Chapter Eighteen
“You’re one popular lady.” The night nurse peeked into Cait’s hospital room. The hospital she was staying at had a twenty-four hour visitor policy, and she could hear her family outside. Fortunately, she was still awake.
She’d passed out after she crashed and had only come around in the last hour. She was wearing a neck brace, and her chest ached every time she took a breath.
“Cait, are you all right?” Her mother said, being the first to enter. Her dad, two sisters, two almost brother-in-laws, three brothers, one sister-in-law, and the two female elves her two single brothers picked up at the Lighting Festival crowded into the room.
She craned her stiff neck to see if Brian was hanging at the back in his usual position, but there was no thatch of carrot red hair visible.
Did he not know? Wouldn’t the police have contacted him because, like it or not, he was her next-of-kin?
Her family settled around her with expressions of concern and love while questions volleyed and lobbed across the room like popcorn over an open fire.
“What happened?”
“Why were you driving Brian’s car?”
“He said something about two dogs, where are they?”
“Are you in pain?”
“What does the doctor say?”
Melisa made her way to the front of the horde, holding a bouquet of flowers. “Here, these are for you.”
She set the flowers on the tray table in front of Cait—a combination of pale pink roses and lavender lilies with pretty pink and purple snapdragons, the exact type of flowers that matched her baby sister, who was a kindergarten teacher.
“Thanks,” Cait said as tears snuck around the corners of her eyes. “You don’t have to share your flowers with me. I’ll be okay. It’s nothing serious. The doctor says I have a concussion, a strained neck, and a few bruised ribs.”
She was also rolling in self-pity because, boohoo, Brian wasn’t there to hold her hand—not that he ever was.
Nothing had changed, despite the heart-to-heart they’d had earlier in the cabin. For him, it was an exchange of information, and nothing she’d said had touched his heart. If what Mrs. Thornton suspected about Brian were true, it wasn’t his fault.
Were people with Asperger’s syndrome capable of being in love? If not, it would be terribly unfair of her to ask him to try. It would be as if he’d asked her to climb into burning buildings.
She should be grateful her family loved her and had dropped everything to be with her. Her neck was held stiff with the cervical collar, so it was hard for her to look everyone in the eye. “Thanks for coming to see me. It means a lot to me. Thanks for the flowers, too.”
“Don’t thank us,” Jenna said, arranging the flowers on the tray table. She was the fashion designer, and before she met Larry, she had a trail of hotshot men sending her flowers and gifts. Jenna plucked the card from the plastic prongs. “Open it. You’ll be surprised.”
“They’re so not your style,” Cait said, wincing as she tried to roll her eyes. She must really have been knocked up good, what with the airbags punching her, and the final jolting thud when the car landed on the bottom of a ravine—not that she remembered a thing. Brian’s Outback was totaled, and the nurses had told her it was a miracle she’d survived.
“They’re not exactly your style either, but Brian picked them for you. Sorry, we read the card,” Nadine cut in. She sat in a chair next to the bed and patted Cait’s hand. “He wanted to surprise you. You should have seen how his face fell when we told him you weren’t home.”
“Brian? For me?” Cait reached for the card. “Why isn’t he here? Did something happen to him?”
Connor stepped forward. “He had to speak to the sheriff at Colson’s Corner.”
“Why? Is he in some kind of trouble?” Cait jerked her neck his direction, causing a jolt of pain. “The police wanted to see me, but the doctors said I wasn’t up to being questioned.”
“Tell us what happened,” her brother, Grady, said. “Did someone try to run you off the road? How did you lose control of the car?”
“I don’t remember,” Cait said. “They said I was going too fast.”
“But you never go too fast,” Jenna said. “You’re the slowest driver in California. People pass you all the time, giving you dirty looks.”
“Maybe someone was tailgating her,” Grady said. “Forcing her to go faster.”
Cait’s head ached at the glimpses of the horrible scene. “I’m trying to remember.”
