Crash: A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance (5 page)

I chucked the soggy remnants of my snow cone into a trashcan as we passed by it and tried to keep my mind off the ever-growing knot in my stomach. I noticed Luke tilt back his paper cone and gulped down the last of his before wadding it up and tossing it into the same can.

“Luke! Hey, Luke!”

Our heads turned in unison as a gorgeous redhead in the tiniest bikini I’ve ever seen jogged toward us, her huge fake breasts jiggling. I could have sworn we’d just been tossed into an episode of Baywatch. I heard Luke mutter an obscenity under his breath.

“Ashley,” he commented darkly.

“What are you doing here?” she chirped. “You’re awfully far from home!”

“So are you,” he replied.

“My parents have a beach house just up there,” she said, pointing down the beach. “Gosh, it’s been ages since I saw you. What have you been up to?”

“Avoiding you,” he said. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”

I watched gleefully as the smile faded from her face when he turned to walk away, and she huffed in his direction.

“Still slumming it, I see!” she called after him, looking down her nose at me.

“Slumming it?” I spat at her. “I
know
you’re not referring to me! I don’t know who you are, but…”

I felt strong arms close around my waist, dragging me away from the scene. I started to kick and flail my arms, trying to get away, and he lifted me into his arms and strode quickly after our parents.

I wasn’t going to let some ginger bitch talk to me that way. Slumming it? Me?

“Who the fuck does she think she is?” I demanded when Luke finally deposited me into the sand.

“Ashley is a bitch who thinks she’s better than everyone on the planet,” he explained. “She still hasn’t gotten over the fact that I dumped her ass.”

“So you dated her?”
Like I was surprised.

“Briefly.
Very
briefly.”

“What happened?”

“Like I said, I dumped her. Let’s just leave it at that.”

He didn’t want to talk about it. Fine. I guess I’d touched a nerve.

We made it back to the car, and I resumed the same position I’d taken on the way to the first restaurant. I leaned my head against the window as Steve drove, silently watching the world whiz by.

“Are you alright?” Luke asked quietly.

“Mm-hmm,” I muttered.

I saw him shrug out of the corner of my eye, and then I turned my attention to a blur of red headed straight for us. I screamed, but the sound was lost amid the squall of tires and the grating screech of twisting metal. I felt a shockwave rush through me, and then I was lifted into the air. The world spun, and a secondary impact jolted me. The high-pitched shriek of metal against pavement and the tinkling sound of glass shards addled my brain for several long, terrifying moments, and then there was nothing but a constant hissing noise.

“Mom?” I called weakly, but my voice was nearly lost in a gurgle. I coughed and sputtered, struggling to breathe.

I could hear voices, but they sounded as though they were far away, echoing through a tunnel. I clawed at my seatbelt, desperate to free myself, but I couldn’t locate the buckle.

The acrid scent of gasoline filled my nostrils, and I realized I needed to get away.  I tried to call for help, but a salty wetness had filled my nose and mouth, and I couldn’t swallow it away. I tugged at my restraints, tears stinging my eyes. Fear had gripped me, wrapping itself around my throat and choking off my air supply.

This is it,
I thought.
I am going to die.

I heard another echoing voice—close… familiar. Was that my name he was calling? I opened my mouth to answer, but my voice was entirely choked off.

A jolt of pain shot through me, and I felt myself moving. My throat was so full of something that I couldn’t even scream. I tried again to suck in a breath, but I was unsuccessful. I began to feel cold, and my teeth started to chatter.

I’m dying. I’ll never see Mom again. What about Finn, my cat? She’ll never remember to feed him.

My mind was a semi-delirious stream of thought, racing from subject to subject. I guess it was something like one’s life flashing before one’s eyes at the time of death.

Mom called me Kitty Kat. Daddy used to call me that, especially when he had a surprise for me. I miss Daddy. I wonder if I’ll see him in Heaven. Oh! Maybe he’s with Grandma!

“Kat?” Mom’s voice called out.

I tried to turn toward the sound of her voice, but a searing pain surged through my neck. I tried to cry out, but I still couldn’t breathe.

“Hold on, Baby! They’re coming!” Mom shouted.

“The car’s going to blow!” an unfamiliar voice screamed.

What? Blow?

“I’ll get her!” called that familiar voice again. Who was that?

I felt movement underneath my arms, and pain surged through me so intensely it nearly pulled me into the black. I felt myself being dragged, and the flesh along the back of my thighs felt like it was being torn from my skin. I could hear the tinkling sound of glass as I moved.

Sirens wailed in the distance, growing ever louder until they nearly drowned out every other sound. The only sound I could hear was a cacophony of voices shouting, “Move! Move! Move!”

A thunderous roar rattled me to my core, and I felt a massive whoosh of air blast in my direction. Heat. Unbearable heat. Pain finally pulled me under.

Luke

I stood there watching paramedics work on her, helpless to make a difference. She looked so small and fragile. She’d lost so much blood. So. Much. Blood.

“Get back!” one of the medics shouted, waving his hand.

I stumbled backward, unable to peel my eyes away from her. A medic was suctioning her airway while another pumped her chest. One. Two. Three. Four. He kept a rapid pace.

Her mother was sobbing onto my father’s shoulder. She looked every bit as helpless as her daughter.

They put a collar around her neck and rolled her onto a backboard. They strapped her on and loaded her onto a stretcher as CPR continued. They pushed the stretcher into the back of an ambulance, and I tried to step in with her.

“Luke!” I heard my father shout sharply.

I turned around to see him helping Katherine’s mother into the ambulance with her. Of course it should be her mother riding with her. What was I thinking? I hopped to the side to allow her mother to step up beside her, and the medics slammed the doors and drove away.

I watched the ambulance spin up lights and sirens, and I couldn’t look away until it disappeared in the distance.

“Sir, I need to take a look at you,” I heard someone say.

One of the medics was checking me over, but I shrugged him off.

“I’m fine,” I muttered.

“Luke, let them check you out,” Dad said as another medic sat him down to look him over.

I sighed and allowed the medic to do his thing. He poked and prodded, checked the dilation of my pupils, and asked me questions. I watched the firefighters dousing the blazing vehicle, muttering an answer when prompted. Finally, the medic agreed that I was fine. My father and I both declined transport, each signed a paper, and watched the medics head back to their ambulance.

Dad and I were forced to stay at the scene while the police asked us an endless stream of questions. Each of us had already told the story a dozen times, and still they kept asking their incessant questions.

“Excuse me, but are we just about done, now?” I finally snapped. “We need to get to the hospital!”

The officer, who was easily twice my size, silenced himself and shot me a glare that spoke volumes.

“We’ll be done when we are done,” the officer said firmly. “I can’t just rush an accident investigation.”

“Look, we’ve already told you everything we remember about the accident,” I argued. “What more could you possibly need us for?”

“Look, you little punk…” the officer poked his finger toward me.

“Barnes!” a voice shouted, and the officer lowered his hand and looked in that direction. A woman almost as muscular as me approached him and added, “Back off! Now!” Barnes reluctantly backed away, and the woman managed a weak smile, saying, “Sorry about him. He’s new. We have everything we need for now, and we’ll be in touch if we need anything else. You’re free to go.”

“Thank you, officer,” I told her gratefully.

Dad had already called one of the drivers from his company to pick us up. I was never more grateful to be wealthy than I was when our private driver pulled up to the curb to pick us up and take us to the hospital.

One we arrived at the hospital, my father demanded that we see Katherine. They attempted to stop us because, since he and Katherine’s mother weren’t married yet, we weren’t immediate family. But Katherine’s mother burst through the doors throwing a hissy fit and the nurses decided not to mess with her. I had to admit, I was pretty impressed with her tenacity.

We followed her through a wide corridor to the emergency room where Katherine was lying unconscious on a gurney with a tube down her throat and stitches in several places.

“Is she going to… be alright?” I asked.

“They said they are cautiously optimistic, whatever that means,” her mother answered. I noticed her eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with red. She’d been crying very recently. Her lashes were still damp and clumped together. “What does that even mean?”

“I think it means they don’t know, so they tell you what they think you want to hear,” I told her honestly.

She nodded sadly and patted Katherine’s ankle, which was the nearest part of her she could reach.

Dad put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. She closed her eyes and leaned against him, nuzzling him with her head like a cat. I was beginning to support their relationship more than ever. They really seemed to be happy.

I turned back to Katherine and watched her, hoping to see some movement—a flutter of lashes, a twitch of lips.

“Surgeon is ready, Ma’am.”

Katherine’s mother popped to her feet and picked up a small hand, pressing it to her lips. A tear dripped onto Katherine’s hand and rolled off onto the sheet. My father had to pry Katherine’s hand from her mother’s grip so they could take her into surgery.

The moment the doors closed behind Katherine’s stretcher, her mother broke down. She collapsed onto the floor, sobbing loudly, with my dad dropping to his knees to cradle her in his arms.

I flopped into a nearby chair in stunned silence. In the span of a couple of hours, I’d met Katherine and her mother, nearly punched a maître d, pissed off Katherine, went on a wild goose chase to find her, gave her flowers, walked her on the beach, pulled her from the wreckage of a car just before it exploded, watched paramedics frantically trying to revive her, and watched nurses wheeling her into surgery. I’d had enough excitement for one day. Fuck that. I’d had enough excitement for one
lifetime
.

Dad finally managed to coax Katherine’s mother off the floor, and we followed a nurse into a private waiting area outside the surgical unit where we could sit and wait for her. All we could do was wait. And I’ve never been a patient person.

It was only moments before I started pacing the floor, and fifteen minutes in I was raking my fingers through my hair and fighting the urge to punch something.

“Where
are they?
” I complained loudly. “It’s been hours!”

“It’s been fifteen minutes, Luke,” Dad said calmly. “Just sit down. You’re making Lucy nervous.”

“No he’s not,” Katherine’s mother argued.

“Okay, you’re making
me
nervous,” Dad corrected himself, nodding toward a chair.

I grumbled audibly and slammed myself heavily into the chair, crossing my arms in a huff. Those doctors better fix her, or I swear to God…

I suddenly realized the depth of what I was feeling. I’d only just met this girl, but I was feeling a fierce protectiveness that I’d never felt for anyone—even my own mother. Not that it was too hard to understand that given the distance she always kept from me, but I never realized I could feel so much for one single human being.

It’s just because she’s about to be my sister, I told myself. Of course I’d be protective of her. It made sense. And it made me feel better.

I’d never had a sibling before. When I was a kid, I’d wanted a sibling so badly, because I craved affection and attention. I thought a sibling would have been some company in an otherwise incredibly lonely house. But I’d never had that, and it just made sense that I’d be so passionate about protecting it now that it was just within my grasp.

The hours ticked by, and every time I heard the slightest noise in the corridor I’d jump to my feet and rush the door. It was maddening.

Finally, miraculously, the door opened. My heart thudded, and we all sprang to our feet. Katherine’s mother clutched at my father.

“I’m afraid it’s not good,” the doctor said, his face somber.

A lump swelled in my throat, and I sank back into my chair, gripping the arms. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut and had the wind knocked out of me.

“What’s going on?” her mother demanded. “How is she?”

“She made it through surgery, but she has very little brain activity,” the doctor said. “She’s in a coma, and I’m afraid… I’m afraid she may never wake up. But for the moment, I’ll suggest a wait and see approach.”

“Wait and see? What does that mean?” her mother asked.

“How can I put this?” the doctor asked himself. “Hmm. Okay... I’ve seen patients in better condition than her not make it. But at the same time, I’ve seen patients in worse condition pull out of something like this with no lasting effects. Honestly, it’s all up to her, now.”

“How long should we wait?” asked her mother.

“That will be up to you,” he said softly. “And how long the insurance company will continue paying for her care.”

“Don’t worry, Lucy,” my dad said quickly. “We’ll pick up the bill after the insurance company drops it, however long is necessary.”

Lucy nodded, accepting a tissue the doctor had handed her. She blew her nose and continued sobbing against Dad’s shoulder.

“Doctor, give it to me straight,” Lucy said. “No bullshit. In your personal opinion, will she make it, and if so, how long will it be before we know something?”

“Ma’am, I understand you’re looking for answers, but I just don’t happen to have them,” he apologized. “Believe me, I wish I did. But it probably just depends on how much of a fighter she is.”

“Oh, she’s never been much of a fighter,” her mother wailed, bursting into another round of sobs.

After what I witnessed that day, I wasn’t so sure about that. Katherine seemed like a fiery little fighter to me, and that fact gave me hope.