A Year of You (26 page)

Georgia met him in the emergency room. “They kicked me out because I’m not family. I didn’t think about lying until it was too late.” She rolled her eyes. “You all right? You should go wash some of that blood off your face.”

“I don’t care about it right now. I just need to find out about Mattie.”

“She’s doing okay. She’s asleep or whatever it is the drug makes her do. They’re watching her because of something about respiratory problems caused by whatever he gave her.”

“Thanks, G. You better go find Tysie. Rebel’s outside, so he can give you a ride back.”

“How’re you going to get back to the bar to get your truck?”


“I’ll figure something out.”
Georgia slugged his shoulder. “I’m going to go check on Rebel, but we’re going to hang out.”

“Yeah, okay.”

The nurse at the desk led him through a maze of hallways to a tiny room deep in the bowels of the hospital. Mattie lay on the bed with an oxygen mask over her face and an IV in her arm. Her eyes were still half-open. Once in a while she would blink.

The doctor popped in just as West got into the room. “Mr. West?”


“Yeah. Is she okay?”


“She will be. The combination of alcohol and GHB can be fatal if the dose is too high, but she got lucky. Even though the guy who doped her up probably has experience doing this kind of thing, he gave her a bit too much. We really just want to watch her to make sure she doesn’t go into respiratory distress. You look like you need some medical attention, though, Mr. West. Your nose and your hand look like they’re in bad shape.”

“I don’t care. I don’t even feel ‘em.”

“Yet. It’s all the adrenaline. Once it wears off in about half an hour, you’ll be hurting something fierce.”

West liked this doctor, with his open manner and blunt speech. “Did he...did he touch her?”

“No. We didn’t find any evidence of sexual intercourse. No bruising or fluids. You must have interrupted him.”

Or Emeline planned it all.

No way. She just wouldn’t do that.
Then why are you doubting it?



Had to be Justine. Emeline was a rotten brat, but she wasn’t this malicious.

“Come on now, Mr. West. Let me take a look at you.”


West sighed and gave in, but only on the condition that a security guard stayed outside Mattie’s room.

A series of x-rays later determined that while his nose was fractured, his hand wasn’t. The nurse cleaned the abrasions and gashes on his knuckles and gave him a big bag of ice for his hand. She brought him a fact sheet about GHB and other date-rape drugs.

He washed his face in the bathroom, wincing at the nasty bruises already forming in black beneath his eyes. The nurse gave him a chemical cold pack for his nose. “Won’t hurt so bad resting on it,” she explained. She watched him adjust it. “Those bruises on her torso and face--“

“She got beat up during a robbery last week. I don’t beat my wife.”

She smiled a tiny little patronizing smile. “Of course not, Mr. West. We just want to make sure you’re both okay.”

After he took care of all the paperwork from admissions, he sat down in the chair next to Mattie’s bed and slouched down until the back of his head rested on the back of his seat.

He’d barely closed his eyes when Mattie’s soft sobs jerked him fully awake. “Mattie?”
She didn’t answer him. Those soft half-sobs sounded muffled behind the oxygen mask.
“Hey, Mattie? Honey?” He smoothed her hair off her face. She turned toward his touch.

He smiled, enough relief shooting through his system to turn his knees to water. “Yeah, I’m here, babe. Right here beside you. Just go to sleep, okay?”
He found her hand beneath the blanket and gave it a squeeze.
She smiled, just a little tilt of her lips, behind the mask. West pressed a kiss to her temple.
It tore him up to think that Emeline, as beautiful as she was, could have done this. Planned this.

His phone began chiming and vibrating, letting him know he was getting emails. He sat back, braced one foot on the lowest rail of the hospital bed, and opened the first email. The more he read, the more disgusted he became. The emails Emeline fired off, seemingly one after the other, were full of apologies, full of words and promises he wasn’t sure he should be reading from another woman. As the night wore on, the emails turned into text messages, and finally, to phone calls that he rejected instantly. The messages ranged from sobbing miserably to her hollering into the phone about being unfaithful.

I’ve been an idiot.
West paced the narrow room. From somewhere down the hall, somebody wept, wailing sorrowfully.

West tucked the blanket around Mattie and stepped out into the hall. A nurse gave him directions to the exit.

A familiar baby-blue Navigator waited in the empty visitor parking lot. Em popped out, her light- blonde hair silvery in the moonlight. West stalked toward her. “Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with that, Em,” he demanded quietly, firmly.

“I—I didn’t. West, you have to believe me.”


“Who is that fucker?”


“His mom is one of Justine’s friends. Justine sort of set us up to go out.”
Justine? West felt an immense bomb of relief go off in his gut.

“You didn’t have anything to do with this?”


“No, West. I don’t like Mattie one bit, but I wouldn’t try to hurt her. She’s my sister. I don’t like how things are turning out, but…she’s still my sister.” Standing before him, she looked so young, so helpless. Compared to Mattie she was so delicate. Her bottom lip trembled, a sign of real tears, not the dramatics she usually pulled off. “I barely remember Elaine. I don’t know how to deal with her being back…and you being with her.”

“She and I were meant to be together. We fit. You and I…we never did. It was like a square peg in a round hole.”

Em shrugged and hugged herself. Her flaxen hair fell over her shoulders, light and wispy. Her mascara was smudged beneath her eyes. “I do love you, West. I know I’ve been sort of childish about everything.”

He glanced away from Emeline’s entrancing face. Why couldn’t he shake her? Why did his head beg him to betray Mattie every time he was close to Em.

The wind blew across the parking lot, a hard gust that whipped against the cars and rocked Emeline’s willowy frame. Without thinking he held his arms out to her.
She came to him, all angles and bones. So different than Mattie.


“I didn’t know he was going to do anything, West. But...” She fell silent. The sound of her breath in his ear blended with the wind in the trees on the other side of the parking lot. She laid her head on his shoulder. He winced. Ever her face was bony. “I’m starting to miss you.”

West’s eyebrows rose. “What?”

“I miss you. I never really noticed everything about you until you weren’t there anymore.” She made a soft sound and walked away from him. Realizing she was crying, West sighed and gazed up at the night sky. “Please, West, tell me there’s a chance for us after she leaves.”

Tonight I was going to tell Mattie I love her. Ask her to stay with me forever and make this a real marriage.

Everything changed in a heartbeat with Em’s tear-ragged words. The world tilted on its axis again.

West wasn’t sure it was a good change. He’d wanted to hear those words for so long, and she’d just said them. The temptation to slip back into his old habits, his old life rose up so strong they almost drowned him right there in the parking lot. He clenched his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

“Em...”

“You can’t love her, West. She’s nothing like me, and you used to love me. You’ve spent the last three years of your life loving me. I want you, West. Don’t you want me?”

“I—”

“She’s going to just go right back to her old life, West. When the year is over, she’s not even going to remember you. She’s going to have millions of dollars, West. Why would she need to remember you? You told me right before you got married that it was just a ‘thing.’ It wasn’t real. You said I’d be the only woman for you forever.”

West ran his hands through his hair, pushing it off his face. He found a half-crushed cigarette in his pocket. He lit it and sucked the smoke in deep. A few breaths passed in and out before he felt the calm of the ritual and the nicotine in his blood. “Emeline.” Her name was a breath on his lips, a last plea. The question and the answer.

Em turned around to face him, the streaks of tears on her cheeks like rivers of silver. She sniffled and crossed her arms over her narrow chest. “Tell me there’s a chance, West. Please.”

“Yeah, tell us there’s a chance.”

West jumped and whirled around. Georgia and Rebel stood a few feet away, windows of their car down.

They’d heard everything.

“You’re such a fuckin’ sellout,” Georgia growled. “Mattie’s so in love with you she’d take a bullet for you, but all you can see is that nasty little whore Emeline.”

Rebel shook his head. “You got issues, man. She set Mattie up, and you’re still forgiving her and actually thinking about getting back with her. I can see it in your eyes. That’s fuckin’ sick. You need your ass beat, West.”

West shook his head, feeling as lost as a dim star in the night sky. Like a single grain of sand on the beach. Even surrounded by thousands, millions, he was still all alone. “It’s not like that. It wasn’t Emeline.”

“Like hell it wasn’t. We all know her and how she is.” Georgia sniffled and crossed her arms over her chest. She circled Em, glaring at her. “Come on, tell us if she has a chance. We wanna know how you can give somebody like Emeline here, a person that has no problems cheating and screwing around on you when you have somebody like Mattie literally drowning in her own tears for you.”

“Mattie and me have an agreement, Georgia. We both know this isn’t forever. It’s just for a year. Whatever happens between us is...it’s business.”

“You’re pathetic. Business my ass. That’s all there is to it. You deserve Emeline. You deserve to have her rip your heart out and stomp on it. We love Mattie. We love her. All of us. And we’re not going to let you hurt her.”

“I’m not going to hurt her! Me and her both know how this is going to end. It’s not a commitment. Back off!”

West stalked toward the hospital doors. Emeline got in her truck and slammed the door. A second later she revved the engine and zipped out. Rebel and Georgia got in his way. “Get out of the way.”

“No.” Georgia stood firm. “Go home to your whore. We’re going to take care of Mattie. We care about her for real and not for just a year. You’re acting like she’s going to just vanish after a year. She’d stay if you asked her.”

Rebel gestured toward the parking lot. “Your truck’s out there. I brought it over for you.”


“Ya’ll just don’t understand. We know what we’re doing.”
Georgia shook her head. “You should get her drunk and listen to her talking about you, West. She adores you.” Her voice hitched. “If I had somebody like Mattie, I’d never let her go. Ever.” She swiped at her cheeks once more. “You don’t deserve her, West.”

Sick to his stomach, West backed up, nearly stumbling over the curb. His injured hand smacked into an oak sapling, sending pain shooting all the way up his arm. He couldn’t fight his friends, because they were right.
She’d stay if you asked her.

They were right.
He didn’t deserve Mattie.
“You gotta ditch the whore, West.” Rebel flicked his cigarette into the ashtray.
Georgia poked her finger in his chest. “I don’t want to see Emeline anywhere near you again. If I do, I’m going to kick her skinny ass, then yours. And, you gotta screw that ‘business agreement.’ That ain’t gonna fly.”

West stared at his friends, his emotions bottoming out. He didn’t know what to feel, what to do, what to say.

“And you’re on notice, man,” Rebel added. “I mean it. You’re going to be looking for a new band if you mess with Emeline again. We’re all sick of her shit. We care about you, too, and she’s bad news. If you insist on being a dick, we’re not going to sit around and watch you crash and burn.”

“There’s not a chance, man,” West said simply. He felt dead inside.

Dead except for the hot spark that flared in his gut when he thought of Mattie, hurt, sad, and alone.
She’d stay if you asked her.

Would she?

Georgia eyed him uncertainly. Rebel glared at him. “She’s gone, man,” West said, gesturing toward the parking lot. “I don’t want that anymore.”

“I swear, dude,” Georgia said, shaking her head. “If you hurt Mattie, I’ll make your life hell.”

West followed them inside and down the hall to Mattie’s little cubicle of a room. His eyes felt grainy and rough, and his face was starting to hurt. He charmed some pain-killers from a pretty little nurse and settled into the chair next to Mattie’s bed.

“You guys going home or staying?” he asked.

Rebel shrugged. “We left Townsend passed out back at the bar. We probably should go pick him up. The owner ain’t real happy with us as it is.”

“I’ll talk to ya’ll tomorrow then, at some point.”
On her way out, Georgia met West’s eyes. “I mean it, West. Treat her right. She’s gold.”

West gazed down at Mattie, who seemed to be sleeping deeply. “I know it.”

Chapter Seventeen

Mattie groaned and tried to button her favorite black slacks. Damn things were too tight. She’d gained weight, even though she swore she was trying to lose it! Sucking in a deep breath, she got the button done. Luckily the peasant wraparound style of her dressy blouse hid the strain of the button and the pooch of her muffin top.

“I hate these dinner things,” Mattie whined when West entered the bedroom to get dressed. He was still damp from the shower and smelled absolutely amazing. He put up with her sniffing him for a moment. Pushing her away gently, he eyed the contents of the narrow closet.

“Me too, but they’re a necessary evil. McKendrick insists on our attendance.”


“Why? He doesn’t like either one of us.”


“Maybe he got the test results.”


Mattie’s gut clenched. “H-he did?” she stammered. Results meant they would know for sure she wasn’t Elaine.
Would tonight be the end of it all?


No. Ruth Ellen would stall as long as it took.
Still, the thought of losing West made her crazy. Hot tears welled up in her eyes. He noticed and frowned.
“What?” He plundered through one of his drawers for clean boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Blubbering suddenly, Mattie shrugged and buried her face in her hands. West’s arms encircled her and held her tight. He stroked her hair, her shoulders. “Babe, I love you, but these crying jags are killing me.”