Forever Mine (Providence Series Book 1) (32 page)

Mom had made an excellent point, though, and my brain suddenly starts throwing ideas at me.
 
She was right, and I think I knew just how to do it, so I got up and jogged back to where the Montgomery’s were sitting, pulling my phone out on the way.

Mace

Waiting for news on Maya and Luke had been torture, especially watching Ava trying to hold it together.
 
We hadn’t spoken since she’d turned up with Ren last night and she kept avoiding me every time I tried. I needed to tell her the truth about what she saw; I couldn’t take her hurting because of me; especially when it hadn’t been what it looked like.

Seeing her stand up I knew I needed to take this chance to make her listen.
 
Walking out after her, I stopped when I saw her talking to a young guy in scrubs laughing. She was giving him the smile that I used to get before it all became so complicated between us, and I felt like breaking the asshole in half. Walking up to them, I saw him pass over a piece of paper and a pen that she wrote something on before passing it back to him, just as I reached them.

“Gonna introduce me to your friend Angel?” Yeah, I’m a possessive asshole, but she’s mine regardless of the fact that we can’t be together.

She turned to look at me with the look on her face that she gave me all the time now. It was distrust and disgust and made me sick to my stomach.

“Sure, Penn this is Mace, Mace this is Penn. Mace is like my big brother,” she said laughing.
 

Was I fuck like her big brother? What we had together was so far from siblings it was unreal. I’d never thought of her as a sister even when she and Gia were little pains in my ass following me everywhere.

“I gotta go, Ava,” Peen said looking at the time. “I’ll give you a call later, though. See you soon and nice to meet you, man.”

I waited until he was out of earshot and turned back to the Angel standing in front of me. “So, you’re going out with Peen?”

“It’s Penn asshat,” she rolled her eyes and started walking away from me.

“Dammit Ava, we need to talk!”

“No, we really don’t,” she spun around and marched up to me sticking her finger in my face. “I’m not interested in listening to one thing that you have to say. Why don’t you go and call your slut?”

She was shaking by the end of it, and I realized the amount of damage I’d done. It didn’t matter that it was innocent and that I’d been trying to get information out of her, or that I wouldn’t touch her or anyone else when all I wanted was Ava. The fact is I couldn’t have her anyway, I was tainted, a murderer, a piece of shit and she was too damn good for me.

Giving her a last look, I turned and walked back toward the waiting room, stopping when I got to Ren and his family. The only time I ever felt like a human who was worthy of love was when I was around the Townsends, Gia or Ava; the rest of the time I knew exactly what I was.

Seeing Ren so devastated over Maya though flipped a switch in me. What if it was Ava where Maya was right now? I’d never have had the chance to show her how much she means to me or to experience what Ren had. If I didn’t do something soon, I’d never experience it. I needed to do something now and prove to her that I was worthy regardless of the blood on my hands. Colette told me a couple of weeks ago that you had to fight for happiness in life and that it would be worth it; I was going to fight, and I wasn’t taking any prisoners. Ava was mine.

26

____

May
a

I hurt all over.
 
Every time I breathed
in it felt like someone was stabbing me and like I had a sumo wrestler sitting on my chest. How the hell did guys find those 450-pound women sitting on them arousing? Not being able to breathe and feeling like my chest was about to explode wasn’t doing it for me.
 
Then there was the pain in my arm and my leg and oh God my head. I could hear a hissing noise and every second or so a beep; it was making the pain in my head worse. The beeping was starting to get faster; couldn’t Ren turn the damn alarm off? He always slept through it, and now it was making my pain worse. Why was I in pain? Just as I tried to open my eyes I heard the door open, and my arm suddenly felt cold,
 
then everything went back to black…

*
 
*
 
*

That seemed to have been how things went for a while; pain, beeping and then sleep.
 
Now and then I’d hear people talking, but for the life of me, I couldn’t make out a thing they were saying or who it was. I sometimes felt someone holding my hand or stroking my hair, or at least, I thought I did, but it all seemed to be muddled together.
 

Right now, things seemed clearer and less painful, maybe I was getting over whatever it was.
 
After a lot of persuasion, my eyes opened. I really must have been sick because I could have sworn that I was in a hospital.
 
Noise from beside me had me slowly turning my head in that direction as a slice of bright light hitting my eyes made me flinch.

“Maya?” It sounded like Ren, but not at the same time. “Oh shit, Maya,” the end was said loudly making me close my eyes and groan. Why was he torturing me? I felt someone reaching over me and then footsteps went quickly back to where the light had come from. There was a loud thud as the light hit me again and the voice yelled, “She’s awake, she’s awake…”

I really wish I could punch them right now. Every noise felt like I was being stabbed in the head and every flinch felt like someone was taking a bat to my body. So I did the only thing I could with the limited movement I had…

“Well, that’s charming,” the voice muttered as I stuck my middle finger in the air and fell back to sleep…

*
 
*
 
*

“Maya baby,” a lovely deep voice whispered from beside me. “Maya, I have your parents on FaceTime. Open your beautiful eyes and just let them see you, okay? Otherwise, they’re gonna fly here, and you’ll be in big trouble, beautiful.”

That wasn’t an empty threat; I once fell out the window sneaking out to go to a party. After I’d had a cast put on my broken ankle, my Dad made me stay up for two days straight so that I got the all nighter party experience. Cruel bastard!

Blinking my eyes open, I focused for the first time since whatever happened to me and saw Ren looking down at me with a smile on his face. Leaning down, he kissed me on the forehead. “Thank God, baby.”
 

“Maya,” I remembered my parents were on the screen watching and turned my face towards where Dad’s voice came from.

“Hey, pumpkin,” my Mom’s face came into focus on the screen, and I could see that they both looked exhausted and pale.

“Momma? Daddy?” Was that even my voice? It sounded like an eighty a day smokers. I was about to say something else when Ren placed a straw on my lips, and I took a sip of cold water.
 
For a second it brought tears to my eyes when the water hit my mouth and throat, it felt like it was tearing it apart. After a second though it calmed, and I took more and more sips from the straw.

“Slowly baby, you’ve got to take small sips, so you don’t throw up.” I looked at Ren and saw how exhausted he looked.
 

“Are you sick?” Maybe it was a stupid question seeing as how I was obviously in a hospital bed, in pain, but he really didn’t look good. Suddenly I remembered being under the scaffolding and it collapsing on top of us. “Oh Jesus, where’s Luke?”

Strong arms gently wrapped around me as I tried to move out of bed and my parents yelled at me to stay still.

“I need to see Luke!”

“He’s alright baby, just sleeping. Once the Doctor says it's fine, we’ll go and visit him so you can see for yourself,” Ren whispered in my ear as my Dad bossed me from the phone and Mom begged me to lie down.

“He told me about the photos, Ren. We were talking about it when it all came down.”

His eyes flicked to the phone and back to me, and I got what he was saying, we’d talk about it later.
 

I managed about five minutes on FaceTime with Mom and Dad before the glare from the screen set my headache off again, leaving Ren to take the orders from them. Revenge would normally have been sweet, but I was in too much pain to enjoy it.

Cole

With Maya finally awake we could all relax a bit. Luke had stabilized, and they’d stopped the medication keeping him in a coma, and now it was just up to his body to wake him from the natural coma that it was in. His eyes had swollen with the pressure inside his skull, and I’d walked in two days after the accident to find him staring straight ahead. I’d gone up to him and started talking and waving in front of his face; when he didn’t respond, I’d pressed the red button and waited for the team to arrive. I thought maybe he was playing, or the force of the hit to his head had knocked something out of place. Unfortunately, the button I pressed apparently meant that resuscitation was required on a patient, so a large team arrived who weren’t happy with me when I explained. How was I supposed to know? Four days after that, Maya had woken up and fallen back to sleep giving me the bird. What was wrong with hospitals, they made people so mean?

Sitting next to Maya and playing some Candy shit on my phone that Layla had introduced me to on FaceBook, I heard the door open behind me making me sigh and stand up. Ren never wanted Maya alone, but then he never wanted anyone too close to her either; difficult bastard. I walked over to the window and rested against it as I continued to play my game.

“How are we today, honey?” A voice I hadn’t expected said, and I looked up and saw a nurse standing beside Maya smiling. She was gorgeous with her dark hair tied back and boring blue scrubs on. How the hell did she make those look sexy? It was impossible! “My name’s Ebru by the way, and I’m the nurse that’s been taking care of you during the day while you’ve been with us,” she continued, putting her fingers on Maya’s wrist.
 
Had she? I hadn’t seen her, but then Ren was normally here.
 

Dammit, now see, I’d missed out on… “Oh fucking no.” Panic hit me like a wall to the face. This couldn’t be happening; sure I’d wanted it to, but now that I was faced with it I couldn’t take it.
 

Looking up, I saw both of them looking at me, frowning like there was something wrong with me. Why was this my fault?

“You alright, Cole?” Maya croaked.

Backing away from them in the direction of the door, I held my hands out in front of me in case the little witch in the blue scrubs came after me.
 

“No no no,” I knew I must look like an idiot, but come on, this wasn’t meant to happen now. “No way, this is free Willy! No, it’s not happening. Free fucking willy!” I made my point by jabbing my finger in their direction.
 

Did they not know about the United States? It was a free country, the land of the free and my dick was a free man. I may not actively act out my reputation, but I was too young to settle down. I mean, what about Dash? Fucking dog, what did that say about my life?
 

As I shot out the door, I saw the nurse turn red, and Maya looked at me with that look that she gets that I know is going to end up with me in pain. Fuck my life.

Isla

Sitting beside Luke’s bed hearing the machinery beeping and the ventilator whirring beside me, I tried not to cry.
 
His eyes had been taped shut as they’d struggled to get them to stay closed due to the pressure inside his skull and, he just looked so broken lying there.

Laying my head down on his hand I gave into the tears that I’d been trying to hold back;
 
he had to be okay.

I was about to start talking when the curtain around us was pushed back with a mighty force. Kendal stormed up to the bed with mascara down her face.

“Oh my God,” she wailed loudly in the middle of ICU, no doubt disturbing everyone else. Before I could say anything, she literally pushed me away from him as she fell onto his chest causing alarms to go off as she sobbed.
 
A team of nurses and Doctors came running in to help Luke and pulled her off him as they assessed what was wrong.

“The pressure caused the bleed to start again, we need to take him back to the theater,” the Doctor in charge said. They lowered the top of the bed and started wheeling him out in a hurry.

“What’s happening?” It felt like I wasn’t really there and that I was watching this from a distance.

“Miss? Miss!” A petite nurse shook the hysterical Kendal. “Who are you?”

“I’m his girlfriend,” she snapped back with the mascara now dripping off her face. She looked a bit like Alice Cooper mixed with a psycho out of a movie. Then her words hit me.

“That’s impossible!”

“Why are you here?” She sneered at me. “Look, little girl, Luke and I have been together for months now, and we’re getting married. You hanging around him and harassing him all the time isn’t going to work for me.” She’d walked up to me during this time and was pointing at me with a sharp tipped red nail. It actually completed the psycho look.

“That’s impossible,” I repeated. Only two weeks ago we’d been lying in bed, and he’d told me he loved me for the first time.