Driven By Love (6 page)

"What!? That's insane! What are they all doing here?" Kenneth bellowed.

"Dad, come on. Missy's a big supermodel and Anne is a big star. They all want to see them. Speaking of which, what's the news?"

Anne spoke up, "She was in surgery and now they are running more tests. We're waiting on more news on Evan."

Daniel shook his head and began his round of hugs and handshakes.

He extended his hand to Dean. "Thanks for being here, man."

"Jeri and I consider you guys family."

The minutes just seemed to drag as their chit chat started to idle. Christina soon arrived and sat with her father in the corner. Elle soon followed and Kenneth vacated his seat for her as he went over to George and Christina.

When the doctor came in almost two hours later, a hush came over the room.

“The good news is that both Missy and Evan don't have any signs of brain damage.” He calmly told them.

“What's the bad news?” Kenneth bluntly asked.

The doctor sighed. “They both need to regain consciousness in order for us to really assess if there is any permanent damage.”

Helen's face got paler. “Permanent damage?”

The doctor shoved his hands into his lab coat. “With accidents such as these there are some cases where the patient has some sort of brain damage. I just want you to be prepared for anything. It's really a miracle that they are both alive.”

Helen grabbed another tissue out of her purse and wiped her eyes.

He nodded. “Both of them are heading to private rooms and the nurse will bring you to them as soon as they are situated.”

“Thank you for the update, Doctor.” Kenneth told him.

When the nurse came with the room numbers almost thirty minutes later they all bolted to the elevators in lighting speed.

Holding on to Missy’s hand, Anne felt the sting of tears as she tried to keep all her emotions at bay.

Missy had to pull through for all of them. Anne couldn’t think of how her life would be without Missy.

“We have to live a little,” she once told Anne and Elle as they cruised down the roads in the middle of the night. Anne only had Hawk a few weeks and was still getting to know him and Missy kept telling her they just needed to go out and have some fun with her new car.

As they drove down the streets, they stopped at a light and a brand new white sports car pulled up next to them with music blaring.

“Hey, honey!” the young jock driver called out to them. “Does that thing have any balls or is it just a pretty little thing like you that needs to be shown what balls really look like?” His two passengers hooted and hollered as they made obscene gestures.

Elle inhaled sharply and whispered, “Anne, just ignore them!”

“No way, Elle!” Missy snapped back. “Anne can take them!”

As she looked over at the obnoxious punks, Anne felt her blood boil as they puckered their lips at them.

“They’re walking home.”

“What!?” Elle squealed as the light turned green and Anne floored the gas pedal. Hawk soared ahead of them and Anne threw more of her energy to him as his engine roared louder, causing Elle to close her eyes and Missy to holler.

They stopped at the next red light which was two miles away and the jocks pulled up next to them.

“You cheated, you little bitch! You have nitrous in that thing!”

The passenger in the front got up and mooned them out the open window as the other two laughed hysterically.

“Oh my…!” Elle screeched in the back.

“Wow, that is one ugly ass!” Missy laughed.

Anne’s lips curved and she threw her energy towards the neighboring car and asked it to floor it hard to the left. It instantly responded and caused the passenger to be taken by surprise and fall on his bare ass as the car drove away with his friends and his shorts which were caught in the seat belt holder.

Stunned, the guy stood up and screamed at the runaway car. “Adam, you asshole! What the fuck!?”

He ran after the car, which was already blocks away. Missy and Elle laughed hysterically as Anne drove beside the half-naked jock as he ran and tried to cover his jewels at the same time.

“You know, I would love to offer you a ride but you and your friends told me that my car doesn’t have enough balls for you so I guess you will just have to show the world what real balls look like!” Anne smiled as she floored Hawk and drove away.

She squeezed Missy’s hand again and swore that if she got out of this, she would do everything she could to make some more time to spend with her.

Exhaustion started to take over her as her eyes began to close. Her father went to their home to pick up a spare change of clothes for himself and her mother and was due back any minute. When he left, Anne felt some of the tension leave her body. She didn’t know how she was going to repair the rift between them and she wasn’t sure if she ever would. It hurt like hell that he blamed her for Missy’s accident.

Her mother held Missy’s limp hand and kissed it every few minutes as if to try and help her wake up from her unconscious state. Every time Anne wanted to apologize for missing the holidays, a lump would form in her throat and the words just couldn’t come out.

Dean sat in a chair on the other side of the room and pretended to watch the TV as his eyes darted back towards the door. Jerilind went back to her home and promised to return in the morning with real food and refreshments for all of them.

The exhaustion on Anne’s face was hard to miss. Helen placed her hand on her shoulder. "Go home, honey. Your father and I will be here and we'll call you if anything changes."

Normally, she would have refused but all the stress of the day wore on her body that she couldn’t even see straight.

"I'll be back first thing in the morning," she promised as she kissed her cheek, hoping to ease her mother’s worry.

Dean looked at her when she stood up. "I'm going home."

"I'll take you."

"No, you don't have to. I'll be fine."

"I wasn’t giving you an option."

Anne huffed, "Look, I told you that I don't need a babysitter."

"Anne." Her mother stopped her. "Please have him take you home. All those people from the news media are making me nervous. I already have one daughter that I'm worried about I don't need two."

The worry on her mother's face just crushed her heart and she let her argument drop.

"Alright."

Gently maneuvering around all the tubes and wires, she leaned over to Missy and kissed her forehead. “Love you, Missy.”

As she turned back she kissed her mother’s cheek again and hugged her. “If you need anything…”

“We know--you are a phone call away.” 

Dean quickly walked over to Helen and she stood up and grabbed him in a bear hug.

"Stay with her," she whispered to him. "I'll feel better knowing that
you're with her."

"I will."

"I put some extra-large men's clothes in the guest bedroom downstairs at her house."

Dean couldn't help but smile. "Thanks. I’ll make sure she stays safe."

"Thank you.”

With that, Dean left to go catch up with Anne who was halfway down the hall already.

"We'll have to go out the back," he told her as she pressed the elevator button.
"Way ahead of you. Hawk should be waiting there."

He glanced around them and saw that no one was close enough to hear their conversation. "How does he know where to wait for you?"

“He follows my energy. It's like a beacon to him and the reverse is true with me. If I need him, I know where to go because I can feel him."

The elevator opened and they stepped in. With no one around, Dean continued to pry.

"How can you feel him?"

With a sigh, she looked over at him. He seemed genuinely interested in her powers and how she used them.

"Okay, you know how when you get out of a mall or museum or stadium and you walk into a parking lot and you get that feeling that you parked your car in a certain spot? That's how I feel him, except I know for a fact where he is exactly."

"How far can you track him?"

"About a mile, no more than that."

"Have you told anyone else that you can do this?" He needed to know if there was anyone else who could have a motive to hurt her in any way.

"Just my family."

"What about your ex-husband?"

How did she know he was going to ask that? "My ex was the stereotypical Hollywood actor who only cared about himself. He really didn’t care much about my feelings or what I wanted to do. It never felt right to tell him this because I was afraid of what he’d say. In the end, I’m glad that I never did tell him. He would have made himself look like the victim and plastered it all over the news."

The elevator stopped and they turned right down the corridor. "So why did you marry him, if you didn't trust him?"

Anne just didn’t want to tell him that she just used him to get her career going. It would have solidified his opinion of her as being a Hollywood diva…Although she didn’t know why that bothered her. Why did she care what he thought of her? Her father already told her he was ashamed of her and her career choice. She broke her mother’s heart when she didn’t show up on the holidays. In his eyes, she was already a selfish person.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s all in the past. Hawk is down this way." She took him down a corridor and then they reached the back door.

“Hawk?”

“Yes, it’s what I call my car. I figured calling him car was just not good enough. He always seemed to swoop down when I needed him the most, kind of like a hawk.”

Before she could grab the door, Dean interjected, "Wait." He went to the door first and slowly pried it open. He peeked out and saw that there seemed to be no one there except Hawk, who was a few feet away from the bottom of the steps and was peacefully quiet.

"Okay.” He opened the door and they both jumped out and bolted to the car. Anne instinctively ran to the driver's side, but Dean interjected. "I'm driving."

"My car."

"Yeah, but I know how to deal with crazy people."

"What crazy people?"

"Those." he pointed towards the other side of the building where two people were running towards them. One had a video camera and the other a microphone. Reporters. Just what she needed right now.

Hawk saw them and started his engine and turned on his lights.

Dean pushed Anne in the passenger seat and slid across the hood and planted himself in the driver’s seat. Hawk leaped forward before he could even shift to drive and spun around the opposite direction as he tried to get away from the reporters and the crowd that would soon follow. As he approached the end of the building, he slowed down just enough not be too loud and attract attention. Anne stared at the hospital entrance. Daniel was right--there was a huge mob of people there. News vans had their satellites up and broadcasting. Other people had handmade signs with supportive words that Anne hoped her mother would be able to see.

"This is insane!" she exclaimed as Dean left the parking lot and then turned right and floored it. Nice thing about living in the country was the speed limit was much higher so he'd be long gone before the other reporters got wind that Anne left the hospital.

Anne sank into the seat as exhaustion began to take over her and the shock of seeing the paparazzi wore off. It finally dawned on her that in her lowest moment everyone wanted a piece of her and not all in a good way. Her distraught face would have been plastered on every tabloid along with ridiculous headlines. It was good that Missy had extra security outside her room and that her parents were both by her bedside. A picture of her right now would make someone a millionaire overnight.

“You okay?”

She stared at the headlights as the beams cut through the night. “I had no idea they would go after my family like this.” The moonlight cast a subtle glow on Dean as he kept driving Hawk. “I’m used to this. Ever since my last hit movie everywhere I go I have people who recognize me and take pictures, ask for autographs… For the most part they left my family alone.”

“Your dad’s shotgun probably had something to do with that,” Dean said with a smirk as he remembered Kenneth proudly showing off his collection of guns.

“Probably. Mom only mentioned one time a reporter stopped in to try and get some dirt on us and Dad solved that problem really fast when he brought out his Colt.” Anne could only imagine how fast those reporters drove off their property. She was actually surprised that it didn’t end up in the papers.

"Turn right here," she told him as they neared an intersection.

In the darkness she could see a grin form on Dean’s face. "I know."

"How do you know where my house is? No, wait, don’t tell me. My mom showed you."

"You got it." Hawk hugged the road to the right. He slowed down until he saw her house and then his heart sank. There were mobs of people there. Vans, cars, kids on bikes, you name it. They were all there.

"Wow, I can’t even have some peace and quiet here.”

“You’re a big star, Anne. They are going to follow you everywhere.”

There were at least two police cars that made sure no one broke in. One reporter saw them and waved to the camera man to zoom in on them.

"Shit," Dean muttered as he slowed down and began to turn into her crowded driveway.

"We're staying at your house. We have the police to protect us and I already know the layout well and know how to keep us safe here. We'll go in the back way."

Anne looked at the crowd around her house. There would definitely be headlines tomorrow and at the moment she just really didn’t care. Her emotions were completely drained.

Dean inched Hawk slowly down the driveway as the reporters shoved the cameras and bright lights in her direction. They engulfed Hawk and he roared his engine to scare them off but it didn’t even faze them. The police removed the bright yellow barricade and let them in. Dean

drove the car to the end of the driveway and went around the other side to let her out. At once a flutter of lights went on and she had to look away from being blinded. They walked to the back door and Dean punched in the key code on the lock and opened the door. Anne ran inside and tried to catch her breath.

"I'm going to talk to the police and I'll be right back. Lock this door and don't unlock it for anyone."

His words really didn’t sink in and her legs felt wobbly as she placed her purse on the kitchen table. Taking her shoes off, she threw them in the corner. She plopped down in the chair and cradled her head. This was all such a nightmare. What had happened to cause Evan’s car to lose control like that? She should have been the one to pick up Missy but with Missy’s flight being delayed, there was no way she could have been in two places at once.

A chill went through her reminding her that she still had her dress on from earlier in the day. She dragged herself to the upstairs room and changed into a pair of pants and a blouse. Her stomach growled and she remembered she had not eaten since this morning. Did she even have anything to eat in the house? When she arrived last night she only had a glass of wine and this morning she rushed out to meet Cindy at the local diner.