“Justin,” she said, crying. But then the van was closed and we were moving. I heard paramedics call out my vitals, but I don’t remember ending up in the hospital. I just remember a lot of darkness, soft and warm, welcoming.
Chapter 22 - Grace
The police came in the nick of time. A moment later and Justin would have been dead. Evelyn and I had been watching through the window, saw the big hit man train his gun on Justin, and there had been nothing we could do but cry and grab onto each other.
If we ran out, the guy was going to shoot at us. It didn’t take much to know that.
The ranch owner had phoned the police when they’d heard gun shots. They’d seen Elijah’s car come by and known there was trouble – they didn’t know the car and they saw him dropping off the big guy by a clump of trees before he drove to the cottage.
The police still aren’t sure how they managed to find us, but they think the big guy, who turned out to be a wanted convict named Kyle Waterson, had tabs on everything that was happening.
The thought that someone had been following us, with intentions to kill Justin, left me cold.
The police had taped off the cottage and immediate garden. Elijah was beaten up, bleeding from his nose, a split lip and an eye that was going to be black in a couple of hours. But he swore at the policemen when they rushed to him to cuff him.
They’d shot him in the leg and he was wildly unhappy about it.
When they’d taken Justin away, Evelyn and I sat huddled under a blanket on the porch. We were both freezing, even though it was middle of the summer. We watched the police clear up the crime scene. Kyle was taken away immediately. Elijah was patched up first and then he was taken away too.
And finally, a plainclothes officer came to us with a notebook. He took our statements. I hated it. I didn’t want to replay what had happened word for word, but I did.
“I’d like to lay a charge for domestic abuse,” I said after we’d told him everything.
“I’ll add that to the list. He’s already going to be charged for assault, attempted murder, resisting arrest and assisting attempted murder.”
It sounded terrible. It was hard to think that the man I thought I knew so well turned out to be such a criminal.
“Are you going to search his house?” I asked.
“We have no reason to do it just yet, although we do believe he’s under the influence of something. As soon as we get the blood test results we’ll know.”
“Search his office, when you do,” I said. “I don’t know what he’s hiding, but it’s what started all this.”
The office nodded and made a note. A paramedic looked us both over but we suffered from shock and trauma, nothing else. We were lucky, they said.
And I really believed we were.
I’d seen more of the hospital in the last couple of weeks than I ever wanted to see in a lifetime. The irony didn’t pass me by. It was like after everything, we’d come full circle. Justin was asleep for days. The nurses said that it wasn’t a coma, just much-needed sleep, but it always seemed like every time I was there, he just wasn’t.
I sat next to his bed. I watched the steady rise and fall of his chest and told myself it was a good thing that he was stable. He looked terrible. He had a hard strip of padded plastic across his nose. He would always have a kink in his nose, the doctor had said, but other than that he would be okay.
The skin around his nose and his eyes had gone a purple-black, both eyes darkened from the break. His lip was split down the middle and dried in a dark red line, and the side of his jaw was an angry purple and swollen.
I wondered if this was what I’d looked like when I’d woken up in the hospital. I knew now that my bruises and injuries, besides the lump on my head, weren’t from the accident. It had been Elijah, but it was easy for him to chalk it up to the accident after I was brought into the hospital.
In a lot of ways, the accident was convenient for him. Yes, it was sad that I’d woken up not remembering that he and I were together. But because of that, I’d also not remembered everything that had happened. Everything he’d done to me.
I had a lot of time to think, sitting next to Justin’s bed, waiting for the time to pass so that he would finally open his eyes.
There were thoughts and feelings I’d had at the beginning, when I’d just woken up in the hospital that made more sense now. Like the fear I’d had of Elijah, my inability to trust him, even though it just didn’t make sense. I replayed everything that had been said, and looked at it in a different way, started seeing underlying things that had really been said but I’d missed it.
I kept thinking about the past, kept replaying everything in my mind that had already happened, because it was easier than looking toward the future. It was all the opposite of what it used to be.
When I’d woken up in the hospital with a big gap in my life, a black hole where the most important decision of my life had been swallowed, the future was all I could look to.
Now I avoided it and kept looking back because the truth was I just didn’t know where I was headed anymore. Where was I going to go? My career was over at Magna Solutions. It didn’t take a lot to figure that one out. With Elijah in jail – or heading towards it, at least – I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to the company. But I was sure of it that my job there was done. If I didn’t quit first, which seemed like the logical thing to do, then Elijah would make sure that I was fired.
And what was his favorite line? Make sure that I never worked in this country again.
I took a deep breath and blew it out with a shudder.
When Justin woke up, I didn’t know if he would still want me. If any of this would change what he thought of me. I’d done a lot of wrong things during our relationship. Elijah had hurt me, but I was really the villain most of the time, leading two guys on because I just couldn’t make up my mind.
And now that I’d decided, there was a chance that he wouldn’t want me at all. And I was going to be in this world alone, with no career lined up and no one to love me despite my lack of independence. It wasn’t just depressing, it was heartbreaking.
I moved out of the mansion. I wasn’t going to get an apartment, I probably wasn’t going to be staying in Fort Atkinson. I moved into Shonda’s place. I should have done this from the start. Shonda travelled a lot for work, and her place was empty most of the time.
Maybe the idea of being left alone for so long had scared me. Or maybe it was just the fact that I still hadn’t been able to choose who I was going to be with. And being without a man sounded worse than being with someone that scared me. Even if I didn’t know why.
She’d been terrified of Elijah when he’d gone there looking for me. It was the face of a tyrant, she’d told me. Apparently he’d barged into her place and scared her half to death, threatening to hurt her if he found out that she was hiding me.
Why had it taken an abusive maniac to help me make up my mind, when the perfect guy had been waiting and willing for so long? There were so many stories about women that didn’t take the guy they could have, but instead ended up with the jerk. I hated the fact that I was now in that group.
Evelyn came to visit me four days later. I was alone at Shonda’s place, and when I heard the car in the driveway I assumed it was Shonda coming home. The knock on the door made me jump. My heart beat in my throat and for some reason I was scared it was Elijah, out to get me.
But he was behind bars. He’d been denied bail, and he was going to stay locked up until his trail.
I walked to the door and opened it, and Evelyn stood on the porch looking like she might be intruding.
“Come in,” I said and stepped aside. She walked into the house and stayed just inside the door, like she was nervous to be there at all.
“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” she said.
“I’m doing alright, considering. It’s much better than it was before. I remember everything, and even though what happened was rough, it’s better knowing why I struggled.”
Evelyn nodded. When I’d run to her after leaving Elijah, I’d told her everything. I’d needed someone to listen to me. I needed to be able to get it all off my chest.
“What are your plans now?” she asked before I could return the question and ask after her well-being.
I shrugged. “I have no idea. I want to stay until Justin wakes up, and then I guess it’s finding a new job. The joys of relocation and all that.”
She frowned. “So you don’t want to be with him anymore?”
I looked down, tried to force away the lump that had risen in my throat. My eyes burned with tears but damned if I was going to cry now, after everything had happened and I’d been strong enough to get through it.
“I want to be with him, but to be honest I’ve hurt him more than enough. Don’t you think?”
I sighed, turned around and sat down on the couch. Evelyn followed my example and sat down opposite me.
“Do you love him?”
I didn’t answer her straight away. I looked down at my hands, inspected the way the curve led from my thumb to my forefinger.