By the time they got her in the ambulance and she was warm enough to text anyone, it was too late to ask her plane to wait. It had already departed. Her assistant offered to book another charter plane, but with the way the weather was turning, it might not be until the next day.
She closed her eyes and didn’t bother to answer that text, or any other that came in.
She’d clearly pissed off the universe, and the only thing to do now was hunker down and wait out the storm.
Figuratively and literally.
13
When Josh stalkedthrough the sliding doors of the Emergency Room, he immediately caught sight of Monica, sitting up on a gurney in the hallway.
Sitting up.Fuck, that was a relief. The tension in his chest eased a tiny bit.
And she was making Dani and Matt laugh, because of course she was.
She tried so fucking hard to make everyone like her, and even though they always did it never felt like enough for her.
Even after being in a car accident, she was trying to win people over.
If he could force her to lie down and just rest, he would. But he didn’t have that right, not anymore. Had he ever had that kind of influence over her? He’d thought he had—he’d thought he’d known her inside and out—but that hadn’t been true in the end.
“Hey,” he said gruffly as he came to a stop just short of the little group. The paramedics gave him a familiar nod, but before they could ask why he was there or what he was to Monica—did they already know? Maybe they did—a nurse hustled over to take the input report.
Matt relayed what had happened, and Monica’s symptoms.Headache, possible neck strain, reported dizziness, no period of unconsciousness.For anyone else, Josh would be relieved. It didn’t sound that bad.
But his hands balled into frustrated fists and he had to shove them in his pockets to keep himself from reaching for her.
The nurse turned to Monica. “Can you walk?”
She wiggled her legs. “Yep.”
“All right, let’s go this way.” As Monica carefully slid off the stretcher, the nurse glanced at Josh. “Is he with you?”
He was going to feel real dumb in three, two, one—
“Yes,” Monica said, not quite looking at him. “He is.”
He was grateful that nobody asked why, or what his relationship was to her. It wasn't that he didn't think they should know or maybe already did know, in the case of Matt and Dani, and the Pine Harbour gossip network. It was that he wasn't sure he could hold himself together at the same time as he said out loud,I'm her husband, three words he didn’t deserve to say after demanding she leave his garage.
He’d sent her out into bad weather.
It was his fault she ended up in the ditch.
Seeing Monica's car in the ditch was one of the hardest moments of his life. Realizing that it was her who had driven off the road had clarified some of his feelings.
Not in any kind ofreal changesort of way. Just in the profound,how dare he be mad at herkind of way.
She’d flown across the continent and rented a car to come and tell him some seriously fucked up news to his face.
That took guts.
And he’d responded by telling her to get the fuck out of his town.
Guilt twisted at him, because the direct connection between him yelling at her and then her subsequently getting into an accident couldn’t be ignored.
The nurse got a quick summary of Monica’s injuries—which Josh held his breath through, only exhaling properly when the summary was, “I really do feel okay.”
“We’ll just get the doctor to confirm that. You might not in the morning, dear.”
