Beyond 10 Nights (34 page)

“Get the fuck away from the door,
Alex, now!” Rhett was done; getting Leah home so he could talk to sense into
her, without everyone else around confusing her, was his number one priority.
It was clear to him that they had all lost their minds and he wasn’t about to
let Leah be suckered into their insanity, not if he could help it.

“Rhett, you really need to calm
down,” David told his friend, astonished by the change in him; he had never
seen Rhett behave the way he was before. “Take a deep breath and relax; if you
can’t do that then you should leave, alone, before you do or say something
you’ll regret.”

“Fuck you, David! Do you really
think I’m going to leave her here with you idiots?” Shaking his head, he let go
of Leah and grabbed Alex by the front of his shirt. “She is not going to be
your animal, Alex, no fucking way! You’ve lost your mind if you think I’m going
to let you use her the way those ponies out at the Ranch are used. What you do
out there is wrong, and sick. I’ll fucking kill you before I let you treat her
like one of those delusional idiots out there.”

Grabbing his friend’s hand, Alex
pried it loose from his shirt and pushed him back. “You’re the one who's lost
his mind, Rhett. Do you really think you can threaten me? I suggest you leave,
before this goes any further.” He turned to Leah then. “I’m sorry things have
ended up this way, perhaps you and Janie should go home; we can discuss things
further tomorrow, when everyone has had a chance to calm down.”

Leah couldn’t believe what a jerk Rhett
was being. She knew he had threatened Alex on the phone, but for him to do it
again, face to face, and in front of other people, it was just crazy. “You’re
right, Alex,” she said. “I’ll stop by the hotel in the morning so we can talk.”

“No way are you are you seeing him
tomorrow, Leah, you can’t go near him again. He’s sick.”

“Go to hell, Rhett, I’ll do what I
want.”

Leah moved away from him toward the
door, but all Rhett saw was that she was leaving him for Alex, and he wasn’t
about to let that happen. Reaching out, he grabbed her by the arm again and
pulled her back, doing so with enough force to make her stumble and fall
against him.

Amazed by what his friend was doing,
Alex moved forward to help Leah, only to be further stunned when Rhett threw Leah
aside and swung at him. The move caught him by surprise and he wasn’t able to
react, to dodge or block the blow, before it struck him on the side of the jaw.

Alex stumbled back against the door,
dimly aware of a crashing sound as he shook his head, trying to clear it of the
dizziness the blow had left him with. He was still trying to recover when a
second blow from Rhett, this time to the gut, doubled him over.

He managed to raise his arm in time
to block the third blow, which would have taken him on the jaw, and retaliated,
driving his fist into his friend’s stomach. While he was bent, gasping for
breath, Alex shoved Rhett back, wanting to give himself space.

“You sonofabitch, I’ll fucking kill
you,” Rhett yelled, launching himself at Alex.

David couldn’t believe a fight was
happening in his home, especially between two people who were supposed to be
friends; it simply wasn’t real, and he moved to separate the two of them.
Knowing that Rhett was causing the trouble, David grabbed his arm as he pulled it
back to take another swing at Alex.

David and Rhett began wrestling, and
Alex tried to help David subdue the raging Rhett, who was easily the strongest
of the three, when a scream froze them.

As one they turned to see that it
was Janie who had screamed, and that she was kneeling over Leah, who was on the
floor, unmoving, amid the shattered remains of the glass coffee table.

Alex was the first to react to the
sight of Leah’s motionless form, and the dark stain, which could only be blood,
on the carpet beneath her head. “David, call an ambulance,” he ordered as he
rushed across the room to kneel at her side. “Leah, honey, wake up.” He was
almost too scared to reach out and check for a pulse. “Get the fuck away from
her, Rhett,” he snarled when the other man tried to join him at her side.
“You’ve done enough damage.”

“Fuck you, this is all your fault,
you sick freak!” Rhett declared, dragging Alex away from Leah’s prone form.

Alex rolled and twisted to break
free and sprang to his feet. They faced off across from one another for a
moment, oblivious to David and Janie as they called for an ambulance and the
police, and tried to wake Leah.

Rhett was the first to throw a
punch, which Alex blocked, as he did the next attempted blow, and the third.
Rhett’s frustration grew as his blows were blocked, he wanted to pummel Alex,
to pound him into the floor; nothing less would satisfy him. Pretending to
throw another blow, Rhett grabbed Alex’s wrist when he went to block his fist.

Using all of his strength, Rhett
swung his friend, letting go of him so he flew into the wall. He was on him
instantly, driving his fist into Alex’s kidney and making him cry out in pain.
A second blow to the same spot elicited an even louder cry of pain and Alex
swung his elbow wildly.

Rhett swayed back away from Alex’s
elbow and spun his friend round, slamming him against the wall. A fist to the
gut doubled Alex up, and Rhett followed it with an uppercut and a left hook in
quick succession, which broke Alex’s nose and sprayed blood across the wall
behind him.

As satisfying as it was to draw
blood from his friend, it wasn’t enough, and Rhett punched him again, finishing
the job he had started of destroying Alex’s nose. The blow rocked Alex’s head
back, knocking it into the wall behind him and blood flowed from the smashed
nose to stain the lower half of his face.

A left to the stomach doubled Alex
up once more and Rhett brought his right down on the side of his face, using
all of his strength to drive him to the floor.

Dazed by pain, and the blows to his
head, Alex tried to fight off his friend as Rhett used his superior weight to
hold him down as he rained blow after blow on him. A sharp cracking sound
followed one particularly strong blow, leaving Alex sure at least one of his
ribs had just been broken, if not worse, and he cried out in pain. His cry was
cut off as a fresh blow struck him on the side of the head and everything went
black.

Though his friend lay unmoving,
Rhett continued to pound his fists into him, his blows landing wherever he
could reach. It wasn’t until he was dragged away by David that he stopped, even
then his anger was not sated and he reacted to the hand on his shoulder by
swinging a fist at his partner.

David blocked the blow that was
aimed at him and shoved his friend away forcefully, aiming him toward the
doorway so he could get him out of the way. Keeping a careful eye on his friend
and partner, David was ready when Rhett caught himself on the doorway to stop
his momentum, and then launched himself back into the room.

David used his friend’s momentum
against him, twisting and tripping him so he fell to the floor. In an instant
he was on him, using his weight to hold Rhett down, while he grabbed him by his
hair and lifted his head. “Look!” he told his partner. “Look,” he commanded,
pointing his friend’s face at Leah’s still form. “Look at what you did because
you can’t control your temper.”

“Oh god!” Rhett sobbed, seeing Leah,
and the bloodstain beneath her head. “Oh god! What have I done.”

Seeing that he no longer needed to
be restrained David released his friend and moved to check on Alex, who was as
unmoving as Leah. The discovery of a pulse reassured David that Alex was in no
immediate physical danger, but it was a great relief to him to hear the sound
of approaching sirens.

Soon enough the doorbell rang,
announcing the arrival of the paramedics, and the police. Janie, who had
recovered from her shock and distress, scrambled to her feet so she could dart
from the room to open the front door. Speaking rapidly, she explained the
situation to the police as she led them and the paramedics into the living
room.

While the paramedics split, so they
could check over both Leah and Alex and determine which one was the more
critical patient, the police officers listened to Janie’s rapid-fire
explanation of what had happened. Once they had listened to Janie’s report, the
two officers turned their attention to Rhett, who was still on the floor,
though he had risen to his knees, his eyes not straying from Leah.

“Sir?” The senior of the two police
officers approached cautiously, one hand on his gun in case the man was going
to turn violent again. “Can you tell me what happened here?”

“It’s all my fault.” Was all Rhett
would say, repeating it over and over, oblivious to the presence of the police,
despite their efforts to question him.

After several minutes, during which
he got no response from the man before him, the senior officer took out his
handcuffs. “Mr. Hammond, I am arresting you for assault…” he reeled off the
Miranda rights both he and his partner had memorized as he secured Rhett’s
wrists behind him.

While Rhett was taken away by the
two officers, Leah and Alex were loaded onto gurneys and placed in the rear of
the ambulance. Janie and David followed behind in David’s car as it sped toward
the hospital, hoping that both Leah and Alex would prove to be okay, and their
injuries more minor than they appeared to be.

19

Healing

When Leah woke she felt as though
her head had been slammed into a wall. Groaning softly, she forced her eyes
open slowly, confused by her surroundings. “Where am I?” she asked, her voice
barely above a whisper, though it sounded like a shout to her.

What little she could see told her
she was in a hospital room, but she had no idea why she was there, or how she
had ended up there.

“You’re fine, honey,” Janie cooed,
rising from the chair where she had been sitting alongside the bed so she could
pat her friend’s hand, like she was a small child. “The doc says you have a
small concussion, and a few nasty cuts from the glass, but you should be able
to go home tomorrow.”

“I’m so sorry this happened, Leah.”
Alex lifted her other hand, being careful not to dislodge the I.V. that was
taped in place there.

Images flooded Leah’s mind, making her
head throb and she whimpered as she remembered what had happened. “It wasn’t
your fault,” she told him. Looking up at him she saw the tape covering his
broken nose and the darkened eyes that had resulted from it, as well as the
bruise on his jaw, and tried to sit and reach a hand up to him.

Alex let go of Leah’s hand so he
could gently push her back down on the bed. “The physician said you should
remain still, love,” he told her with a sad smile as he reached for the button
to call the nurse. He wasn’t just angry with Rhett over what had happened he
was angry with himself. He knew he should never have let things get to the
point they had, not when he had seen how angry his friend was becoming.

 “Where’s Rhett?” Leah asked,
laying still, not just because she was supposed to, but because the effort to
sit had sent pain shooting through her head, leaving her with the desire to
stay as still as possible.

Alex didn’t want to upset her any
more than she already was and looked to Janie. No matter how the night ended,
he knew that she had serious feelings for Rhett, and he wasn’t cruel enough to
blurt out the truth, even though he felt his friend was exactly where he
deserved to be just then.

“He’s in jail, honey,” Janie told
her. She didn’t feel good about having to share such news with her friend,
despite her private feelings about the man, but her friend deserved to know the
truth. “He admitted to causing your accident and assaulting Alex, he's in jail
until he has been arraigned.” As far as she was concerned he could rot in there
after what he had done; she had been terrified when she saw her friend unmoving
and bleeding from a head wound.

“We have to get him out of there,”
Leah said softly. Even seeing Alex’s injuries she didn’t believe Rhett deserved
to spend time in jail, after all, he had just been trying to do what he thought
was best for her.

“After what he’s done, I think a few
nights in jail might be good for him,” Janie said, unable to keep her opinion
to herself.

“Janie, if you guys won’t help, I’ll
get out of this bed and go down there myself,” Leah declared. What he had done
might well have been wrong, and extreme, but the thought of him sitting in
jail, even for a while, appalled her, all the more so because she knew she was
the cause of all the trouble.

“David is there now, honey, so don’t
you worry about any of this.” Alex held a similar opinion to Janie, that a few
days cooling off in a jail cell would be good for Rhett, it might even be best
if he stayed there until he was tried, he thought, but he didn’t say that. He
had come to learn just how tender Leah’s feelings were, and he had no intention
of upsetting her if it could be avoided.

“I’m sure David is doing everything
he can to speed things up,” Janie said.

The nurse walked in then and Alex
and Janie both left so she could check Leah’s stats. “You’ve had an exciting
night, young lady,” she tsked under her breath. “Thankfully, your CT scan is
fine, and I think with some rest you’ll be almost back to your old self in just
a few days.” Smiling, she placed a pulse oximeter on her finger and then took
her blood pressure after that number registered. “Everything looks good here;
are you in any pain?”