Finding Our Reality (The Reality Duet #2)

Chapter 31

ELLA

He’s waiting on me when I come out of the restroom. “I’m gonna finish filling up. Grab me a bottle of water?”

“Sure.”

Ry turns to walk out the gas station door, but stops in his tracks. I’m about to ask him what he’s doing when he plants a soft kiss on my temple and smiles.

He’s done everything possible to cheer me up since we left the interview with Caleb. He thinks he’s being sly about it, but he’s not. It’s pretty obvious what he’s doing, and it’s making me fall even more in love with him.

As if that’s possible.

He drove forty minutes out of the way, through Atlanta traffic, to take me to a late lunch at a sandwich spot he read about that has mind-blowing Philly cheesesteak sandwiches. Instead of listening to his normal rock music, he downloaded a new crime podcast and has been patiently listening to that during our drive back home. He’s held my hand, caressed my back, and now, gently kissed my temple.

I grab a bottle of water from the cooler and search for something to drink for myself. I’m completely taken aback when my eyes settle on something familiar—Slayton’s Southern Blackberry Tea. I didn’t even know they still made it. Snatching it up, I quickly pay for the drinks and head back out to the gas pumps. Ry’s leaned against the bed of his truck, pumping gas. Sensing my presence, he turns around. I stop on the sidewalk and hold up my hand, waving the drink around in the air. He flicks the ballcap higher on his head to get a better look. I love it when he does that. Even from here, I can see the arch of his eyebrows.

Laughing, I take a step off the curb when something catches my attention from the corner of my eye. There’s a large SUV with a mom trying to pay for gas at the pump. A young girl, about ten or eleven, is talking to her. It sounds like she’s asking about going to a friend’s house. A little boy, about six or seven, is next to them, trying to interrupt. He’s wanting to go inside the station to get a snack and is asking for money. The mom is trying to listen to them both, but the machine keeps beeping at her, warning her that her credit card isn’t working. Right then, the back passenger-side door opens and a small little boy, about three or four, jumps out of his booster seat. For a split second, he wobbles and then takes off running toward the front door of the gas station.

Running toward me.

The plumber’s van reversing out of the parking spot in front of the store can’t see him.

There’s no way they can see him.

Everything else happens in slow motion. It feels like I’m moving in water, like my limbs aren’t moving as quickly as my brain tells them to. It’s frustrating. It makes me angry. I feel like I’m trying to run a marathon in a dream, drugged and sluggish.

I throw the drinks and my wallet on the ground and race across the asphalt. Panicked and determined. Scared.

I think Ry shouts my name, but I’m not sure.

My arms wrap around the little boy. I feel the air whoosh from his lungs in surprise. I don’t even have time to turn around. I basically jerk his body to the side, placing myself between him and the van, and run sideways, trying to gain clearance from the vehicle. It slams on the brakes and stops right when my foot trips over the curb. I fall flat on my back with the little boy on top of me.

He immediately starts screaming and crying. I sit up, searching his body for injuries. He’s okay.

He’s absolutely perfect.

I lie back down on the sidewalk as everyone rushes to my side.

And I watch in silence as my blood pools against the steaming hot sidewalk.

***

I bite my lip, trying not to laugh. “How much longer can you pace around? You’ve probably walked five miles back and forth across this room.”

Ry grabs his ballcap and turns it around backward on his head. I love it when he does that too. “They should’ve come back by now to check your head.”

“They already told you that I don’t have a concussion. That bump was nothing. I’ve hit my head harder than that on a headboard.”

Wrong time to joke.

He rakes his hand across his stubble. “Do I look amused, Lulu? Shit, I’m covered in your blood.”

I study the blood covering his shirt and pants and then look down at my own clothes. I knew the arm could bleed a lot, but it’s different seeing it in person. I make a mental note to learn more about blood evidence. Some new studies came out recently, and I should really familiarize myself with them.

“What’s that look for? What are you thinking about?”

I shake my head. “Nothing.” I smile, changing subjects. “Hey, look at the bright side. We’re across the Alabama state line, so I don’t have any out-of-state insurance co-pays to worry about.”

Again, he’s not amused.

It’s true, I did bump my head on the sidewalk when I fell, but it wasn’t bad at all. What did hurt was the fact that I fell onto the busted glass from the Slayton’s Southern Blackberry Tea bottle. A large piece of jagged glass sliced my right forearm. That and a scrape on my ankle are my only injuries. More importantly, the little boy is safe and sound.

The hospital has already stitched my wound. The numbing shot and tetanus shot were not pleasant at all. We’re just waiting on the nurse to finish dressing my wound and give me the after-care instructions. And of course, they need to finish my paperwork. They were more concerned with the blood gushing from my arm when I got here than with my Social Security number and employer address.

My arm is propped on a pillow, and I count the nine small stitches. I was really lucky in the fact that a plastic surgeon was working in the hospital tonight. The emergency department doctor called him to do the sutures. My scar should be minimal.

Ry sighs and walks over to the side of the hospital bed. His fingers tenderly graze over mine. He’s washed his hands three times already, but I can still see my blood caked in the corners of his cuticles. “Can you feel that? Is the numbing shot starting to wear off?”

“I feel everything you do,” I whisper.

His eyes dart to mine. That color will captivate me forever. Translucent and green. The eyes I loved to hate every single day for nearly twelve years. The eyes I now want to love. Every. Single. Day. “Tell me something. Something no one else knows.”

He lovingly tucks my hair behind my ear. “I’m so damn proud of what you did today. Saving that kid. You were amazing. I’m also so damn mad at you. What if that van hadn’t stopped when it did? What if…” His voice trails off. He can’t finish his thought. Instead, he leans down and kisses me. Softly and slowly, he pours devotion from his body into mine.

“Ahem.”

Ry quickly pulls away when the nurse makes her presence known. Smirking, he winks at me and heads back over to stand against the wall. “Sorry, ma’am.”

Nurse Dorothy chuckles. “Never say you’re sorry for kissing the one you love. That’s good advice to heed. My forty-third wedding anniversary is tomorrow.” Something about her completely puts me at ease. She reminds me of Harlan.

“Happy anniversary.”

She smiles, patting me on the good arm. “Thanks, hon. What do you say we get this wound dressed, finish this paperwork, and get you lovebirds on the way?”

She runs through everything with us. I have to change the dressing daily, wrap my arm in cellophane and tape to shower, watch for infections, and go somewhere local in fourteen days to get the stiches removed. She tells me the doctor will give me a prescription for pain pills to take as needed, but I politely decline, telling her that addiction runs in my family, and I would prefer to make do with over-the-counter medicine.

“Alright, hon, now time for the fun part. We have to finish this paperwork.” She grabs her electronic tablet and starts typing. She looks over at Ry and then back at me. “Would you like some privacy for this?”

Ry takes a protective step in my direction. “Over my dead body. I’m not leaving her. Ever.”

I snort on a chuckle. “It’s fine. He can stay.”

Dorothy leans forward, pretending to whisper-shout, and jerks her thumb in Ry’s direction. “Is the handsome officer always so serious?”

I scrunch my nose, playing along. “He’s been known to cut loose. Once or twice, that is. He has a thing for the ladies.”

“Lulu!”

By now me and Dorothy are laughing like crazy. Ry opens his mouth to say something, but instead pouts, folding his arms across his broad chest.

We settle down and she runs through all my personal data—name, Social, address, date of birth, and so on and so on. She lifts an eyebrow when I say I’m unmarried and makes a tsking sound in Ry’s direction. I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing. We go through the medical history of my immediate family. Cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.

And then we get to the questions I hate.

The questions I always forget about.

The questions I block from my memory on purpose.

I am screwed. Completely and totally fucked.

Why did I let Ry stay in this room? Why, oh why, oh why?

“Number of children?”

My heart thunders in my chest. “Zero.”

“Number of pregnancies?”

My body breaks out in a cold sweat knowing the answer I’m about to give. “One.”

Ry’s head snaps up in my direction, faster than a bolt of lightning.

In a split second, tension floods the room. All the oxygen is sucked out of the area, leaving me panting and gasping for air.

Dorothy notices something is off. She asks the next question slowly, as if saying the sentence one syllable at a time will magically diffuse the situation. “Number of live births?”

I can’t do this. I can’t do this. Tears spring to my eyes. I bite my lip, trying to keep my untamed reaction buried. Ry’s eyes widen and his mouth falls open. He thinks I had a child with Hudson. He thinks I lied to him, omitted a major fact.

I did lie to him. I omitted a major fact. But he gave me no other choice.

Lifting my face and squaring my shoulders, I firmly answer the question. “One. A daughter. I had an umbilical cord prolapse. She died six hours after her birth.”

“Oh hon, I’m so very sorry you went through that.” Dorothy reaches out and wraps her fingers around mine. “How long ago was it?”

My eyes bore into Ry, drilling a hole directly into his soul. “Eleven years and seven months ago. I was thirty-four weeks pregnant when it happened.”

He stumbles backward, reaching out and gripping the doorframe for support. His eyes dart around the room, mentally counting our time together and our time apart, trying to determine if his first thought was wrong. But he knows he’s right. He knows it’s him. He knows that he’s the father.

After all these years, he knows I was pregnant with his child when he left me. When he turned his back and walked away, I was carrying his baby.

He finally knows.

He coughs, drowning in his own emotions. He grabs the collar of his shirt and yanks on it, like it’s a vise, choking the life from him.

His episode is so disturbing and traumatic to watch, Dorothy stands up. “Officer? Are you okay?”

Spinning on his heels, Ry slams his fist so hard into the wall that a framed picture of the digestive tract falls to the ground and shatters into a million pieces. His bellowed moan is dragged directly from the pits of hell, filled with so much sorrow and pain, I don’t know if he’ll ever be okay. His voice is so broken, I can barely make out the words. “I need some air.”

He walks out the door, leaving me crying on the hospital bed.