Savage Collision: A Hawke Family Novel (Hawke Family #1)(21)

He sighs and releases my hand before running his back through his hair. “I don’t know, honestly. It didn’t come up at my office, or at dinner. I knew you couldn’t see my chair from where you were standing in my office, and I beat you to the restaurant and was already in the booth. It isn’t really something you tell someone in a text message.” He pauses and drops his hands onto his lap. “And, frankly, I was worried about what your reaction might be. This is the first time I’ve been interested in someone since the accident.”

Accident. The word sends chills down my spine before I even know what happened. Whatever it was, it must have been violent and awful for him to end up like this. “What happened?”

When he closes his eyes and drops his head back, I fear he isn’t going to answer me.

Shit, maybe I shouldn’t have asked.

Just as I suck in my breath to apologize for being so intrusive, he drops his head forward and meets my eyes again.

“Car accident…almost three years ago. I was in Europe, skiing with my sister, Star. I took her there as a graduation gift. She had just finished getting her nurse practitioner license. Skye, her twin, was supposed to come with us but she ended up ditching the trip to be with some guy. Our third day there, we were driving back to our lodge and a semi jackknifed on the road. I couldn’t swerve to avoid it. We were on a mountain pass and there was a giant cliff on the other side.”

A picture forms in my mind of a dark, narrow, winding mountain pass—those roads are terrifying enough without envisioning a giant semi-trailer barreling at you. I try to hide my reaction, but a shudder runs through me and I know he notices because he winces slightly. “The trailer hit our SUV and pushed it through the guardrail. We rolled down into the ravine. I lost consciousness at some point and don’t remember much, which is probably a good thing,” he says, glancing down at his hands clenched in his lap.

My eyes are burning with tears, but I refuse to cry right now.

Pull yourself together!

I shake my head and wipe at my eyes while he’s not looking at me. When he glances back up, I notice a sheen in his eyes too and it makes my stomach lurch into my throat.

“I was in a coma for almost two weeks. When I woke up, I was in a hospital in Germany…” He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “…and my whole family was there to tell me my sister was dead.”

A gasp escapes me before I can stop it and the tears that have been threatening finally fall. He gives me a sad smile, and I can only imagine how much talking about this must rip his fucking heart out. I want to climb onto his lap and hold him but that would probably be inappropriate, given my actions today.

“I’m so sorry.” I manage to eke the words out in between sobs and when I wipe my eyes again, I see tearstains on his face too. He nods, never taking his eyes off me.

“In addition to lots of broken bones and lots of cuts and gashes, I underwent several back surgeries while I was there. I won’t bore you with all the medical shit. My spine was partially crushed, but because it wasn’t severed and the injury was so low, I’m actually pretty lucky.”

“What do you mean?” How can someone call themselves lucky when they’re paralyzed?

“I have what’s referred to as an incomplete spinal cord injury and it’s at the base of my spine, which basically means I still have some feeling in my legs and have very minimal movement of them, but not enough that I can really control them and I’ll never walk again. I work with a personal trainer who is also a physical therapist almost every day to help keep myself in as good of shape as I can.”

Just thinking about all that sounds horribly painful. “Holy shit. How long were you in the hospital for?”

“Almost six months. The hospital I was at is one of the world’s leading treatment centers for spinal cord injuries. I let them do everything they could for me before I came home.”

Jesus. I can’t even imagine what he’s been through.

“That is a long time to be away from home.”

He nods and smiles, but it doesn’t touch his eyes. “It was. Before the accident, I was engaged.”

My inner green-eyed monster appears out of nowhere at the thought of him marrying someone. My lunch tries to make an appearance and I clench my hands into fists on my lap.

“Were? What happened?”

He shrugs. “I guess it was all just too much for her. We had been together almost four years and were supposed to get married that spring. We had a house, and a dog,” he says, looking at Princess, who has made her way back over to us and jumped up on the couch next to me, “and she flew over to see me immediately after the accident. She stayed for a week, but had to go back for work. She made it over a couple more times in the next two months, but somehow, I knew she wouldn’t be back when she left that last time. Things had changed between us, and she didn’t know how to deal with everything. Hell, I didn’t either. At least I got to keep Princess.”

At the sound of her name, she leaps down off the couch and jumps up into his lap. A true smile appears on his face for the first time in this conversation, and seeing him doting on that damn tiny, girly dog has me smiling, too.

Jesus, he’s a total softy.

He turns that killer smile on me. “So, are you ready to run screaming yet?”

My smile must falter because his expression changes rapidly. “I was just joking,” he says, placing Princess back on the couch, “but seriously, if this has all been too much for you and you want to skip dinner, I totally understand. It was kind of a dick move for me to spring this on you when I’m on my home turf.”