This One Moment (Pushing Limits, #1)(74)

“Hailey!”

I didn’t know if it was my scream or the unexpected movement, but Lindsey’s stepfather loosened his hold on me and I tumbled to the floor, the knife jerking out of me.

The world faded slightly. Black dots shifted in my vision.

Drawing on everything inside me—the fear, the determination, the love—I fought the desire to close my eyes. I didn’t want to go to sleep. I wanted to be in Nolan’s arms. I wanted to tell him I loved him.

There was a sudden movement in the doorway, and for a moment I thought it was Nolan.

“Police,” a deep male voice yelled, the sound of it reverberating in my head. “Put the knife down…I said, put the knife down!”

A muffled thud near me on the floor almost made me cry out in relief. Needing to get as far from Lindsey’s stepfather as possible, I dragged myself forward, biting my lip against the pain.

The cop entered the room, his gun pointed at the man.

Another cop came in after him and crouched down beside me. “We need a medic up here.” He’d barely had a chance to finish the last word before Nolan was by my side.

As the cop coaxed me to lie back down, Nolan whipped off his T-shirt. Normally I would’ve appreciated the sight of a shirtless Nolan. What girl wouldn’t? But right now he could have been completely naked and I wouldn’t have cared. Much.

“Hey, Forget-Me-Not.” The smile in his voice that was usually there whenever he used my nickname was missing. He pressed the T-shirt against my side. “I’ve got you.”

Gasping, I jolted at the sharp pain.

I vaguely heard someone informing Lindsey’s stepfather of his rights as Nolan brushed the hair from my face.

“I’ve got you, Forget-Me-Not, and I’m never letting go of you again.”

I focused on Nolan’s voice and only on his voice. If I could help it, I’d never let go of him again either.

I replayed his words in my head as the paramedics arrived, as they examined me, and as they drove me away in the ambulance. And true to his word, Nolan stayed with me.





Chapter 47


Nolan


Hailey squeezed my hand as we stood in front of my house. “Are you sure about this?” she asked. She glanced back at her parents’ home and shuddered. We were going there after this, to help her deal with what had happened almost two weeks ago.

“Yes. I need to do it.” I pulled her toward the front door and unlocked it. What had happened the night my family died wasn’t my fault. I’d finally accepted that. For a long time before that night I’d tried to convince my mother to leave my father. I couldn’t have predicted the sequence of events or the outcome. None of us could have.

The cops eventually put everything together as to what had happened the night Hailey was found barely alive in Westgate. Philip Brady, the man Mom had been having an affair with, had attacked her in this house, and he panicked. He and his brother took Hailey to Westgate to kill her. They wanted it to look like a random attack. They never expected her to survive. The man I accidentally killed when he attacked Hailey while she was running? He was Philip’s brother.

Initially it didn’t make sense that Philip had waited so long to make sure there was nothing that could link him to my mother and Sarah. But then we learned that Philip had recently decided he wanted to go into politics, and so he needed to ensure all his skeletons stayed buried deep.

Chris’s death was quickly determined to be unrelated, the result of a steroid drug deal gone wrong. His alleged killer had been arrested early last week.

I opened the front door and stepped inside my house. The night Philip had attacked Hailey at her parents’, I’d been about to cross the street to my home when I heard her scream. Thinking that the person who’d put her in a coma and the person who had killed Chris was the same and was still running free, I’d called the cops. Fortunately, Hailey’s parents had left the spare key in the same place as when she and I were kids.

Now, as we entered the house I’d grown up in, I saw that a layer of dust covered the furniture. The air held a slight musty smell. But otherwise, the place looked no different than I remembered.

I inhaled deeply and started coughing. “Hmm. It’s a little dustier than I remembered.” Hailey’s parents had arranged for someone to clean every few months for the past five years. Her mother knew my mom would’ve appreciated it, even if she was dead. I had agreed to it, and the funds had come from my parents’ estate. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t sold it right away—why I had waited until only recently to finally decide to put it on the market. Maybe deep down I had assumed no one would want to buy a house three people had died violently in. Or maybe deep down I just hadn’t been ready to let it go—to let go of the only home my sister had ever known.

Hailey chuckled, taking in the dusty state of the furniture and the house. “Just a little.”

“I guess I should hire someone to deal with it before I sell the place.” I pulled her into my arms and grinned. “Unless you want to delay our flight for another month. Then we can clean it ourselves.”

She made a face. “No heavy lifting for me for a while. Doctor’s orders.” Doctor’s orders also said we couldn’t have sex for a few more weeks while Hailey recovered from surgery. Not that I was counting the days or anything. “Are you sure you want to sell the place?” she asked.