Chapter Twenty-One

Kelly

One Week Later

Kelly stared at the phone, then looked at Miska and Annie, her mood picking up for the first time since Blake had left her apartment the morning the storm had finally blown over, his goodbye awkward and terse after three days of constant lovemaking. They shouldn’t have, but keeping their hands off each other had proved an impossibility. And in between they’d talked and talked, but never come close to resolving whether there could ever be an ‘us.’

She hadn’t heard from him since and figured he’d done what he’d originally intended to do, booking it off the island as fast as he could to get away from her. The pain of that memory receded briefly as the message on her phone finally registered in her brain.

“I got it!” She jumped to her feet, dancing with elation, arms waving wildly. “I got the job!”

Her friends whooped and hauled her in for a tight embrace, talking simultaneously so she could barely make out what either was saying. It didn’t much matter; all that did was that Blake’s leaving had finally provided the impetus she’d needed to get out of Element Island. She’d applied for a secretarial job at a lawyer’s office in Myrtle Beach and after two interviews, had now been officially offered the job.

As her friends went back to their own responsibilities at the hotel at last, Kelly sagged into a chair in the lobby, on lunch break. Giddy with elation, nerves nevertheless set in as she considered everything she’d now have to do, starting with pulling up all the roots she’d set down here and moving to the mainland.

In her mind, she heard what she was sure Blake would have said, back before he was being an asshole and a coward.

You can do it. They’ll be lucky to have you. Show them what you’re made of.

Impulsively, because that was her middle name, she pulled out her phone and sent Blake a text. She’d sworn she wouldn’t, but after a week, surely it was okay. They’d said they would stay friends …

To her surprise and delight, there was an almost immediate response to her text. Kelly looked eagerly at her phone and her smile faded into uncertainty.

Are you Blake’s girl?

Warily, she texted, Who is this?

His younger brother, Hawk. Are you his girl? Kelly, right?

He’d mentioned Hawk quite a few times, so she felt more secure as she responded, I’m not his girl. Just a friend.

Well, just a friend, your not-guy’s pretty damn sick.

What? Why?? she texted in shock.

Easier if you come to the hospital. MB Main. Meet you in the lobby. I’m wearing an Eagles’ tee.

Hospital?!

Kelly ran from the hotel, not even telling her manager she was going. She had a new job anyway, so if she got fired before she quit, she could claim severance. More to the point, she didn’t care. Her entire concern was in getting to the mainland to the hospital.

***

An endless ferry ride, followed by a seemingly unending cab drive, and Kelly ran up the steps into the hospital. Immediately, she spotted the Blake-look-alike wearing an Eagles’ T-shirt.

“What happened?” she demanded, hurrying over to him. “I’m Kelly. Is he okay? What happened?”

Hawk, who looked like a far younger, less stressed version of his big brother, shook her hand with a formality that didn’t seem to fit his demeanor.

“Hi, Kelly. I’m Hawk. He stepped off the boardwalk onto the sand at the construction site, the day after the storm.”

Kelly gasped, fully aware of what had to have happened. The storm would have blown the region’s fair share of deadly pit vipers every which way, and more than a few would have been hiding under the boardwalk. It was likely Blake had literally stepped into a nest of snakes that had just emerged to themselves in the aftermath.

“How many?” she asked, hurrying after Hawk as he took off toward the elevator.

“Nine,” Hawk said grimly. “He was seizing by the time he was airlifted here. He’s been in and out of consciousness ever since. I wouldn’t have even known if I hadn’t been on the phone with him when he got bitten. If there hadn’t been some construction guys at the Magnolia, he would’ve bit the—sorry. Not an intentional pun.”

“Oh, God,” Kelly whispered. She didn’t even want to think about what might have happened if the men hadn’t been there. “Can I see him?” she asked, her voice shaking.

Hawk nodded. “Yeah, in a little while. Doctors are doing something or other right now. Some kind of, uh, draining procedure, I think. They kicked me out.” He looked gray at the thought.

Kelly was sure her own face was just as pale. “Why—why did you text me? I’m so glad you did,” she added hastily. “A whole week he’s been here and I didn’t—” she broke off, looking away as her voice cracked.

Beside her, Hawk rested a big hand lightly on her shoulder. “I thought you would want to be here.” She turned and met his gaze, blue like Blake’s, and kind, though there was nothing of the heat that Kelly had long come to associate with Blake. “Would he want you here, Kelly.”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly, swallowing hard. “I don’t know. Things are strange between us right now.”

“My brother has a tendency to make everything twice as hard as it should be,” Hawk told her. “He’s a good guy. Just takes on way too much responsibility for everyone. I’m guessing you got the ‘he’s not good enough for you’ speech.”

Even though Blake was sick, possibly dying, Kelly managed a slight laugh. “Maybe a slight variation of that. But the truth is that maybe I’m not good enough for him. Not because I don’t have plenty to offer, but he seems to want a certain woman by his side … a business woman, I guess.” She pulled away and walked over to the vending machine, staring blankly at the sugary, salty treats.

“If Blake can’t pull his head out long enough to see how much you love him,” Hawk said quietly from a few feet away, “Then he doesn’t deserve you. I can see it, and we’ve known each other for all of three seconds.”

Kelly cleared her throat and closed her eyes. A moment later, a gruff voice came from the doorway, heavily accented with a mainland drawl. “Mr. Parker? May I speak with you, please?”

She heard Hawk walk away and mindlessly purchased a bag of pretzels, stuffing them down as if somehow keeping her mouth occupied could keep her heart off the realization that she could lose Blake. And not just to his business. Forever.

Fighting desperate tears, Kelly balled the pretzel bag into her hand and slammed it into the garbage can, grateful no one was nearby to witness her actions. “He can’t die. He can’t die,” she whispered over and over, unable to fathom how the man she’d fallen in love with so completely could ever leave her life forever, to where she couldn’t even reach him with an occasional friendly text—

“Kelly.”

She turned and saw Hawk in the doorway, a relieved smile on his face. Not daring to hope, she started toward him. “Is he—”

“They think he’ll make a full recovery. It’ll take some time, and they’ll leave in the induced coma a while longer to give him a chance to recuperate, but they say he was brought here fast enough and the antivenin did its job.”

She couldn’t say anything. If she’d dared speak, she would have broken down and wept right then and there.

Seeming to understand, Hawk nodded at the hallway. “Come on. We can see him now.”

As relieved as she was, a chill of dread went through Kelly as they approached Blake’s room in intensive care. Hawk stopped outside the door. “I’ll wait out here and give you a minute alone with him.”

Throat still locked down tight against a mixture of dangerously strong emotions, Kelly walked into the dimly lit room and slowly, very slowly made her way over to where Blake lay in the hospital bed, his big body covered from head to toe in every manner of tubing and machinery, to where she could barely get close to him.

“Oh my god.” She covered her mouth, shaking at the sight of the man she loved so very clearly still at the edges of death. Reaching out without thinking, needing to touch him, Kelly touched his shoulder, the one place he didn’t seem to have a needle stabbing him.

“Blake.” What she’d feared came pouring out and she stood at his bedside and wept for a good 10 minutes, staring down into his beloved face, so still, so silent, while machines kept time with his heartrate.

Finally calming, Kelly wiped the mess off her face and leaned down to whisper to him. “Blake. I didn’t know. I would’ve been here so much sooner. But you might not have wanted that.” His words came back to haunt her, as they had for days. “I want to be by your side as you recover, Blake. But you won’t let me, will you.”

Realization touched her and slowly, her tears dried as a kind of numb acceptance took over her. “I want to fight for you. I want to make you see how good we are. But you need to focus everything on recovering. I … I’ll just distract you from getting healthy. And then you’ll be so upset that you’re behind on business …”

Kelly shook her head and leaned down to very gently kiss his cold cheek, lingering on the hard line of his jaw, even more defined now that he’d lost several pounds.

“I love you. That’s why I’m leaving. I have to. Goodbye,” she whispered, and turned and fled from the room, bolting past a startled Hawk before he even had the chance to call out her name.