CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 

Carly had calmed me down and hailed a cab. Now I sat in the waiting room at the hospital, one knee bouncing anxiously up and down. Carly returned from the vending machine and handed me a bottle of water. I drank more than I expected.

“Everything will be okay, Veronica.” She sat down beside me. “Try not to worry.”

“I can’t help it.”

“I know.” We sat quietly for a few minutes. Then Carly surprised me by smiling and tapping my elbow. “So, when you get to see him are you going to tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“Oh, you know what.” She winked at me.

In my mind, this was no time for jokes. I narrowed my eyes at her. “No, I don’t know what. And I don’t feel like fooling around right now, Car. Not until I know he’s going to be okay.”

“Because you love him.”

“Yes,” I said, before I realized what she had said. I stared at her. “Yes. I do.”

She grinned again. “You need to tell him. That’s all I meant. After all this, and how shitty he’s going to feel, it will be a nice thing to hear. He loves you too. It’s clear as day on his face when he looks at you.”

I took another sip of water and sighed. “How long are we going to have to wait for? It’s already been an hour.”

Carly shrugged. “Probably not much longer.”

She was right, of course. It had been no more than another fifteen minutes when McCoy came through the automatic glass doors behind the receptionist desk. A nurse was handing him a piece of paper and a bottle of water. I watched him thank her before he turned and started looking for me.

When our eyes met he gave me that smile that told me everything was going to be okay. He wove around the receptionist desk and I was on my feet by the time he made it out front. I threw my arms around his neck and he caught me and wrapped his arms around me. He kissed my cheek, pulled away from me, and held my face in his hands. “Everything is fine.” He said.

I fought the tears that were resurfacing and nodded. “Good.”

Carly stood and she hugged McCoy too. It threw him off a bit. His wide eyes turned to me as if asking for help. I couldn’t help but laugh at the startled expression. Carly pulled away and rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t be such a pansy. I’m just glad you’re okay. I’ve kind of developed a liking to you now.”

McCoy laughed somewhat awkwardly.

“Don’t let it get to your head,” she said quickly. “It’s just that we have common ground now. You kicked his ass. Just like I wanted. It’s like my own little fairy tale come true.”

McCoy surprised me by laughing. I thought the comment would have unsettled him. I knew he was conflicted about the damage he had inflicted on Jason. Carly’s approval of the total ass-kicking seemed to remind him that Jason had it coming.

He took my hand in his. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

I never told him at the hospital that I loved him. I had wanted to. The urge was definitely there. But we were surrounded by sick people or injured people. I didn’t want to create that memory there. So I waited. I waited until I felt like the timing would be perfect.

I had to wake McCoy every two or three hours during the night after we were sent home from the hospital. I felt guilty every time I whispered his name and shook his shoulder. I wanted to ease him awake as gently as I could, because every time he woke he was uncomfortable. His heachache made him squint his eyes and he always wanted to push a hand against the back of his head. I imagined it was a reflex. So I started holding his hand when I woke him, and let him wake gently.

When I woke him in the morning, around seven, his eyes were blurry. He looked over at me and shielded his eyes against the early morning sun that was creeping through my drapes. I apologized, again, for having to wake him up.

“It’s okay,” he assured me, “plenty of time to sleep later.”

I rested my chin on his chest and stared up at him. “True.” I wasn’t convinced. I wanted him to be able to rest until he felt like his normal self again. It didn’t feel fair that he had to lay here like this. He stretched beneath me and gave way to a yawn. “Go back to sleep, I’ll wake you again around ten.”

He rubbed my shoulder. Soon the movements of his fingers on my skin slowed, and he fell again into a calm and steady sleep. I stayed with him the whole time. Laying on my side and just staring at him. I had to talk to him when he woke. I had questions. I didn’t want to ask them- I feared my asking would be the breaking point for him. It would be when he realized I wasn’t the right girl, and he’d take off.

But I had to ask.

When I woke him for the last time I was prepared. He knew something was bothering me right away, and as he propped himself up against my headboard his eyes flicked back and forth between mine. He was assessing the situation. “What’s wrong?” He finally asked, his hands resting lightly on top of the blankets in his lap.

I chewed the inside of my cheek. There was no point in hiding from it now. There would be no other time to have this conversation, and it was a conversation I knew I needed to have in order to move forward with him. “I wanted to talk to you about what Jason told me last night.”

“What did he tell you?”

That was a fair question. I realized McCoy didn’t even know any of the conversation I had with Jason in the kitchen. He had been lying unconscious on my floor. I took a deep breath to ease my anxiously beating heart. “He told me who the man was that you tried to kill with the bat. That it was your dad.”

McCoy didn’t react. He remained impossibly calm as he lay in my bed. He didn’t shy away from my steady stare, either. Finally he answered me. “What do you need to know?”

That was a fair question. Did I need to know anything? Was it important? I hardened my resolve. “I just want to know why you did it.”

He nodded. “He struck my mother.” His eyes settled on his hands in his lap. “It was something he had never done. Usually, when he was drunk, he’d come after me. I was a smart ass, I provoked it sometimes. One night, I pushed too hard, and he wailed on me like he never had before. Broke my nose. Cracked two ribs.

Then my mom tried to stop him. She came in with the bat. She begged him to leave me be. He went after her. Took the bat from her. He knocked her down and kicked her. She was screaming. And I lost it. I don’t even remember it happening. I just remember, at the end of it all, my mom screaming my name. That’s when I stopped.”

I had nothing to say. I simply watched him relive it all. He continued. “When it was done I was covered in his blood. The bat was covered. The carpet. He was a mess. My mom called an ambulance and the cops took me away that night. My sentence was a lot lighter than it could have been. The judge took pity on me. On my mom.” His expression softened and he mustered the courage to look up at me. “And from that day I didn’t think I would ever be able to feel something good again. I still can’t believe…” he started to chuckle.

I put my hands on his and squeezed them lightly. “Me neither.”

I thought to ask him about what Jason had said the other night. About why they called him “McCoy”, but decided otherwise; he had gone through a lot.