IT’S BEEN HOURS.
I think it’s been hours. I’m so numb, so oblivious to everything going on around me in this damn waiting room, we could have been sitting here for a month. That’s how I foresee a life without Kai. This winding meander of minutes and hours and days that blurs into an eternity. That cuts through a desert, a dry existence devoid of life that could have been rich. Could have been flooded with love, but now may be a wasteland.
“You should clean up.” Bristol plops down beside me on the less-than-comfortable couch, its salmon-colored pleather cool against my back. “Ella’s bringing some clothes for you.”
I shrug. Why should I care how I look? How I smell? If Kai doesn’t make it, I’m not sure I’ll ever care about those things again.
“Ruthie is on her way.” Bristol reads a text on her phone. “She just texted me from the plane we sent. They’re about to take off now.”
“San?”
I force myself to listen, to stay engaged because Kai loves them more than anyone else. She would want them here. I think I need them here because they are the only ones who could even come close to loving Kai as much as I do.
“Still no luck.” Bristol twists her lips apologetically. “I’ve been ringing his cell and the hotel in Turks, but I haven’t been able to reach him. I’ll keep trying.”
“Yeah, thanks. Keep me posted.”
Bristol looks down at her phone when it rings.
“This is Ella now.” She puts the phone to her ear and heads toward the exit. “Hey. Where are you?”
I think of the last time I waited in a hospital for Kai. Ella was there then too. She’s a good friend. I was so anxious that night Kai collapsed, and it was just pneumonia. God, what I wouldn’t give for this to be that simple. Maybe Ella will bring the same calm she carried then.
Luke and the band swung through, but we sent them back to the hotel with promises to keep them apprised. Gep sits in the corner on his laptop, probably trying to figure out how this got past us, where we went wrong. Marlon is curled up on one of the sofas asleep. He performed his ass off last night, and the demands of the showcase and all the work he’s been doing for his album are catching up to him. He’s had a long few days. We all have. We all look worse for wear, but I look the worst.
I glance down at my bare chest. The bloodied t-shirt is long gone, probably still in the back of that ambulance. Blood rings my knuckles, dried into the crevices, and tinges my palms. I touch my hair, finding it pulled into thick peeks stiff with the blood from my hands rolling through it. I’m disgusting, but I can’t leave this spot. If there’s news, if something happens, I have to be here. Not knowing is killing me. Not knowing if our baby girl is already gone. Not knowing if Kai’s breathing right now. The last time I saw her, a tube was shoved down her throat. And now someone I don’t know is cutting on my girl.
“Did they tell you anything when you gave blood?” I flick a look up at James Pearson seated on the couch across from me reading.
He peers at me over the round lenses of his glasses. His wife, a faded version of Cassie, came to pick up their daughter a little while ago. Cassie didn’t want to leave, but she was exhausted, and there was nothing she could do to help after she and James gave blood. Which is more than I’ve been able to do.
“No.” James shakes his head, using a finger to hold his place in the book he closes. “They took our blood and told us to wait out here.”
His eyes rove over the half-naked, blood-stained mess that is me.
“Your sister’s right.” He takes off his glasses and holds the stem between his fingers. “You should clean up. You don’t want Kai to see you like that when she wakes up.”
My heart latches onto that phrase.
When she wakes up.
I clear my throat before walking over to sit beside him. I glance at the cover of the book he’s reading. It’s a Bible just like the reverend had at our wedding.
“You, uh, think Kai will be waking up?” I rest my elbows on my knees and glance up and back at him.
He considers me for a few moments before putting his glasses back on and opening his Bible to the spot.
“I believe she will.”
My heartbeat accelerates, and it feels like this is the first time my heart has beaten in hours.
“How do you know?” I demand.
“I said I believe. I have faith.”
That’s not good enough. I know it sounds bad, but the faith of an adulterous pastor who abandons his family for his mistress and love child in Vegas doesn’t comfort me that, if there is a God, He’s on James’ side.
“You don’t put much stock in that, though, do you?” he asks, a smile curving his lips but not quite touching his eyes.
“No.” I shake my head and blow out a defeated breath. “I don’t.”
“You don’t put much stock in me in general, do you, son?”
“I’m not your son.”
I stand up and walk over to where Bristol waits with Ella and the clothes she
brought. The young nurse who gave me paperwork to complete rounds out a little trio of eyes watching me like I might detonate any minute. They’re not far off.
“For me?” I take the bag and manage a small smile for the nurse. “Are you taking me somewhere so I can freshen up?”
She nods, her brown eyes wide and shining. Please don’t let her say she loves my music or she saw me in concert once or knows all my songs by heart. I don’t give a shit. There’s nothing like nearly losing the thing that means the most to you to show you how little everything else is actually worth. Thankfully, she’s quiet as she leads me to a small bathroom down the hall.
It’s the fastest shower I’ve ever taken. The hospital soap and shampoo smell like household cleaners, but they wash away the stench and stickiness of blood. I make quick use of them and tug on jeans, a t-shirt, and tennis shoes. I step back into the waiting room and come to a full stop.
Gep’s on his feet talking with a police officer. Bristol joins them, folding her arms over her chest and double-dutching a glance between them. That look on her face that means she’s just waiting for the right time to jump in.
“But we just have a few questions for Mr. Gray. I promise it won’t take long.” The police officer directs his words to Bristol, who I’m assuming, in her highly professional manner, just denied him. She has this very polite way of telling you things. It’s not until you’re out of her presence that you realize she told you to fuck yourself and you feel the sting of it. By the look on the officer’s face, he’s already feeling the sting.
“What’s going on?”
The three of them turn to me. Gep’s expression is as impassive as always. You could run over that guy’s toe with a Mack truck and he wouldn’t grimace. Bristol looks mad, which she often resorts to when things are out of her control. Anger is her fall back. And the officer looks like he’s just doing his job.
“You needed to speak to me?” I ask him.
“I told him later would be better.” Bristol flays him with a glance. “It’s not the right time, officer.”
“With all due respect, ma’am, we’re conducting a criminal investigation,” the officer says carefully. “I’m Officer Baynard, Mr. Gray. We want to figure out what happened.”
“He’s right, Bris.” I sigh and gesture to the couch that probably still bears the imprint of my butt, I sat there so long. “What do you need to know?”
He asks basic questions about our day leading up to the event, and I answer, not sure what any of that has to do with anything.
“Had you or your fiancée met Anna Borden before tonight?” Officer Baynard asks.
“Is that her name?” I narrow my eyes and divide a sober look between the three of them. “That’s who shot Kai?”
“We met her for the first time yesterday,” Bristol asserts, eyes set on the hands in her lap.
“We did?” Rage climbs from the pit of my stomach over my chest and shoulders until it’s a mist clouding my eyes. “When did we meet her? What are you talking about?”
“It was the girl from the meet and greet,” Gep answers since Bristol seems to have lost her voice. She’s biting her lip and staring at the floor. “The girl who, um . . . fell down.”
The girl Kai pushed. The one she thought wanted to hurt me.
“She had a pen,” I say dumbly. “It caught the light, and my . . . Kai thought it was a knife. She pushed her away from me.”
In the quiet we all digest that information. Kai was right. Her instinct about the crazy girl was right. If I’d known she had this in mind, that she would hurt Kai, I would have rammed that pen in my own throat.
“Did she have anything to do with the blood on my car? The message about killing Kai?” My words barge into the awkward silence. “Was that her?”
“Mr. Gephardt did mention that incident, so we questioned her about it.” Officer Baynard clears his throat and flicks a glance at Gep. “She confessed to that too, yes.”
Gep and Bristol look at each other quickly and then away. They knew it was that girl and didn’t tell me.
“So you’re saying the girl who shot my wife,” I say, my voice quaking with rage, not directed at the stupid girl, but at myself, “I gave that girl a ticket to the show.”
“Actually I gave her the ticket,” Bristol says softly, her eyes still fixed on the floor. “If you want to blame anyone, blame me. I’m the one who pushed for us to come.”
Bristol gives voice to the silent shriek that’s ripped through my head a hundred times since we climbed into that ambulance. Why did we come here? Why did I ignore my instincts? This is my fault.
“She should never have been at that show.” Anger sharpens my words. “Never gotten close enough to shoot at Kai.”
“Well, you were her target,” the officer says unhelpfully. “She said if she couldn’t have you then no one could.”
It’s like something out of a bad movie. It pisses me off that Kai ended up in the middle of it.
“Where is she now?” I grind the question to little bits.
“She’s in custody at the station,” the officer says. “Actually under suicide watch. Her plan was to shoot you and then turn the gun on herself.”
“Why?” I spit out.
“Why was that her plan?” Officer Baynard’s bushy eyebrows meet at the center of his forehead. “We—”
“No, why is she under suicide watch?” I slam my fist into the palm of my other hand. “Let her do it. Let her kill herself. Why are we stopping her?”
The officer doesn’t know what to do with my feral response. With the anguish and rage propelling my words. I don’t know what to do with them either. I need to walk away.
“Are we done?” I push the damp hair out of my eyes. “My wife is fighting for her life and for our unborn child, so excuse me if I don’t want to waste another second on the loony bitch who tried to kill her.”
I don’t wait for his dismissal, but just walk away over to the window overlooking the street. The Vegas Strip glitters like a distant promise. Like a wavering mirage on the horizon. Is that what our happiness was? Our future? The promise of something that would never materialize?
I clench my teeth against the rage shrieking from my gut. Not at the fucking demented stalker. At myself. I did everything but pull the trigger. I gave her a ticket. Here I thought I had all my bases covered, had my girls protected from all harm, when the greatest harm was me. Was my blindness. My idiocy.
A sharp sound a few feet away distracts me from my recriminations. Bristol stands against the corridor wall, arms folded across her chest, face set into her usual obstinate lines. There’s no sign of her sleek ponytail, and her hair is free and a little wild around her shoulders. Marlon stands so close I can’t tell if he’s caging her or protecting her, but the expression on his face is fierce, sterner than any I’ve seen him wear before. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but it must be good. It must be working. The tough line of her mouth starts to wobble when his hand cups her chin, tilts her face up. And then I see something I’ve only seen a few times in all the years since we were born within minutes of each other.
Bristol breaks.
Her face crumples, tears streaming over her cheeks. Marlon palms her head and presses her into his chest. She grips his elbows and shakes against him. The same guilt that’s eating me alive gnaws at her. It’s an intimate thing, witnessing someone fall apart, and I almost wish I hadn’t seen it. Bristol’s the strongest of us all. I wouldn’t be able to do half of what I do without her, and to see her trembling unnerves me. Even the strongest needs someone to be weak with. I had no idea Marlon was that for Bristol.
I only knew that’s what Kai is for me.
“You know,” James Pearson says, startling me with his presence beside me at the window. “I may not be a preacher any more, but I can still believe. I still have faith. Do you have faith in anything, Rhyson?”
“Her,” I whisper, my breath fogging the window. “Just in her.”
This is not the time for fucking tears to burn my eyes, for me to have to blink to keep them from falling. I can’t let them fall in front of the last man I want to see my weakness. The weak man who abandoned my girl and her mother. I bang my forehead against the glass and slam my fist into the thick pane.
“Faith!” I snap at his reflection beside mine in the window. “Ask me for something else. Ask me for money. For position. For fame. I can give you all of those things if you want them. But none of them will help her now, and you ask me for the one thing I don’t have.”
“You may have more than you think,” he says quietly, apparently unfazed by my outburst.
“Yeah?” I turn to face him, my anger and pain for his inspection. “You want me to pray for Kai? You want me to send money to some preacher in exchange for her life? Or go to some confessional and leave a big check so things can be right? Just tell me which self-serving religious practice will save my wife and daughter, and I’ll do it.”
“How do you know it’s a girl?”
You know those sunshowers? The weather phenomenon when it rains while the sun is shining? That’s how incongruous his question seems to me. I’m using a pointless philosophical debate on religion to distract myself from how I fucked everything up inviting a madwoman to our concert, and he asks me that shit.
“What . . . huh?” I shake my head as if to clear it, when actually maybe he’s the one whose head needs clearing. “What does that matter?”
“You just sound so certain.” James tilts his head and squints at me like I’m one of his Bible verses vexing him. “And earlier when you were talking to Dr. Haddow you wanted him to tell you your girls were going to be okay.”
“I don’t see how this—”
“It’s too early to tell, right?
“Too early?”
“In the pregnancy?” One side of his mouth gives in to a grin. “It’s been a long time, fifteen years, but they didn’t know at four weeks that Cassie was a girl. Has technology evolved that much now?”
“No, we don’t . . . well, they don’t know, but—”
“But you do,” he says. “You know.”
“Yeah. It’s a girl.”
“How do you know?”
“I just . . .” I shake my head again, and it has less of a clearing effect than it did even a few minutes ago. “I just know.”
“No, a fact is something you know.” James pats my shoulder. “Faith is, well, it’s something you believe so strongly it feels like fact to you. And it’s obvious to me you have a great capacity for it.”
“The doctor’s coming,” Bristol says from across the room where she and Marlon are seated.
I tear my eyes away from James, wishing I had more time to digest what he said, but eager to hear from the doctor. Finally.
“She’s out.” Dr. Haddow crumples the surgical mask in his right hand and pushes the left over a face haggard with fatigue. “We got the bullet. She was really lucky because it just grazed an artery, but it was enough to cause all the blood loss.”
He levels a glance at James.
“We needed a lot of blood,” he says. “You and your daughter really came through for her. She could have hemorrhaged, but it never got to that point. She’s in recovery now.”
It’s like we all breathe a collective sigh of relief. We exchange tentative smiles. I’m so grateful. It all sounds good so far, and I’m afraid to ask all the questions that burn my tongue. I’m afraid of the answers.
“So she, um, she’ll be all right?” I brace for his response.
“She’s not out of the woods yet,” he says cautiously. “She’s still on a ventilator. The chest tube is creating suction and removing air pressure from the lung cavity. That helps to keep the lung re-inflated. And there’s always the risk of blood clots moving toward the heart with situations like this. Those are extremely dangerous and move fast, but we’re monitoring her.”
Hearing about chest tubes and blood clots scares the hell out of me, but they’re monitoring her. It’s under control. Now that I feel a little better about Kai, I force myself to ask the question consuming my mind.
“And our baby?” I watch Dr. Haddow’s expression for any sign before he speaks. If our baby didn’t make it, I’ll still be immeasurably grateful that Kai did, but I won’t get over it any time soon. Neither would Kai.
“As of now, still viable.” A weary laugh rattles in his chest. “It’s a little bit of a miracle. The odds weren’t good, but the baby seems to be fine. We’ll do an ultrasound to know for sure.”
James and I exchange a glance at the word “miracle.” I don’t care if it’s faith, kismet, or a stroke of luck that saved our baby. I’ll take it.
I sit down on the armrest of the nearest chair. Relief weakens my knees. They’re okay. Not out of the woods, but alive.
“Can I see her?”
I need to replace the last image I have of Kai. The bluish tinge to her skin. The blood running from her mouth. The tube invading her throat. Looking closer to death than life.
Dr. Haddow offers me another one of those rare smiles before responding.
“Soon.”
While we wait, I realize I have missed calls from my father. Of course he’s probably seen this all over the news. I’ve been so tuned into Kai and the baby, I’ve tuned out everything else.
“You talked to Dad?” I ask Bristol.
“No.” She glances up from the statement about the shooting she’s preparing for release. “But I talked to Mom.”
Bristol and I have a little bit of a stare down. We both have complex relationships with our parents, but Bristol has a lot more tolerance for our mother than I do.
“Dad called, but I missed it.”
“They were both concerned. Mom just knew you wouldn’t want to talk to her.” Bristol closes her laptop and devotes her full attention to me. “Is it really fair that you’ve forgiven Dad, but you still hold everything over Mom’s head?”
“Dad didn’t get me hooked on prescription drugs and refuse to send me to rehab until I got him the next check.”
“Dad’s no saint.” Bristol compresses displeasure tightly between her lips.
“Did you get a hold of Grady?” I ask, ignoring her statement. It’s never productive when we talk about our parents, and I don’t have the emotional space right now to fight with my sister.
“Yeah, he and Em are coming tomorrow. They were on some couples’ cruise, and it’s the soonest they can get here.” She re-opens the laptop. “For this statement, do you want to refer to Kai as your fiancée or your wife?”
“Wife,” I reply decisively. “And just say we recently married in a private ceremony with close friends and family.”
“It was a beautiful ceremony.” An almost wistful smile teases Bristol’s lips.
I glance down at the golden thread tied around my ring finger. I can’t swallow. I press my lips against my teeth to control the emotions that overwhelm me. I almost lost her. Tonight I almost lost my whole world. I would have been like some pitiful Humpty Dumpty—irreparable and shattered. Nothing would have pieced me back together. Nothing would have ever been right in my world again. Aunt Ruthie once told me it was dangerous to love the way Kai and I do. I get that now. To be that vulnerable, to have everything hinge on another person drawing their next breath is the most helpless feeling in the world. There’s a part of you that just wants to shut it down, to find a way to harden yourself. To find a way not to love at all. But I know I could never do that. Not with her. I’d rather live on the razor edge of devastation every day for the rest of my life with her than even one day without her.
Never is that more clear to me than when I finally walk into her hospital room.
I thought when I saw her, still breathing, I’d feel reassured. I’m actually scared all over again seeing the IVs, the mask over her face, the chest tube running from her back and through the little hole they’ve cut in her hospital gown. I don’t know if it’s the culmination of everything that’s happened in the last few hours, or the sight of her like this, but any composure I have unravels as soon as I sit down in the chair by her bed. Kai is the one I’m weak with, and even though she’s not awake, my walls can’t hold with her this close.
I break down.
Like I never have before. Like someone who has been swimming upstream for hours, for days, for years, only to sink with the shore in sight. I’m drowning from the inside out. My heart thrashes inside my chest. Guilt, relief, fear. They swirl around me as I go down.
I press her small hand to my forehead and bathe her fingers in my tears as I contemplate how close I came to losing her, how close I came to a barren life without her. I’m undone. Any bravado I had, any semblance of control completely unspools at her bedside into this moaning, weeping, helpless son of a bitch who would do anything to trade places with her. Anything to take this pain away from her. That’s what hurts most of all. It should be me here with a hole in my chest. Me with a collapsed lung. With a bullet hole in my back. A bullet that was meant for me.
I wouldn’t even pause if I had to die for you, Rhyson.
Why did she do it? Did she think this would hurt me any less than a bullet ripping through my heart?
“I’m spanking you for this when we get outta here, Pep.” I croak out a tear-soaked laugh. “And not in a sexy way.”
The silence reiterates that she’s not well. If I close my eyes, I can still see her at our last-minute wedding. Glowing. Healthy. Whole. Happy. I want that back so badly. I want to wind time up and hurtle it back to the night I gave in and agreed to come to Vegas. I hate this place and we’re never coming back.
I reach across her prone body to find her left hand on the other side. They removed her engagement ring during surgery, but somehow that little gold thread remains tied around her finger. I search it out, stroke it like a genie’s bottle, and I have one wish. That she would come back to me.
The steady beep of the machine monitoring her heart isn’t what assures me she’s alive. It’s a different beat. The beat anchoring our melody, strong and percussive. I’m quiet and still until it thumps inside of me. Until I hear our love. That song, that refrain that hums through my very blood and inundates my soul until every note, every phrase, every measure drowns out everything else. Our song isn’t one I’ve ever written or sung. It’s the one that plays between our souls.
I look to her face, hoping our song has penetrated the dark quiet she’s in, and that she’ll be smiling back at me like nothing ever happened. That my love lured her from the deep sleep. Instead I see a small red line trickling from her mouth. The beep on the monitor skips and speeds, sending a warning that brings people wearing white coats and green scrubs rushing into the room with a large cart, pushing me out of the way.
“She was just fine,” I yell over the commotion. “What’s happening? Somebody tell me what’s wrong!”
None of them seem to hear me. Everyone focuses on Kai, hurling numbers and readings at one another over my head. I can only pick out two words that make any sense, and they pin me to the wall with icy fear.
Blood clot.
A red flat line onscreen levels me. Knocks all the breath from me like a body blow.
In the midst of chaos, I strain my ears for that beat always echoing from my heart to hers, that sound, that song I thought would connect me to her forever.
But there is no beat.
There is no sound.
There is no song.
It’s gone.