Chapter Thirty-Eight
Eden
I felt like I was underwater trying to swim to the surface. I opened my eyes and blinked. The fluorescent lights hurt my head. I looked down at the IV attached to my arm and at the hand holding mine.
I turned my head to look at him. His eyes were red-rimmed like he’d been crying, and his face was ravaged. But it was him. His beautiful face, his beautiful everything. My gaze drifted down to his chest. The faded blue T-shirt said Martha’s Vineyard.
“Why are you wearing Zeke’s T-shirt?” I asked, my voice sounding hoarse like I hadn’t used it in a long time.
“Because…” His eyes searched my face.
I closed my eyes, remembering. My ears were still ringing from the shots fired. My stomach hurt. My head hurt. Everything hurt. “They shot you. I thought…you were dead.”
“I was wearing a bullet-proof vest.”
Thank God. “Why am I in the hospital?”
His fingers brushed over my cheekbone and he swept my hair off my forehead. His touch was gentle, but I winced. “You have a concussion.”
I started laughing, but it bordered on hysterical. My laughter turned into sobbing that wracked my body and made everything hurt even more. Killian climbed onto the bed and held me the way he did before we went to sleep. He kept holding me until, eventually, I calmed down and my breathing regulated.
“You’re in shock,” he said quietly, stroking my hair. “The brain can only handle so much information…” He was trying to help me make sense of something that didn’t make any sense. I lay there, letting him stroke my hair and hold me. I listened to the sound of his voice but not the words.
I pressed my body closer to his. He flinched, sucking in his breath. “You’re hurt.” I remembered my dad and Garrett talking about it once. Bullet-resistant vests might stop a bullet, but it would still hurt like hell.
“I’m fine,” Killian said. I knew he’d say that no matter how much it hurt. He reached for my hand and laced his fingers in mine.
“Is Connor…is he…?” I whimpered.
“He’ll be okay.”
“But he…what…”
“Miss Madley, we need to ask you a few questions,” a woman’s voice said. Two police officers were standing by my bed.
“She’s not ready to talk,” Killian said.
“I’m sorry,” the female officer said. “But we need to talk to her.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
The female officer asked the questions, and I told her what I remembered…which wasn’t much. But I wanted to help Connor, so I tried my best to remember everything I could.
“I was upstairs changing into a clean shirt when they came. I’d been painting…” Which was totally irrelevant. “Connor was downstairs. We were about to watch a movie…” More useless information. “We thought it was our pizza delivery. Before he opened the door, Connor asked who it was. I heard the guy say the name of the pizzeria we ordered from… so Connor unlocked the door…”
“Fuck,” Killian muttered under his breath.
“What did the men say when they came inside?” the police officer asked.
“They called him a snitch. And they said…” I took a deep breath. Connor was alive. He was going to be okay. “…they came to kill him. I heard a scuffle and they were…they must have been beating him up. I was on the phone with Killian. I called him right away.”
“And, where were you at this point?” she asked.
“In the bathroom. With the door locked. I didn’t know where else to go. It’s the only door upstairs with a lock.”
“Then what?”
“I heard someone coming up the stairs, checking the rooms. He…” I stopped and swallowed. “Knocked down the bathroom door. I sprayed deodorant in his eyes which kind of stunned him. Then I kneed him in the junk,” I said, feeling kind of proud of my handiwork. Killian chuckled under his breath, but his humor was short-lived. The police officer prompted me to continue.
I took a deep breath and let it out as the memories washed over me. “I ran out of the bathroom, but he caught me and…” My whole body was trembling.
Killian’s arms tightened around me. “What did he do to you?” he asked, his voice low.
“He just…” The cool metal of the gun pressed against my forehead. “Boom”, he said, and laughed. “He hit me in the forehead with his gun.”
I told her the rest of what happened, what I remembered, and the officer took it all down and said she’d contact me if they needed more information.
“How are you holding up, Killian?” she asked.
“Except for my girlfriend getting dragged into the shit storm of my life…fucking great.”
“I’m sorry about your father. We all looked up to him.”
I felt Killian nod and when the cops left my room, I asked, “What happened to your dad?” I didn’t even realize he’d been there which just went to show how much I’d missed.
“He was shot,” Killian said.
“But…so were you.”
“He was shot in the head.”
Oh my God.
I hated that man, but he came to our rescue, right along with Killian. Now he was dead. It seemed strange we survived, but the police chief died. “And…what about those men?”
Killian either didn’t know or he didn’t want to tell me. “You don’t need to worry about them anymore.”
“And Connor…shouldn’t you be with him now?”
“Ava is with him.”
I felt better knowing he wasn’t alone. I tried not to picture his face, the pulpy flesh and blood, or the knife cutting into his chest. What did he do to deserve that? They were going to kill him after they finished torturing him. They were going to kill me too, probably. Wrong place, wrong time.
“I love you, Killian. I love you so much.”
He let out a ragged breath. “I love you too.”
“Don’t leave me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”