Crashed (Driven, #3)(23)

I sigh out loud as Beckett gathers the remaining trash from our late night dinner we’d had while impatiently waiting for Colton to wake. I glance over from my book that I’m really not paying attention to and watch Becks’ methodical movements. I can see the toll the past week has taken on him in the bruises beneath his eyes and the scruff on his usually clean-shaven face. He seems lost.

“How you doing?” I ask the question softly, but I know he can hear me because his body stops momentarily before he puts the last bit in the trash can and shoves it down.

He turns and leans his hip against a counter behind him and just shrugs as our eyes meet. “You know,” he drawls out in his slow, resonating tone that I’ve come to love. “In the sixteen years we’ve known each other, this is the longest we’ve ever gone without talking.” He shrugs again and stares out the window for a moment at the media trucks in the parking lot. “He may be a demanding smart-ass, but I miss him. Call me a *, but I kinda like the guy.”

I can’t help the smile that spreads on my lips. “Me too,” I murmur. “Me too.”

Becks walks over to me and presses a kiss to the top of my head. “I’m going to head back to the hotel. I’ve gotta take a shower, check in with my brother, and then I’ll be back, okay?”

A growing adoration for Becks blooms within—the ever true best friend. “Why don’t you stay there tonight and get a good night’s sleep? In a real bed instead of the crappy chairs in the waiting room.”

He chuckles derisively and shakes his head at me. “Pot calling the kettle black, huh?”

“I know, but I just can’t … and besides, I’ve been sleeping in these crappy chairs in here.” I pat the seat of the one I’m sitting on. “At least this has more padding than those out there.” I angle my head and watch him mull it over. “I promise to call if he wakes up.”

He exhales loudly and gives me a reluctant look. “Okay … but you’ll call?”

“Of course.”

I watch Becks leave and welcome the unique silence of the hospital room. I sit and watch Colton, feeling truly blessed indeed that he’s here and whole in front of me—that he didn’t forget me—when it could be so much worse. I send a silent prayer up as time passes, knowing I have to start following through with the various barters I made to the great beyond to get Colton to come back to me.

I field a couple of texts from Haddie, check in on the boys and see how Ricky’s math test went today, before texting Becks good night and telling him Colton’s still out.

The early morning hours approach and I can’t resist anymore. I slip off my shoes, pull the clip out of my hair, and position myself in the only place in the world I want to be.

At Colton’s side.





The morning light burns through my closed eyelids as I try to rouse myself from the deepest sleep I’ve had in over six days. Instead I just burrow in deeper to the warmth beside me. I feel fingers brush across my cheek and I’m instantly alert, my body jolting with awareness.


“Morning.” His voice is a whispered murmur against the top of my head. My heart floods with an array of emotions but what I feel more than anything is complete.

Whole again.

I start to move so I can look into his eyes. “No doctors yet. I just need this. Need you. No one else, okay?” he asks.

Seriously? Is the sky blue? If I could, I’d whisk him out of this sterile prison and keep him all to myself for a while. Forever or more if he’d let me. But rather than letting the flippant comment roll off my tongue, I just make a satisfied moan and tighten my arms around him. I close my eyes and just absorb everything about this moment. I so desperately wish we were somewhere else, anywhere else, so I could lie with him skin to skin, connect with him in that indescribable way. Feel like I am doing something to help heal his broken memory and damaged soul.

We lie there in silence, my hand over his heart and the fingers of his left hand lazily drawing lines up and down my forearm. There are so many questions I want to ask. So many things that run through my head, but the only one that I manage to say is, “How are you feeling?”

The momentary pause in his movement is so subtle I almost don’t catch it, but I do. And it’s enough to tell me that something’s wrong besides the obvious.

“This is nice.” It’s all he says and that further solidifies my hunch. I give him a bit of time to gather his thoughts and work out what he wants to say because after the past few weeks, I’ve learned so many things, least of which is my inability to listen when it matters the most.

And right now it matters.

So I sit in silence as my mind wars with the possibilities.

“I’ve been awake for a few hours,” he starts. “Listening to you breathe. Trying to make my right hand f*cking work. Trying to wrap my head around what happened. What I can’t remember. It’s there. I can sense it but I can’t make it come to the forefront …” he trails off.

“What do you remember?” I ask.

I desperately want to turn, to look into his eyes and read the fear and frustration that is most likely marring them, but I don’t. I give him the space to admit that he’s not one hundred percent. To balance that inherent male need to be as strong as possible, to show no weakness.