“Saturday.”
“Good.” He flashes a light in her eyes to check for a concussion, which there is no doubt she has. “Does your head hurt?”
“You could say that.”
“On a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst, how bad does it feel?”
“Like I just fell off the side of a cliff and landed on my head, bad.”
Even in the most serious of times, there are no simple answers where this woman is concerned.
Noah chuckles and turns to the woman who had so kindly been waiting at Daisy’s side. “Do you know how long she was unconscious?”
“About two minutes.”
Fuck.
I’m glad Noah is in control because I’m a fucked-up mess. “Daisy, does anything else hurt?” he asks.
“My ankle doesn’t feel so great.”
Cynthia, an EMT who rides with the fire team, is looking at her leg when Daisy tugs on the hand I’m still holding. “Do not call my family or the girls.”
“Dais, they would kill me if they?—”
“No,” she interrupts me. “Not yet. Promise me?”
There’s no way I could deny her anything right now. I would go to war for her is she asked me to. “I promise. But I’m not leaving your side.”
She gives me the smallest of nods and another squeeze of my hand.
Deputy Norris from the county steps in to ask questions. “Are you here by yourself or is there someone here with you?”
She tries to turn her head, but we all urge her to stop as soon as she does. We can’t be too careful about neck injuries until we know more about her condition. “Uh, I was here with a guy named Wesley. Is he not here?”
Nobody steps forward, but the slim blonde woman who helped her and apparently called 9-1-1 motions to the officer. Turning their backs on the rest of us, they talk quietly. When Norris steps out of earshot and speaks into his radio, I know in my bones that if I ever meet Wesley, I’ll kill him.
The officer returns and asks her more questions about Wesley and if she remembers what happened when she fell. She remembers nothing but thinks she must have twisted her ankle. The look on the face of the woman I now know as Kristel reveals that Daisy’s assumption is far from correct.
The first responders carefully strap Daisy to a gurney and volley between calmly assuring her she’s going to be fine and firing off more questions about her date. Even through my worry over Daisy, I etch his name, his description, the car he was driving, and every detail shared about the asshole who fled the scene into my memory bank.
The bastard didn’t even stick around to make sure she was okay.
He’s a piece of shit.
It kills me not to go in the ambulance with her, but I’ve got my patrol car and can’t leave it. I promise to follow right behind her, and when the ambulance doors close and she can’t see me, I lean forward with my hands on my knees and take steadying breaths.
I’m grateful she’s okay. At the same time scared shitless, because this overwhelming pressure on my chest only proves one thing.
I can’t live without her.
Chapter Twenty
Daisy
If it weren’t for the headache intensified by the awful overhead fluorescent lights, I would say it feels like I’m floating outside of my body. But there is too much pain keeping me grounded to the earth.
I have no idea what happened. One minute I was walking down the trail with Wesley, and the next I was waking up to a stranger holding my hand.
