“Like you know anything about that.”
Kyle twisted his jaw. “Arguing with someone like you is pointless. Just take care of her. She’s not okay. That kind of stress and depression is a serious trigger.”
“Trigger? Trigger for what?” Mike asked, losing his patience.
Kyle stared at him, studying his face. Then he shook his head. “You’re even dumber than I thought.” He scoffed. “You keep saying you know her better than anyone, but you don’t know anything.” He turned, withdrawing to the waiting area. “Just take care of her, Gennaro. She needs it.”
Scene52
Maggie
“Are there a lot out there?” I motioned with my chin toward the hospital main entrance where Mike rolled me via wheelchair. Samantha, Kyle, Amanda, Raoul, and some of my movie crew trailed behind.
“A few,” Mike muttered, helping me with my jacket. “The sooner we get this ex thing straight, the better.”
When the doors slid open, I blinked behind oversized sunglasses at the lights of a hundred cameras. “That’s not a few.”
Samantha stepped ahead. “One at a time, please. Let’s all remember this is a hospital, and Ms. Dawson has been in an accident and needs her rest.” She pointed at a male reporter in a brown suit. “Yes?”
“How badly are you injured?” he asked.
The physical pain was nothing compared to what I felt inside.My soul is bleeding.If only they had a machine to tell me how bad the damage was. “A broken arm and a few bruises. The doctors released me and assured me everything was all right.”
Samantha nodded at another reporter and another. The Kyle-Mike related questions hovered cautiously at first. Lies and half-truths sifted through my mouth whenever needed. All that media coaching I’d been receiving finally came in handy.
Then the blunt questions came.
“Is it official?” A dark-haired female reporter asked. “Are you two together now?”
I raised a brow. “The two of us?”
“You and Mike Gennaro. He’s standing next to you as we speak, while your ex is standing in the back.”
“My ex has a name. Please show him some respect.”
“Apologies. I meant Mr. Burley’s standing in the back,” the reporter amended.
I cleared my throat and took a quick glance at Kyle. His blue eyes were fixed on me, a sad smile on his lips. My gaze shifted back to the reporter. “Mike, like the rest of the amazing people here, came to see his injured friend. As for my…status, I am currently and officially single.”
“But Mike was here before anyone else.”
I shrugged, looking at Mike. “I don’t know about that. But knowing him my whole life, I’d be very surprised if he wasn’t. He’s my best friend.” My voice choked with exhaustion and emotion.
“Why hasn’t either of your parents come to see you?”
My heart squeezed. Mike must have noticed something because he came forward.
“Okay. That’s enough. Thank you,” he announced. “And before you jump to any conclusions, Ms. Dawson, upon my request, has kindly agreed to spend the next couple days at my house to recover, instead of her parents’. They’re out of town on business, and she doesn’t wish to disturb them. We all know how busy Nick and Andrea Dawson can be.” He put on his industry smile and wheeled me through the crowd.
Scene53
Mike
Two days later, despite Mike’s urges, Maggie went back to work. For ten days, she did nothing but that. “I need to make up for the lost time,” she had told him. But Mike knew better. She was drowning herself in work, running from herself and the pain she didn’t want to face.
After long conversations with her doctors—the trauma surgeon and the psychiatrist—they warned him this would happen. She was officially depressed, which meant she’d work, eat, sleep and have sex too much or not at all.
When she thought he wasn’t looking, she cried, and he watched silently from afar, alarmed, Kyle’s words banging in his head; stress and depression could be a serious trigger, but for what? He thought Kyle meant substance abuse, but Maggie hadn’t touched weed or alcohol since. What else could it be?
