Unexpected Fate (34 page)

“Don and Clint? Clint the cameraman? What are you talking about, Mark?”

“I saw the way they looked at you. Always looking at you. And you let them. You shouldn’t have done that, Danielle.” He laughs, the sound making my skin crawl. “You shouldn’t encourage that they had a chance with you.
YOU
are mine and I’m tired of watching you act like a slut when you know, YOU KNOW, what we have.”

I gape at him, dumbfounded. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mark.” A sense of dread starts to take hold of my body, and I try to think of a way out of this mess.

Until he speaks again and I’m shocked to my core.

“I saw the way that you would look at me. I know you felt it. All of our dates we would have. When you would tell me what you loved about me as a boyfriend. I remember it all, Danielle. But you’ve been a naughty girl. It’s time to take care of all of these . . . complications.” He waves the knife around until the tip is pointing down. At my swollen belly.

“No,” I gasp and clutch my stomach. “No!” My scream goes unnoticed by him as he takes a step forward. “Mark, those weren’t dates. We had lunch—with about five other people—in the breakroom at Sway’s. That was it. You were asking my advice for the girl you were dating. Mark, we aren’t anything.” My attempt at reasoning with him only angers him further.

“No!” he bellows, repeatedly jabbing the knife in my direction. “We’re EVERYTHING!” his voice takes on a manic level of insanity, and he starts to advance on me.

“Please . . . I’m begging you. Don’t hurt my baby. I’ll do whatever you want, but please!”

“That,” he says harshly. “That is an abomination and it must be removed from you. I won’t stand for it.”

I grip my stomach tighter and sob. The tears mix with the snot as they roll down my face. The hope I was holding on to that I would be able to talk him off the ledge starts to dwindle. I look around again, praying that I’ll find something that will give me the answer on how to escape this impending doom.

This is it. I’m going to die right here where my future started. Right where it started, we’re going to die, and I know there is no way Cohen will survive this kind of loss. That knowledge and my love for him are the only hope I have left. I spot the lamp just an inch away from my fist right when Mark makes his move and lunges forward. Given the fact that my belly has gotten huge in the last seven weeks since Cohen returned home, my movements are slower than normal, and right when I feel his knife pierce my left side, I heave the lamp with everything I have and clip him right on his temple.

Mark goes down hard, dazed but not out, so I bring my arm back—weakly now that my side is killing me—and swing at him again. His lifts and his knife digs into the top of my hip. Desperate to do what I can to protect my stomach, I twist and fight with everything I have in me. If this is the last moment I have on this Earth, I’m not going to be taken out easily.

“Stop fucking moving so I can get that thing out of you!” he bellows, and it isn’t lost on me just how far gone he is on the sanity scale.

“You won’t get my baby, you sick fuck!” I scream, and with a renewed strength, I start to kick my legs between driving the heavy lamp down onto his face. “You can’t have my baby,” I sob, my body growing weaker. “Never!” I scream out and never stop, my throat burning with the raw sounds coming out.

I feel it before my mind registers that there is nothing else I can do, and as my body is pulled down with nothing left to give, I use the last bit of my strength to twist so that, when I fall, my baby is protected.

“HOW HARD WOULD IT HAVE been to carry this shit down when Cohen got here and could help us?” I ask Nate after dusting my hands off on my jeans.

We’ve just spent the better part of thirty minutes trying to get Cohen’s big-ass seventy-inch television down three flights of stairs and attempted to get the damn thing loaded into the back of my truck without breaking it.

“It seemed easier than it was when I planned it out in my head. It’s not my fault it’s heavier than it looks. Damn thing looked like it would be easy.”

Yeah. Famous last words of Nate Reid.

“Plus, if Chance wouldn’t have been so fucking lazy, he could have helped out too.”

“Chance”—I reach over and shove Nate as we start to walk back up the stairs—“is up there keeping an eye on Dani. Something that, I’ll remind you,
we
should be doing as well.”

“Seriously, Lee? She’s right up there! What the hell is going to happen in the two seconds we took to take care of that shit?” He pulls his UGA ball cap off and scratches his thick, black hair before jamming it back down. “Fuck, it’s hot out here.”

Right when my booted foot touches the bottom step, I hear a sound that stops my heart. I look over at Nate to see if he heard it and see all the color drain from his face.

“Fuck!” I yell and start to bound up the steps in threes. “Call Cohen, Nate. Call Cohen and then call your dad.” I keep running, letting my training take over and my instincts kick in.

For the last two months, I’ve been in training with the local police department, and for the first time, I’m thankful for every second of that training. I don’t look behind me to see if Nate’s coming. I grab my cell and dial 911 as I continue up the stairs. As I reach their landing, the operator picks up and I give her the short version of what I know. Which is nothing. After rattling off Cohen’s address and telling her to send an ambulance as well as the police, I stop talking and ease up on the cracked door.

“Sir, is the intruder still on the scene?” the female voice says through the line.

I feel Nate coming up behind me and hand him the phone. I hardly register his response to the operator. When I don’t hear anything from inside the apartment, I slowly toe open the door and ease inside.

What I see is a scene I will never forget. If I should live to be one hundred, this image will still be branded in my mind. The walls, floor, and tan couches are all stained red.

Blood red.

I can’t see over the loveseat that blocks the view from the doorway into the living room, but I see Chance’s crumpled form behind it, and I slowly move towards him and check for a pulse.

Strong and steady, thank Christ.

He has one hell of a bump forming on his forehead, and I check the knife wound he has to his left shoulder, but it’s a clean cut that isn’t bleeding heavily anymore.

I stand, move around the chair, and feel a sob bubble up my throat.

“Dani!” I yell and rush towards her. I step over the unrecognizable man that is lying—unmoving—in front of her.

“He has the knife,” I hear Nate say weakly behind me. He rushes forward and kicks it away before checking the douchebag for a pulse. “Fuck! She fought, Lee. She fought while we were down there dicking around with a goddamn TV!” He stands and kicks the body behind me. “She fought hard enough that she killed a man threatening her with a knife with a damn lamp.”

I don’t move my eyes from Dani as I check for her pulse and find it weakly beating against my fingertips. “Help me stop the bleeding until the ambulance gets here, Nate!”

We both rush, careful of her pregnant stomach, and hold down the wounds we can, and I look into Nate’s eyes and see the same panic I feel.

That panic never leaves. Not while we soak through the towels we have held against her body and not when I notice that the pulse I keep checking is slowing down.

Not once—even when the paramedics rush through the door and take over care.

It doesn’t stop as we rush behind them as they carry an unmoving Dani on a stretcher.

And not when we’re speeding down the highway behind them on the way to the hospital.

That panic never leaves, and I know that, if Dani doesn’t make it, it’s a feeling I’ll never get over.

“Did you get Cohen?” I whisper towards Nate.

He’s rubbing his bloodstained hands together and doesn’t move his eyes from the back of the ambulance holding his sister.

“No.”

I look away from the road, shocked. “No?”

“He didn’t answer and I rushed after you before I called back. I’ll do that now,” he says with a monotone voice. His movements are robotic as he grabs my cell from the cupholder between us and presses the screen until I hear the ringing echoing throughout the cab.

“What’s up, Lee?” Cohen asks when the call connects. He sounds happy, I notice. “I should be back soon. I’ve—”

“Coh,” I say, my voice cracking.

He doesn’t say anything until I hear him roar through the phone. “Where is she?” he screams. “Where the fuck is she?!” I can hear the strain in his voice, and I imagine that he’s running towards his truck.

“We’re headed to Grady Memorial, Cohen. She’s in the ambulance in front of us.”

“Is she—”

“I don’t know, brother. I honestly just don’t know.”

Cohen disconnects the call, but not before I hear the sob that tears out of his throat.

Another thing I’ll never forget.

Never.

MY MIND GETS ME TO Grady on autopilot.

Every second it takes to get me there feels like eternity. Not knowing how she is, the status of her injuries, is like fuel to the fire of my misery.

After slamming the truck in park, I jump out and run towards the emergency entrance.

Fifteen minutes
after
the call from Lee.

Fifteen unknown minutes filled with thoughts of Dani and our child.

“Coh.”

I look over when I hear Lee croak out my name, and when I take in his appearance, I drop to my knees and feel every second of those fifteen minutes weighing me down as I cry out for my family.

It isn’t until I feel two strong hands press down on my shoulders that I look up and see both my father and Dani’s standing on either side of my fallen body.

“Get up, son. Get up and pull yourself together and be there for Dani and the baby. Until you hear otherwise, you don’t ever fucking give up hope,” my dad says and holds his hand out to help me stand.

I nod and accept his hand, standing and turning towards Axel. His eyes are red and bright with emotion. He doesn’t even try to stop the tears that are falling.

“Her mother will be here soon. She was at the salon when we got word. Melissa went to get her. Let’s go get word on our girl so that I can give my wife something good to focus on, yeah?” He doesn’t stick around to see if I follow.