Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense)(27)

“That’s enough for you, you drive tomorrow. Now, let’s have it. What are you planning here?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have a plan. I’m just making this up as I go along.”

“Good, men plan and God laughs. You ready to tell me the truth?”

“What truth?”

“In vino veritas,” he says, hefting his glass. “I didn’t have any wine so this’ll have to do. Liquor is quicker, anyway. So let’s have it out. I know you were driving the car that night. Are you the reason my brother is dead and his little girl had half her f*cking face burned off?”

“What? No!”

He seems a lot taller than I realized as he stands over me. A lot more sober, too. He downs his vodka like it’s water.

“Young kid barely knows how to drive in too much car, distracted, wrecks it. Bad wreck. I saw the police report. Car flipped three times. Amazing you made it out with just a broken leg while my brother died and my niece almost burned to death.”

“I wasn’t wearing my seat belt. They were. I was thrown out. My leg hit a tree. It’s a miracle I survived.”

“A miracle,” he says grimly.

I lean on the counter. Except it’s more of a slide and I end up sitting on the floor.

“It wasn’t my fault, I swear. I haven’t told her yet.”

“Told her what?”

I grab the beer off the counter and drain it. “The steering wheel stopped working. I think somebody did something to the car. I think my father was trying to kill us.”

Rodney steps back and looks down at me.

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I barely believe it myself.”

“You haven’t talked to Ellie about this?”

“No.” I sigh. “I don’t know how she’d take it. Maybe she doesn’t need to know. I… Her whole existence is about the crash now. She’s obsessed with those scars. It’s all she talks about.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

I hand off the empty beer bottle and he takes it.

“Yeah, I would. It hurts me to see her like this. She was so happy. I could have done something. It was my fault even if somebody did do something to the car to make us wreck. I should have put it in neutral or something. I keep replaying it in my head over and over. I have dreams about it.”

“I’m sure you did everything you could. What possessed you to drag her all the way out here? Why are you going to Arizona?”

“I haven’t seen my mother since I was eight. I want Ellie to meet her. I don’t know. It made sense at the time. I just had to get her out of the house. Her cousin showed up and there’s no way she’d keep her mouth shut about me. If word gets back to my father, I’m up shit creek.”

Rodney nods. “You know they’ll be looking for you by now. You’ve been gone since, what, nine in the morning?”

“Maybe. My father and Jessica are on honeymoon. If Ellie’s cousin—”

“Not her cousin. I don’t have any kids and her mother had no siblings.”

“Well, Jessica’s niece… Fuck it, who cares. If she says something, we’re screwed.”

“Most likely they’re already looking for you. I don’t have a television but I’ll check the Internet and my police band scanner. Best you get some sleep.”

“You’re not going to turn us in?”

“Of course not. Jessica can go sit on a fire hydrant.”

He offers me a hand and drags me to my feet when I take it. I stumble a bit, a little clearer now, and watch while he unfolds the big couch into a bed. He tosses a blanket and pillow at the foot of the mattress and turns, disappearing through the kitchen.

I flop into the bed and splay out, not bothering with the blanket. My head starts to pound as I lie down. I scrub my eyes with the palms of my hands and flop my arms down, and hope for sleep.

It doesn’t come. I hear footsteps upstairs, but don’t open my eyes until there’s a creak on the stairs. A dark shape, lit by the moonlight coming through the tall windows, moves across the living room.

Ellie, dressed in oversized sweatpants and a long t-shirt, spreads a blanket over me as she crawls into the bed. She settles against my side, in the crook of my arm almost. Without thinking, I slip my arms around her.

Then I yelp.

“Jesus, your feet are cold.”

“Shut up. Don’t ruin it.”

“Ellie—”

“I said don’t ruin it. Go to sleep.”

She rolls over onto her other side, probably to take the pressure off her bad arm, and pushes back against me, her head propped in the crook of my elbow. I roll and put my other arm over her, and she doesn’t object.

My breath catches as hers slows, growing shallow and even as she slips into sleep. We’ve never slept together. I don’t mean sex, though I never got to home plate, either. I mean we never did this, just shared a bed. I wanted to but the occasion never arrived.

“Ellie?”

“I said don’t ruin it,” she murmurs.

“What is this?”

“I had a bad dream.”

I pull her into my arms. “You’re safe now.”

“Am I?”

I take a deep breath and bury my face in her hair. God, she still smells exactly the same. Soapy from a shower, but that scent she has is still exactly the same.