Lord Have Mercy (The Southern Gentleman #2)(49)

I thought about having a baby with Camryn and smiled.

“Don’t smile, fucker. You look creepy as fuck with all that blood in your mouth,” Schultz ordered.

I snorted and swallowed hard, tasting the blood as it traveled down my throat. “I was thinking about how much I’d like it if I found out Camryn was having my baby.”

“I’m fairly sure that you’d be excited, and I’d be freakin’ the fuck out,” came a very soft reply.

At first, I wasn’t sure that I hadn’t imagined it, but then Schultz cursed.

“How’d you get in here?” Schultz barked.

I felt a cold, wet nose touch my forehead, and all of a sudden Dooley’s head was next to mine, and he was whimpering in my ear, licking at the side of my face.

I felt cool, delicate hands touch the other side of my face, and I opened my eyes to find myself staring up at Camryn’s horrified face.

I knew what I looked like.

The SUV that was on top of me covered me from just below my pecs down. I had bruising and swelling on my face from where my face had connected with the asphalt. Despite having a helmet on, I still had contusions.

My head and neck were immobilized with a bright yellow C-Spine, and I had an IV in my scalp.

My eyes were all bloodshot due to the capillaries bursting, and from what I was told by Schultz, I resembled the devil.

Needless to say, I wasn’t going to win any beauty pageants any time soon.

“Baby, what did you do to yourself?” she whispered. “And do you know how many mad CrossFitters are at your gym pissed the hell off that they didn’t get their early morning workout?”

How did she do this? How did she always know the exact right thing to say?

I chuckled. “I got hit by an SUV…and I’ll give them a free week. That’ll shut them up.”

I hadn’t realized I’d closed my eyes until I felt a tear hit my cheek.

Opening them again, I could see that Camryn was hovering over me, her face a mask of sadness and pain as she stared at me with tears dripping steadily down her cheeks.

“How did you manage to get hit by a truck?” she whispered.

“SUV,” I corrected her automatically. “And I don’t know. I’m just special like that, I guess. One second, I was riding, and the next I was being hit. They fucked up my new glasses.”

She looked over her shoulder at the glasses that I’d just bought last week that were still laying on the ground and nodded solemnly. “I’ll see about getting you a new pair.”

I doubted that it would happen.

From what I understood, my favorite sunglasses store that I purchased all of my glasses from stopped doing the special-order frames, meaning I’d have to go with plain black instead of the electric blue.

Boring.

“I’ll find you the frames,” she promised. “Don’t underestimate the power of a woman.”

I laughed half-heartedly. “Don’t worry, honey. I’d never underestimate you. I know exactly what you’re capable of.”

She smoothed her hand over my cheek. “What’s that?”

“The impossible,” I rasped, my eyes once again closing. “Making me happy.”





Chapter 16


I’m going to start leaving you a note in your lunchbox that says ‘sorry the Wheat thins are stale. That’s what happens when you don’t close the goddamn box.’

-Text from Camryn to Flint

Camryn

“I’m sorry,” I apologized to the principal. “I won’t be in today.”

Mrs. Sherpa made a disapproving sound. “Camryn, honey. You were out last week with the stomach flu. I have three teachers out with it this week. I don’t have…”

“My boyfriend was hit by a car—SUV—today while he was driving to work out,” I said softly. “I have to be here.”

I’d already called Carmichael, and she was meeting me at the hospital. I wasn’t too sure yet if she’d called in or not.

“Carmichael won’t be there, either,” I said almost on auto-pilot, not allowing myself to feel the emotions that were rocking my body. “He was…he was air-lifted to the hospital. I’m on my way there now.”

Mrs. Sherpa was quiet. “Was it Officer Stone?”

I swallowed hard, feeling the cry bubbling up my throat.

“Yes,” I croaked.

She breathed out hard. “God. Is he…is he okay?”

No. No, he wasn’t.

“I’m…I’m not too sure yet,” I admitted. “He’s not out of the woods, but he was alive when they put him in the helicopter.”

His legs had been crushed. So had one of his hands.

I was fairly sure that he’d sustained far more broken bones, but the extent to which I didn’t know just yet. It was bad, though.

I knew it. He knew it.

Everybody knew it.

Even Dooley knew it.

Speaking of the little devil, he’d never left my side and was following me around like he was lost without Flint.

I dropped my hand down to his head, which was resting on my thigh as we drove hours to follow where the helicopter had taken Flint and said a prayer.

One that was based solely on Flint doing all right. Coming out of this just as good if not better than he was before.