Chapter Fifty-Seven

 

DAVIS

 

I settle down into the uncomfortable hospital chairs. Everything about hospitals is uncomfortable. It's not as bad as hotel rooms, thankfully. I wonder what would have happened if I'd had to wait in a hotel room, instead of a hospital room.

Would I have stayed the way I had so far? I don't know, and that upsets me. I should be in control of my own actions. I should be able to control myself. But instead, I've got myself all fucked up.

I suck in a breath. I don't like one bit how good it felt to talk to Ryan. How much I liked seeing him, hearing him talk. Seeing that he was alright, that he wasn't going to die on me at any second.

I should be detached. I should be keeping myself separate from the situation. I should be a cop, but I can't just turn it off, regardless of what I know I should do. It's pissing me off. But I can't afford to let it get to me, not really.

It's not anyone's fault that it's happening, least of all Ryan's. I had a rough couple of days, and it's that simple. I just had a rough couple of days, and now I'm a little over-emotional because of how hard it all was. Because of how hard I had to push myself to get everything to come together.

Maybe it'll go away. I hope it will. I tell myself that I hope so, anyways. I can't make myself feel it, though. I can think it all I want, that I want him to get out of my head. That I want to avoid entanglements. That I want to go back to the way things were.

But that's just what I think I should want, and the worst part is that I know it. I can't make myself want it, in spite of my best efforts. I can't make myself feel any way at all about it.

Instead, I've got a chill running down my spine just looking at Ryan. This is a side of him that you never saw in the photos. It's a side of him I never saw as I was getting to know him the past couple weeks.

Seeing him there on that bed, in that back seat, bleeding all over my cloth seats… the whole car will need to be reupholstered. It was something that I never saw in him, not one time before that. Never when he was awake. Vulnerability. Like he could be hurt.

Something in me wants to make sure it doesn't happen again. Something that can't be a cop any more. I should kill that voice, and with it I might be able to really keep moving up.

After all, I was the one who destroyed the Crazy Horses. That's always going to be a feather in my cap, no matter how I did it. I could get myself a nice cushy position. The one I always wanted.

I could lord myself over the others, like Donaldsen did. Like I'd always wanted to be able to do. To call it a dream come true is cliche, but not inaccurate. It took a hell of a lot, but it all came together.

Now all I have to do is get rid of Ryan Beauchamp and quiet the little voice inside myself that says I need to protect him. That he's important to me, to who I am.

I've been trying to three days, now. Trying to get the hell out of that hospital bedroom. Trying to get out of this chair that hurts my ass because it's cushioned like a monastery. They could only get more appropriate if they had little spikes in the seat, I think.

I try again. My weight goes onto my hands. My butt starts to feel a whole hell of a lot better as the weight comes off it, as I stop having to cope with that awful cushion. Something in the world changes and shifts, and I can't help myself.

My weight goes back down, and my ass hurts a hell of a lot. I look outside. It's late. The sun's been down for a while, and I should've been asleep. I should've asked someone to at least bring me a book. Even a trashy romance will do.

But I haven't. I can't bring myself to do it. So I take my hands back off the arms of the chairs, fold them in my lap, and watch Ryan Beauchamp, the man who made my future and the man who's taking it all away, in his fitful, vulnerable sleep.

He rolls over and his eyes flutter open a minute.

"Hey, beautiful."

His words are slurred. I didn't expect any different, with the number of painkillers he's taking.

"Hey yourself."

"Can I ask you a question?"

I lean in against the bed railing. "Shoot."

"Why don't you like it when people say, y'know?"

I don't really want to talk about it. He knows I don't. But I'm going to have to trust someone, some time, I guess.

"I don't know," I tell him. It's a lie, and he knows it. But when I try to find the words, they just slip through my fingers. Nothing sounds right, nothing really explains it.

His free hand comes up to trace the line of my cheek. "You gonna be alright, Davis?"

Fuck him, I think. He's sitting there, barely alive. One foot stuck firmly in the grave, and he's worried about me? What gives him the right? What gives him the right to think that he's got any room to worry about anyone? My stomach twists up.

"What the hell kind of question is that?"

He lays his head back. "I don't know. I just thought you looked like you got hurt. And I was worried about you."

"I'm fine." I am fine. I got through that whole thing without a scratch on me. It's amazing, frankly. All the carnage that came down on Ryan's head, on that whole house, and I came out if it without a single bump, a single bruise. I don't know how anyone could have managed it.

"Not like—aw, never mind. Don't worry about it." He smiles weakly.

I smile at him as best as I can. It's all I can do, after all. "You should go back to sleep."

He rolls himself a little more, until his arm starts to pull against the handcuff. "Fuck that. I've been sleeping for, what? At least a day or two."

"Two," I say absently. The first day was real damn scary. Just seeing him sleeping there, the whole day. Seeing his weak pulse, his heart barely keeping him going.

I don't know what I would have done if he'd been really hurt. If he hadn't made it. Just imagining it makes my chest hurt, even now that it's all past.

"Ryan?"

He looks up at me. His eyes are still glassy as can be, and in spite of what he says, he looks real tired. "Yeah?"

"Why did you insist I'd come with you? I might not have wanted to, you know."

He smiles as best he can smile, but it's almost a pathetic thing. It hurts a little to see how far he's fallen from the confident, beaming grins that he gave me when we were hatching this whole plan together.

"I knew better than that, though, didn't I?"

It hurts to smile. Hurts to have this conversation with him, because I know what it means to me, and I know what it means to my career, and I know that doesn't change a whole hell of a lot about what I'm going to do.

"Yeah, I guess you did." I press my lips into his hand. "Go to sleep, okay? You've got to get plenty of rest. You'll have to, to get better, you got that?"

He smiles and rolls back onto his back. "I don't wanna," he says, but he closes his eyes anyways, and then a minute later his breaths get a little shallower, a little more even, and then he's asleep.