Unbroken (The Disclosure Series Book 2) (40 page)

She wanted to push him away, yell and carry on, but the tortured look on his face stopped her dead in her tracks. “You think I’m leaving you?”

He flinched slightly, his broad shoulders heaving as he stared at her, raw emotion in his eyes.

“Luke.” She stepped toward him, but he took a step back.

“You promised.”

“And I’m keeping my promise,” she said, angry but determined. “I have to go meet Morgan. I’m not running, I’m not leaving.”

“I just left it all on the table, Embry. I gave up everything.” His voice cracked, and he ran his hand wildly through his hair. “And all you can say is that you have to go meet Morgan?”

She threw her hands up. “What do you want me to say, Luke? You want to do this right now, on the sidewalk outside of school?”

He leveled his gaze on her, waiting.

“Fine,” she snapped. “I’m fucking livid. You sent me to slaughter without any warning!”

“I was protecting you!” he returned. “You wouldn’t have gone along with it. It was the only way.”

Her eyes flashed. “The only way to what?”

He lifted both hands to his head, closing his eyes and raising his face to the sky. His chest expanded with a deep breath before he cast his gaze on her again. “To get rid of Sydney. I—she—” He let out a frustrated growl. “I had Chuck fire her. I took her job, the only thing she had in New York. I thought it would be enough to send her running back to Georgia, but it wasn’t. She’s set on destroying you, us.”

A shiver crept up her spine. “How?”

He shrugged. “Tank my career. Brand you a whore and ruin you like she thinks I did her.”

Anger burned in the pit of Embry’s stomach. “So you decided to let her win? To just give in?” She threw her hands up in exasperation.

“No!” His eyes blazed. “I took away her power. She has nothing on us now, Embry. Do you think I give two fucks about teaching” —his arms gestured wildly toward the school— “when it means I could lose you? You’re the only thing that’s important to me. The only thing that matters.”

Embry’s phone beeped with a text. She pulled it out. It was Morgan wondering where she was.

She pressed a hand to his chest. “Luke, I love you, but I have to go. I can’t do this now.” Tears returned to her eyes.

He stared at her silently, the muscle in his jaw working.

She lifted onto her toes and pressed a soft kiss to his lips before turning and walking away.

Rounding the corner toward the parking lot, Embry nearly ran right into Sydney, and she couldn’t help the revulsion that sprang up within her, the fury.

“Come to survey the damage?” Embry spat. She had no idea what else she’d be doing anywhere near campus.

“I—excuse me?” Sydney batted her stupid fucking eyelashes, looking offended.

“Don’t bother with the act, Sydney.” Embry glared at her. “You got your way. You win, it’s over.” She pushed past her, Sydney’s sharp mouth hanging open, and shoved her hard with her shoulder. “There’s nothing more you can do to hurt us. Just get the fuck out of our lives.”

Then Embry stormed away, not bothering to wait for a response. Angry tears streamed down her face as she sent a quick text to Morgan and peeled out of the parking lot.

At a red light, she practiced a forced smile in the rearview mirror. She had to pull it together for her best friend, be the maid of honor Morgan needed her to be, even though all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and let her emotions carry her away.

Sitting there, hands tight around the steering wheel, she started to feel her anger linger on Luke again. Maybe he didn’t deserve it. He was right after all—she would’ve never let him go through with it. But with Sydney threatening to destroy them, what other option did they have?

She picked up her phone and dialed Luke.

“Hello?” he sounded distracted, the rustling of papers in the background.

“It’s me.”

“Oh, hey.”

“Luke, listen—”

She heard him sigh through the phone. “No, baby. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. You asked me to trust you, and I do.” She pulled onto a two-lane back road, hoping to avoid the traffic around the university. “I get why you had to do what you did. I never would’ve let you give up your teaching position for me.”

“I know.”

Her jaw clenched. “I still hate that you had to do it. And I hate that you had to make that decision alone.”

“I told you, Embry, it doesn’t matter. Not if I lose you.”

“I—” She hit a pothole, jarring her car and sending her phone flying out of her hand and onto the floorboard below. “Shit. Luke,” she called, “hold on a sec, I dropped my phone.”

She gripped the bottom of the steering wheel with her left hand as she bent down, sweeping her right hand over the floorboards. “Hang on, babe!” She kept her eyes trained on the road ahead as she continued to feel around. When the pads of her fingers brushed the hard edge of the phone, she extended her arm, stretching as far as she could until she was able to wrap her hand around it. “Ah! I got it!”

But as soon as she looked up, bright and blinding headlights were barreling toward her. It was too late to react, to move. Her heart leapt in her chest, adrenaline pulsing through her veins, relaxing her body and readying her for impact. Everything moved in slow motion, tires screeching and metal crunching, her head snapping back as her body absorbed the first shocks of the collision. And then she was weightless, flying—flashes of light illuminating the shattered glass raining down upon her until she was swallowed in darkness.

Droplets of rain splashed against the darkened window as Luke paced the waiting room, his shoes making a loud, wet shrill every time his foot came down against the tiled floor. His eyes were wild, his hair sticking up haphazardly after running his hand through it one too many times. “Why haven’t we heard anything?” he asked, the desperation in his voice so strong, he barely recognized it as his own.

He fought off the growing feeling of dread clouding him as a memory racked his brain, ripping him wide open.

“Embry? Embry!” Fear, stark and vivid, took him over as he shouted into the phone. He held it up in front of him, seeing that the line had gone dead. “No! No, no, no, no, no.”

He hit redial and a false busy assaulted his eardrums.

“Fuck!” His voice cracked, panic taking over.

She’d dropped her phone; that was the last thing he’d heard. But then there was a screeching in the background, tires against asphalt, before a soul-shattering crash reverberated through the phone.

A warm hand on his pulled him from his thoughts, silencing the horrific sounds echoing through his ears.

“Luke.” Morgan grabbed him by the arm, pulling him into the seat next to her. She looked exhausted, her eyes red and puffy from crying. “You need to breathe.”

His chest heaved with effort as he forced air in and out of his lungs, trying to calm himself down. He knew it wouldn’t do any good, making himself crazy, bullying the hospital staff until he got some word on Embry, but he couldn’t help himself. It was a distraction. He couldn’t sit still, couldn’t think about the alternative. He stared at Embry’s best friend, the emotion in her eyes nearly breaking him all over again, and he shot up from his seat and began pacing again.

He’d been out in the rain for over an hour, scouring the back roads near the law school, searching for Embry but finding nothing. Morgan had called around to every local hospital, checking back in every twenty minutes until she’d finally found her. Then she’d phoned Embry’s parents while she and Luke had rushed to Bay General to wait.

All they knew was that Embry’s car had been found in a ditch on the side of the road, upside down, the front end damaged pretty bad. She’d worn her seatbelt, thank God, or she’d have been ejected from the vehicle. They’d been told she was unconscious when she was brought in and rushed into emergency surgery.

The hospital had a strict policy, and they refused to update Luke and Morgan on her condition until her parents arrived. So, Luke was left to his pacing.

Morgan reached for his hand again, this time giving a stern tug. “Hey. Sit down.” She looked up at him, her brown eyes pleading. “Her parents are on the way. We’ll get more information as soon as they arrive. Please, just try to stay calm?”

“How am I supposed to stay calm, Morgan?” Every fiber in his being told him to run, to fight, to do…
something
. He felt completely and utterly helpless.

She shrugged half-heartedly, her sad eyes clinging to his for support. “I don’t know. But please, Luke, you’re making me more nervous.”

“Okay.” He sat down beside her, grasping her hand in his and holding onto her for dear life. She was his only connection to Embry, his lifeline. And he needed her as much as she needed him.

She leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. “She loves you so much, you know.”

He squeezed her hand. “I know.” A small smile came to his lips. “About half as much as she loves you.”

Morgan chuckled, but it was an empty sound.

“Luke? Morgan?” Celia Jacobs choked out their names as she came rushing into the waiting room, flanked by Embry’s father, Dean.

Morgan shot up and threw her arms around Celia, a mess of tears streaming down their faces. Luke stood unsteadily, nodding somberly toward Mr. Jacobs. He stuck his hand out for a shake and Dean Jacobs took it, pulling him roughly into a fatherly hug. A shudder racked Luke’s body, and he fought the urge to completely fall apart. He pulled away, clearing his throat.

Dean studied him with the same green eyes as Embry. She was the spitting image of her father—a much more feminine version. But she looked so much like him that it intensified the ache in his chest, turning it into a deep, searing pain just looking at him.

Celia untangled herself from Morgan and looked up to Luke, eyes bright with tears. “What happened, Luke? Tell us everything.”

He sucked in a steadying breath and, choking back his emotions, told her parents what he knew. “They refuse to give us any more information. Now that you’re here, hopefully that’ll change.”

Dean nodded and headed off toward the nurses station as Morgan and Celia crumpled into two seats in a heap of tears, leaving Luke to his pacing.

And so he paced.

He walked back and forth, tearing a path across the tile, his brain going through the painstaking process of piecing together the last few hours, trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong, what he could’ve done differently. Could dropping her cell phone have caused the accident? Had she taken her eyes from the road? Swerved and hit something?

But, no. The paramedics had said the front of her car had taken the most damage. An impact like that, she would’ve had to hit another car, or a telephone pole, and apparently there had been no damage to any of the poles in the area. The road had been deserted except for her car lying upside down in a ditch. There had been no one else at the scene.

So what then? Who?

His fists clenched automatically, red slowly seeping into the edge of his vision at the thought of someone doing this, causing this, and then fleeing the scene. He tried to shake away the thought, but it was persistent. Someone had left her for dead. Rage, anger, sadness, helplessness all swept through him, swirling together in the perfect storm, and he needed an outlet, a direction. He had no idea how worried he needed to be. If he should be praying, grieving. If she was lying open on an operating table somewhere, fighting for her life, or was the life bleeding out of her this very moment?

Despite Morgan’s presence, despite Embry’s own parents, he was alone, the only person that mattered,
his
person, was slipping through his fingers.

A hand on Luke’s arm jarred him, and he looked up to find Dean, Celia and Morgan standing beside him, their eyes trained on a man in hospital scrubs walking slowly toward them.

“Are you Embry Jacobs’ family?”

They all nodded numbly, and Luke steeled himself for whatever news he was about to hear.

“She’s all right,” he said gently, holding up his hands as if sensing they were all on the edge of a complete breakdown.

At ‘all right’, Luke’s knees buckled and he sagged in relief, the breath whooshing out of his lungs so fast that his head swayed slightly. Morgan and Celia held onto each other while Dean placed a steadying hand on Luke’s shoulder. He wasn’t sure if it was for his benefit or Dean’s.

The doctor continued. “She was in a fairly serious accident from what we’re told, and she came in pretty banged up. She suffered a few broken ribs on the left side. One of the ribs punctured her spleen, causing it to bleed into her abdomen, which required emergency surgery.”

Luke nodded along as the doctor continued to explain, but his thoughts were far away. Knowing that Embry would be okay had no impact on him, he was too busy thinking about her injuries, about the pain she must’ve been in,
would
be in, and the fact that he was helpless to do anything at all.

Why couldn’t it have been him? Why his beautiful girl? He’d gladly go through the pain and trauma so that she didn’t have to.