It's Always Complicated (Her Billionaires Book 4) (26 page)

“Mike Pine? Mike Pine’s family?” said a voice, a young female doctor approaching, chart in hand.

Darla looked up sharply and got off the phone. “I’ll get Laura,” she told Josie, sprinting down the hall.

“I’m...I’m his family,” Josie said.

The doctor approached just as Laura ran into the room. “I’m his fianc
é
e,” she sputtered, eyes wild. “How is he?”

“Hi. Dr. Druce,” said the young woman, who was shorter than Josie, if that was possible, and who looked like she was at the end of a very long shift. “Mr. Pine suffered a dislocated elbow, a broken wrist, what appears to be a series of muscle strains in his right leg, and a hard-to-count series of abrasions and contusions. We gave him nine stitches total, most along the right knee, and we—”

“What about his breathing? Did his lung collapse?” Laura interrupted.

“No lung collapse, but he does have two fractured ribs.”

“Oh, no,” Laura groaned. “Mike. Poor Mike.”

“Given that he was outside wearing a
t
-shirt and light shorts, and in the same position for so long before being rescued, we need to keep him here overnight. Just to evaluate and make sure pneumonia doesn’t set in. He’s coughing regularly, and we want to observe.”

“Of course. Can I see him now? Please?”

The doctor smiled and reached for Laura’s hand. “He’s been asking for you.”

Laura didn’t even try to hold back her tears. She gave Josie a ragged, haunting look, and then all Josie saw was Laura’s back, her soaked dress stuck to her ribs, hair clinging to her back like the wet fingers of desperation.

Laura

The sight of her big giant of a man all stretched out on a hospital bed, underneath layers of thin cotton blankets, made her stop in the doorway and cling to the frame for a moment, her legs going weak. His eyes were closed and his face was red and swollen with small and large scrapes, the blood still so fresh the thin lines that cut his skin were swollen and angry. New scabs hadn’t even had the chance to form.

He looked like he was covered with tiny criss-crosses of scrapes, and for a guy who basically flew and then rolled a hundred times down a cliff, he looked better than you’d expect.

“Laura?” he asked.

Dr. Druce nodded, urging her forward, and she moved like she was walking on stilts, like a kid with strings and coffee cans, lurching and uncoordinated, her heart in a lonely cage as she let relief finally seep in.

He was going to be okay.

His hand was under the blanket, so she rested the edge of her butt on the bed and stroked his wet hair from his forehead. Mike smiled, a boyish grin making him look just enough like their little ones that she burst into a choking sob.

“I look that bad?”

“You look that good,” she said with a whimper. “I’m so sorry.”

His good hand rose up from under the covers, groping blindly for her. He kept his eyes closed and she clasped his hand. Cold. His fingers were icicles, and the shock made her stiffen. Mike was never cold.

“What happened out there?”

“Do I have to tell it again?” he rasped. Laura felt his hand warm in hers. She covered his with both of hers and began to rub slowly.

“No. You can just rest. I’ll hear the story later.”

He coughed and winced.

“Broken ribs feel about as shitty as you’d imagine,” Mike said.

Laura couldn’t speak. She felt the tears crest and roll, crest and roll, dropping onto the white cotton blanket, absorbed and disappearing as if they never happened at all.

She inhaled and exhaled, comforted by the sound of his breath, of knowing his heart was here, pumping blood throughout the man she never, ever wanted to hurt.

Yet had.

“I am so sorry, Mike. I never meant to do this to you.”

“So you were the one who gave me that big shove off the cliff?” He gave her a look. She knew it well. He was trying not to roll his eyes. Why did he look so much like Josie suddenly?

“I’m trying to apologize.”

“And I’m telling you that it’s not necessary. If anyone should apologize, it’s my parents.”

“Your parents?”

“They’re the ones who rudely showed up without ever replying to you.”

“But I’m the one who invited them without asking you.”

“That’s a separate issue, Laura.” He frowned. “I had a lot of time lying on that shore for hours, watching the sun fade, wondering how I was going to move and get back to you, Dylan, and the kids. What you did was borne of love.”

“Mike—”

“What my parents did came from a need to control.”

A shout down the hallway made them both look at the door.

“He’s my son and I’ll go visit him if I want to. You can’t stop me!” boomed a loud, older man’s voice.

“Case in point,” Mike muttered.

If he was upset, he didn’t show it. Laura’s body reacted to the bellowing before her mind could respond. Flushed with a calming anger that should have agitated her, she turned to the doorway, knowing exactly what she would see before he appeared.

And knowing damn well what she had to do next.

Mike ran away because his parents had appeared out of nowhere, exerting a kind of insidious control that made him feel like all he could do was get out—get away—to feel truly human.

Unable to flee, Mike was stuck in that bed, forced to face his parents.

But she’d be damned if that was about to happen.

“Where is my son?” Mike’s dad yelled as he lumbered in, Mary at his heels, the two of them followed by the shift nurse and the doctor who had just helped Laura into the room.

“You can’t just storm in here like this,” Dr. Druce announced, her voice all steel and authority.

“And you can’t—” Mike’s dad started to shout, but Laura cut him off, taking a long, deep breath to do it.

“Leave,” she said in a low voice, her lips wide and mouth opening with a primal movement that reminded her of childbirth, when she’d been coached to keep her voice low to preserve energy.

This was the voice her grandfather had taught her to use when training a puppy. High voices sound like packmates to small animals. And that high voice signals to animals that they don’t need to respect the animal at the end of it.

Big Mike’s eyes snapped away from Dr. Druce, burning into Laura’s face, but she held steady, moving her body between Mike’s parents and her partner, who gripped her hand and kept his eyes closed.

“Leave now.”

“I will not,” Mary said, her voice shrill.

“I’ll call security,” Dr. Druce said, giving Laura
a
look that said she had decision-making authority here.

“We’re his next of kin,” Big Mike said in a derisive tone.

“No,” said another man’s voice from the hallway. “You’re not.”

Dylan.

Laura’s face flooded with heat again, only this time it came with an impish grin, a wholly inappropriate reaction to the words she knew Dylan was about to unleash.

“What do you mean?” Big Mike growled.

“You. Are. Not. Mike’s. Next. Of. Kin,” Dylan said slowly, walking into the room like the head of a pack. “I am. I am his legal husband, and therefore,
I
am his next of kin.”

Mary’s eyes widened as she blinked so hard Laura expected all of her eyelashes to float to the ground like molting feathers. Big Mike’s chest deflated, like a balloon vendor leaking helium out of a spent tank.

“And even if he wasn’t my legal husband, I’m still alive over here. Sentient. I have ears that work and I can hear you all talking about me like I’m a vegetable,” Mike added from the bed, his voice flat. There was no anger. No sarcasm. He was just stating facts.

“He’s right,” Big Mike said simply. There was no expected bite to his words.

“That’s true,” Mary agreed, frowning.

With that simple truth, Dylan shut them down.

And made Laura burst into sudden, all-consuming tears.

Oddly enough, Mary was the first to comfort her, smelling like rosewater and lotion. “Oh, dear, it’s okay. Mikey will be fine. He’s just nervous that way. Always was a runner. I remember when he was just four years old and got mad after Big Mike gave him a wh
up
ping for letting the chickens out of the coop, and Mikey ran five miles. The postman found him out on a rural route in the next county,” she said with a giggle, her fingers smooth like parchment against Laura’s forearm. She babbled when nervous, Laura thought, but she couldn’t make sense of anything more as the tears took over.

“Why are you crying?” Dylan asked in a hushed voice.

“Because I’ll never be Mike’s legal husband!” Laura wailed.

Mary’s hand froze.

“Like you,” Laura added, curling into Dylan’s side, burying her face in him.

Dr. Druce frowned and walked past Laura, checking on Mike’s chart. “Is there more to this than meets the eye?”

Laura gave her an eye roll that didn’t make the doctor flinch, but should have.

“We’re a threesome,” she declared, her voice loud and shaking. “And we’re supposed to get married tomorrow. But two years ago, Mike and Dylan got legally married to protect the custody of our kids.”

Mary and Big Mike gave her incredulous looks, Mary dropping her hand from Laura as Dylan moved closer, his arm around her like a barrier.

“I had a relative who thought his morality trumped my sense of judgment,” she continued, eyes zeroing in on Big Mike. “He made veiled threats about trying to get his hands on Jillian. That was unacceptable. Because I can’t legally marry two men, we did the next best thing.”

“You had the men marry each other,” Dr. Druce said with an appreciative sigh.

Laura broke eye contact with Big Mike and looked at the woman. “Yes. It was the only way to protect Jillian in case something happened to me.”

“Which isn’t going to happen,” Dylan soothed.

Laura broke away from him and pointed at Mike, in the hospital bed, hooked up to tubes and sensors. “Really? Because no one could have predicted this.”

“I did.” Mary’s voice shocked Mike enough that he flinched in bed, then groaned from moving his broken arm. “That’s why we didn’t RSVP,” she continued, her voice shaking, but not quite like Laura’s. The timid little old woman had a tremor in her tone.

It was anger.

“We didn’t RSVP,” she continued, “because we scared Mike off all those years ago. You scared him off,” she added, the word flung at her husband. She looked at Dylan, eyes blazing. “And you stopped them from hurting each other by inserting yourself between them.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt Pa,” Mike interjected.

Dr. Druce shushed him.

Laura gaped at Mary.

“No, you weren’t. Not with fists. But he damn sure was going to hurt you.”

“Now, Mary,” Big Mike said in a voice filled with gravel and regret. “The past is the past.”

Laura, Mike, Dylan, and Dr. Druce all managed inelegant snorts of varying frequencies.

Big Mike startled, anger in the muscles of his face, and then it relaxed as he closed his eyes.

“See?” Mary said reproachfully.”I’ve spent more than a decade away from my boy because we followed the wrong rules in our hearts. We thought we would guide him to a better place by withdrawing our love. Make him come back to his senses. Just look at all the love he went out and found for himself without us.”

“I still don’t think it’s right,” Big Mike said, but the gumption was gone. “But maybe I was wrong all those years ago.” Laura watched the old man struggle, tearing the baseball cap off his h
ead
and twisting it in gnarled, nervous hands. “But a man can’t just give up a whole life of morality suddenly on a dime.”

“You were able to give up your son,” Dylan said, reaching to the bed to rest one hand on Mike’s shoulder. “Why was that so much easier?”

“None of this was easy,” Big Mike said with a scowl. “Not one damned bit.”

“Mike!” Mary chided.

“I’ll say
damned
if I want to, Mary.”

Laura watched as if she were viewing a documentary of some ethnic group from a far-off land. Mike came from this? These were people who loved him, but somewhere along the way had been convinced—or had convinced themselves—that there was only one version of Mike. And that version was the one they’d projected onto him, and if he wasn’t that exact person, then they couldn’t have him in their life at all.

A deep sadness seeped into her bones. She couldn’t fathom rejecting Jillian or Aaron or Adam. Ever. Not for loving a consenting adult—or more than one—in a way that was out of the norm.

“I’m not going to stand here and try to explain the past,” Big Mike continued. “And we could rehash it and just get more angry at each other. Your Ma got that letter from Laura and cried and cried for weeks.
Weeks.
I wanted to burn that piece of paper. It made old wounds rip open.” Big Mike’s red-rimmed eyes, rheumy and guarded, met hers. “But thank you.”

“Thank you?” Laura peeped.

“Thank you, because—” Big Mike was seized by a wracking cough that made Mary rush to his side, one hand on his back, the other on his shoulder, as he reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a handkerchief, coughing into it. The spell lasted longer than it should in a healthy person, and a dawning creep began in Laura’s stomach.

They weren’t here just to cause trouble, or just to reconnect because of the wedding.

“I need to talk to my parents alone,” Mike announced. Dr. Druce gave Dylan and Laura appraising looks. Both nodded, and Laura kissed Mike on the forehead.

“Stay outside in the hall,” he whispered, eyes still closed. She squeezed his hand and Dylan, Laura, and the doctor filed out.

Big Mike began coughing again. Dr. Druce turned back and said, “Mr. Pine, why don’t we get you some hot tea with lemon and honey,” cool
l
y reaching for the big man’s elbow, guiding him out with a kind of smoothness that made Laura appreciate the bedside manner.

And with that, they left Mike alone with Mary.

Laura hoped she was doing the right thing. The last time she tried to do the right thing with Mike, well...

Look what happened.

Mike Pine

“Your father had a heart attack two months ago,” Ma whispered, her eyes focused on the horizon through the window outside, her shoulders squared. He wondered what she saw in the dark, inky night. His heart pounded in time to the throbbing pain of every bruise, each cut, all the scrapes. It soothed him, oddly enough.