Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
He blinked and turned his head, so I released him to battle his heavy feelings on his own. Then I swallowed my own swell of emotion and said, “Want to come to the hospital with me?”
“Uh, yeah. I’d really like that,” he said as he swiped under his eye with an unsteady hand.
“Okay. Let’s go, and while we’re there, I’ll make some calls for you.” As I stood and took a step away from the island, Kenny’s hand landed on my arm.
“Thank you,” he said, staring up at me. “I… just… thank you.”
I nodded. “My part is the easy part.”
And that was the truth. I’d done what I could, and Alex and I would stand by his side in whatever way he needed, but he was in for an uphill battle no one could fight for him.
I sent a plea into the universe, or whoever was listening, to help Kenny turn his life around. We needed something positive to come out of this horrible situation, something.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ALEX
My eyelids weighed at least twenty pounds each, and I could barely lift them, but it felt important. I needed to be awake and conscious of my surroundings.
Why?
Slowly, as I fought to open my heavy eyes, awareness began to seep into my brain. I shifted, and pain shot through my ribs.
Oh shit.
Events began rushing back to me at warp speed.
I’d been waiting for Kenny, and I’d gotten my ass kicked in the worst way. As though the memory of the attack unlocked my nerve pathways, pain came roaring in from all angles. My torso ached so fiercely that every breath burned like a hot poker in my lungs. My head throbbed in time with my pulse, and every inch of my skin felt oversensitive in a fiery way. Ryder was going to flip his shit when I called him. Hopefully, I wouldn’t need to go to the hospital or anything like that.
And where was Kenny?
God, I hope he didn’t show up and end up hurt too. It was that fear and the worry Kenny might have strode into the house and ended up with the same fate as me that had me forcing my eyes open.
I frowned at the stark white walls that greeted me, and even that much movement caused a spike of agony to skitter across my face. This wasn’t my house. It was no longer evening, and I was not on my kitchen floor, where I had gone down.
It took a minute to blink my vision into complete focus, but the first thing I noticed, aside from the fact that I was lying in a bed, was my mother, tipped back in her wheelchair, napping. Something beeped over my head, a familiar sound I’d heard all too often when sitting by my mom’s bedside in the hospital.
Shit.
If I’d been admitted to the hospital, where was Kenny? And where was Ryder? The sudden urge to see my boyfriend slammed into me with so much force I lost my breath. Had he seen me broken and bleeding on my kitchen floor? God, I hoped not.
Hopefully, one day I could look back on the immense effort it took to turn my head right and laugh about it, but today was not that day. I’d had an easier time running miles outside with Ryder in the summer heat than merely turning to the side, but it was well worth the struggle. There, seated beside my bed in a high-backed wooden chair with an open laptop balanced on his legs, slept Ryder. He’d propped his socked feet on the edge of my bed and passed out at some point, probably while trying to slog through homework.
Ryder had dark smudges rimming each eye. His cheeks were scruffier than I’d ever seen him allow. My man enjoyed his face smooth, and his skincare regimen was complicated. If anything was going to make me worry about how long I’d been here and my medical state, it was an unkempt Ryder.
I shifted again, grimacing and grunting as pain accosted me. Either the movement or the sound alerted Ryder, who must have been in the shallowest sleep possible. His eyes flew open, locking with mine. He gasped and, for a moment, froze. We stared at each other until he jolted as though stuck with a cattle prod.
“Alex, oh my God. Alex….” He dropped his feet, and the laptop slid off his legs, clattering to the floor with an awful sound that had me wincing. Ryder didn’t even notice, and why would he? He could easily drop five thousand dollars on a new top-of-the-line MacBook Pro.
He leaned forward, grabbed my hand, and buried his face against my upper arm. Immediately, wetness slid from his eyes to my skin. My jaw dropped as a strangled sob broke from him.
Christ, what had happened? Was I dying?