. Blinding…beams of sunshine.
Skylar—I tried to smile at the light filling my chest.
Darkness swooped down and dragged me under.
Muffled words whispered nearby. Searching hands prodded at my body.
Rhett…
Sirens sounded in the distance, coming to clarity in my ears as though I rose to the surface of a pool.
Pain lanced through my head, and I gasped, reaching—
“Shh.” Someone grasped my arm. “You’re alright. We’re on the way to the hospital.”
“H-happened?” I asked, the agony squeezing my brain unbearable. Couldn’t keep my eyes open. Too bright.
“You were in a car accident and hit your head.”
“Not dead,” I whispered, not even able to handle my own voice echoing inside my skull.
“You’re not dead,” someone agreed with a chuckle.
“H-hurts.”
A needle shoved into my arm, and I hissed at the sting.
“You’re going to be okay…”
The voice faded as numbness crept in.
I thought I remained somewhat alert. Hands kept touching me. Voices nudged me to stay awake when all I wanted to do was slip back into darkness where nothing hurt.
“Need Rhett. My angel.” I kept repeating the words—in my mind or out loud, I couldn’t tell.
Floating in the clouds…I understood the saying, but no jumbled thoughts flitted around my head like Sky’s.
Did I smile?
Her green eyes made me want to.
“Ashton?”
“Hmm?” I hummed in agreement.
The voice repeated my home address.
I hummed, realizing it wasn’t anyone I knew talking to me.
“Is there anyone we should call?”
“Rhett. My angel,” I murmured again—or perhaps for the first time.
My eyelids peeled back, bright light causing me to whimper at the resulting stab of pain through my head.
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Ashton Blackwood.” I couldn’t blink reality into focus.
“Do you know what happened?”
Vomit. Car accident. Not dead.
“Who is Rhett?”
“Partner—Stirling,” I remembered to add, closing my eyes, too tired to care about anything but rest.
No more pain seized my breath, but I could not stay awake.
A loud clanking noise echoed through the darkness while I floated. Hours…days.
Sudden silence filled my ears, the peaceful sort that brought a smile to an exhausted person’s mind.
Death isn’t so bad…
No more aches riddled my body—but I became conscious of an insistent beep slowly growing in volume nearby.
I attempted to blink, but my eyelashes behaved as though they’d been glued together, refusing to peel upward.
Rest.
The next time clarity moved through my mind, I rose fully to awareness.
A white ceiling hung above me. White walls closed in on me. An IV bag hung on my left…a line went into my hand.
“Huh.” I lifted my arm, inspecting the clear bandage over the needle nestled into my skin.
I couldn’t feel it.
“Mr. Blackwood?” a kind, feminine voice stated, and I turned to find a smiling face I didn’t recognize.
“Hmm?”
“It’s good to finally see you lucid,” she said, moving closer to my bed. “How are you feeling?”
She checked the drip while my mind slowly processed.
Hospital.
Nurse.
Accident.
Bleach.
I grimaced as my stomach churned. Pain radiated through my temple. “I hit my head.” I sounded like I’d downed a whole bottle of vodka by myself.
The nurse smiled, poking around on a bandage over my left ear. “You did—and pretty badly. I haven’t had a chance to clean up the dried blood that well, but now that you’re awake, we’ll get to it, okay?”
Fuzzy—that’s how my thoughts felt. Not…all there. “Where’s Rhett?”
“Was someone in the car with you?” she asked, backing up enough to look me in the face.
I recalled driving. Vomiting.
“No. Did you call him?” I slurred the words.
“I can get in touch with whoever you need me to, sweetie.”
I recited his cell number without difficulty, but exhaustion once more weighed heavy on my eyelids.
“He’s my partner,” I murmured. “I’m tired.”
“You go ahead and rest. I’ll call him and let him know you’re here and that you’re going to be just fine.”
I didn’t feel fine…and there was something else wrong with me, but I couldn’t remember what it was.
Eyes closing, I did as the kind nurse said and stopped thinking before the fact I lay in a hospital freaked me the fuck out.
37
Rhett
I laid on the couch in my office long after I should have gotten up, but I had no energy.
Weak-willed, I’d allowed the storm inside me to wipe my ass out.
The ceiling above me had a slight water stain in the shape of a tearing heart, almost shorn in half right down the middle.
Fitting.
Ash had told me to leave because I’d crossed a line and hurt his angel. Never mind how some of his actions since her arrival had been stabbing my chest with lethal force.
Should have opened your goddamn mouth and told him so, you idiot.
I hated the voice in my head that spoke the truth. There was no one to blame for our circumstances other than myself. If I’d explained to him from the start how his actions had made me feel, shit wouldn’t have gotten out of control.
Yes, he’d done wrong, but I’d only made things worse by ignoring the red flags.
It had taken me a night of no sleep on the uncomfortable couch while staring through the darkness with gritty eyes to realize not communicating feelings wasn’t smart or a sign of strength.
It was stupid, an almost unforgivable weakness.
Stifling emotions equaled withholding the truth, thus a lie. And I’d been dishonest in that regard almost my entire life.
Casting blame on my parents would be easy, but that would be feebleness as well…and I could prove myself strong in other ways.
By owning my shortcomings.
Claiming the title of selfish asshole aloud for both Ash and Skylar to hear.
Begging forgiveness without excuses for my dickhead behavior.
I rolled off the cushions that had refused to cradle my back all night and sat on the edge of the couch, face in my hands. Scruff scratched my palms as I groaned.
I had amends to make, but coffee first.
Then a slow drive home while figuring out what the fuck to say to make things right.
Would Ash even give me the chance to explain and apologize for the shit I’d been bottling up inside?
Would Skylar?
My cell rang, my mouth drying at the thought of having a conversation I hadn’t yet planned out.
I didn’t recognize the number but answered anyway.
Processing the words of the female voice took me a few seconds, but when their meaning slammed into place in my exhausted brain, my breath seized, tightening my chest.
Ash had been in a bad car accident and was in the ER.
Exhaustion fled as a rush of adrenaline took over my system. Heart rate jacked, I shot off the couch, grabbed my keys, and sprinted out of the office.
Head trauma, she continued—no coma thank fucking Christ, but the doctors were running further tests.
What the fuck for, I didn’t wait to find out.
I hung up, tossed my cell onto my car’s passenger seat, and screamed at every asshole on the road with me. Slow drivers got in my way. Twice, no turn signals almost caused accidents. Fuckers cut me off—then went into goddamn granny-mode while putting ahead of me and wasting precious moments.
My insides twisted like a coiling snake, a python determined to steal the air in my lungs and swallow me whole.
He’s going to be fine. Just fine.
But that word had been a lie my entire life, and I couldn’t trust its meaning anymore.
Head trauma—what sort? And would there be permanent damage? Was it amnesia? Would he know who I was? Remember all we had, all the shit I’d done in my desperation to not lose his heart?
I made it to the hospital without smashing up my own car, my hands and knees shaking as I rushed through the sliding doors.
“Ashton Blackwood,” I rasped to the woman at the ER’s front desk. “He was in a car accident and brought in about an hour ago.”
I swallowed hard at the words, determined to stay strong.
Whatever the fuck that looked like.
I felt like a first-class mess inside. Without doubt, I appeared the same with my dress shirt unbuttoned halfway and wrinkled by attempted sleep on a couch, my hair probably mussed from trying to rip it out by its roots thanks to every asshole driver on the goddamn planet.
He’s going to be fine…
I clung to the hope he really was, that he had no plans to toss twenty-some years of love down the drain over my poor choices leading up to the admonishment I’d spewed out at Skylar the night before.
A nurse took me through double doors into a hallway. “So you’re his angel,” she said, smiling as though everything was peachy in the world.
“What?” I asked, too brain too fucking fragile, too wound up, to focus on her words.
“He kept asking for Rhett, his angel.”
It took a few seconds for me to put together the simple misplacing of a comma rather than a period.
Angel wasn’t a definition but a second person.
Skylar.
If they didn’t know that bit of information, it meant she hadn’t shown up yet, probably hadn’t been notified—
The nurse pushed aside a privacy curtain, and I shuffled to a stop, my heart stuttering at seeing my love laid out on a hospital bed.
Just like Mom.
Pale and eyes closed, my love didn’t move—but his chest rose.
I quickly scanned over his body, the lack of anything but an IV attached to him.
No machines pushed air into his lungs.
My breath left in a rush, relief flooding through me, and I forced myself to take a slower look over Ash while my feet took me closer.
A bandage covered part of his head, but there was a distinct lack of blood like I’d expected. His hair stuck out in all directions, slightly damp, as though a nurse had sponged him down.
Stinging lit in my eyes, and I blinked back tears while swallowing hard against the thickness in my throat.
Someone touched my elbow, and I tore my focus off my love.
“Are you Rhett Stirling?” A man too young to be a doctor introduced himself as such after I nodded, his voice hushed.
“Can you tell me anything about Ashton’s symptoms over the past couple of weeks?” he asked.
“Symptoms?” I croaked, once more turning my focus on Ash to watch the steady rise and fall of his chest.
“He was going on and on about cancer eating away at his insides—symptoms like Archer’s?”
My knees went weak, and I sank into the lone chair of Ash’s cubicle. “Oh fuck.”
The doctor kept silent while I stared at Ash, so many goddamn things clicking to place in my head. My stomach went hard as a rock, my palms suddenly sweaty.
Beeps and voices I hadn’t noticed before seemed to crescendo in my ears, making me wince.
“H-His twin brother died from leukemia when they were young.” I barely managed the words.
“He said he’d been having body aches—stomach pain especially. Exhaustion and light-headedness. What’s his physician’s name and has he been seen?”
I rattled off our PCP’s name but knew without asking Ash hadn’t gone to get checked out. Chances were, he’d self-diagnosed himself rather than stepping foot in a doctor’s office.
“He claimed he vomited while driving to his office and that’s what caused the accident,” the doctor stated quietly.
He’d been coming to find me.
“Christ.” I scrubbed a trembling hand down over my face. If I’d stayed home, faced what I’d done rather than escaping to lick my wounds, he wouldn’t be there. Wouldn’t be—
“We’re running some tests, but—”
Ash’s eyelids fluttered, and I hopped up, rushing to crowd his bed, ignoring whatever else the doctor had to say.
“Hey, baby.” I tried to keep my voice light while gently threading our hands together and cupping his cheek.
“Rhett.” He worked moisture to his lips and forced his eyelids open with slow blinks.
“We had to give him something to calm him down,” the doctor explained. “He was pretty upset about his symptoms and wanting you here.”
Ash finally gazed up at me, taking a bit to focus on me.
I forced a wobbly smile, my damn eyes stinging again.
A shuddering sigh shivered through him, a slow smile curling his lips. “Am I dead?” The words slurred from his mouth like he was drunk off his ass.
“Far from it,” I stated firmly, fighting the tears that yearned to drip down my face.
“Oh good.” He closed his eyes again, his smile widening. “I don’t want you to be alone when I’m gone. Love her. She’s what you need Rhett. You just have to lower your defenses. Needed...to let you know that first.”
“You aren’t going to die,” I bit the words out, sure the swell of emotions inside me was about to burst through the iron dam I’d kept it behind for too fucking long.
“Okay,” he murmured, his eyes closing.
“I’m sorry I’ve been an absolute ass the past couple of weeks.” I spilled the words, needing them off my fucking chest before he passed out again. “There’s no excuse for my behavior, and I’m going to fix things. I promise.”
“Forgive you…” He went silent, lips parting again.
“Ash?”
“Love you, Rhett,” he slurred as though half-asleep. “Stoic man…my rock. No one…will ever change that.” He let out a sigh and went silent as my chest squeezed tight.
“Ash?” I whispered again, but he didn’t stir. “What’s going on—the tests being run, the plan moving forward,” I demanded of the doctor, not taking my focus off Ash’s slack face.
There was some swelling where he’d hit his head, the doctor told me, but other than a concussion, he would be fine. It had been his ranting about symptoms and dying of cancer that had them running some bloodwork and putting through orders for scans. He assured me he’d get in touch with our PCP immediately and left us alone.
Ash had withheld information from me, no different than my keeping my feelings from him—we’d both been in the wrong, and shit needed to change.
I ached over the fact he’d been dealing with that fear alone. It fucking killed me he hadn’t allowed me to be his rock like he’d claimed I was, that he hadn’t leaned on me for doctor visits and diagnosis—if he’d even gone, which I highly doubted.
His obsession, his desperation to get Skylar pregnant suddenly made sense as shit clicked together in my brain.
“Fuck,” I muttered, running my hand through my hair, my insides growing restless.
Without sure answers about his health, I floundered, too much swirling around inside me I couldn’t breathe…
I untangled my fingers from Ash’s limp ones and strode from his little cubicle, moving aimlessly down the hallway.
Attempting to put shit into perspective and lay groundwork for some sort of foundation to base the next step on, I paced back and forth. The inability to organize my thoughts left me with a sense of helplessness I didn’t know how to safely contain inside as I’d always done.
Couldn’t take control.
Couldn’t plan.
Couldn’t fucking deal.
My stomach churned with every stride and turn, like a bottle of soda being shaken, pressure building until every muscle in my body trembled, ready to explode.
A hushed whimper rose in my throat regardless of how it swelled shut.
I was going to lose my shit, my goddamn mind—
“Rhett?”
I spun on my heel.
She appeared like sweet sunshine with a messy bun and widened bloodshot eyes.
“Skylar,” I croaked out.
A tear slid down her cheek in unchecked release.
She would never ridicule me for being weak like my parents had done. I could trust Skylar with my vulnerabilities, same as I did Ash.
