Heart Trouble (16 page)

“Thanks for the information.”

Erin had made about five steps toward the stairwell when she stopped and turned around, checking the corridor again for any sign of a Rembert family member. “Say, Mindy. Can I ask you a strange question?”

“Sure, fire away.”

Erin licked her lips, trying to decide how to ask what she wanted to know. “You see people…connect strongly over traumatic experiences all the time, right?”

Mindy’s forehead pinched. “You mean like a trauma bond? That sort of thing?”

“Well, no, nothing quite that psychologically extreme or twisted. I just mean more…intimately.” Erin raised her eyebrows, hoping she’d get her meaning.

“Ah, I see.” Mindy’s eyes softened, and she smiled. “Happens all the time up here. Not actual intercourse, mind you. That’s too dangerous, but people still try on occasion. The other stuff, yes. I’ve even had couples renew their wedding vows before surgery. One guy proposed to his girlfriend after she had a faulty heart valve repaired. They’d been dating for
six years
.”

“Do you think the circumstances make the emotion any less real?”

“Not at all. In fact, I believe it makes it that much more genuine. More heartfelt, if you’ll pardon the bad pun.” Mindy shrugged. “And I find it very sweet, but I’m a big ol’ softy when it comes to romance and grand gestures.”

Erin nodded, her mind chewing on what Mindy said. Was she doing it again, trying to apply medical logic to her intense attraction to Sean? Probably. Her disappointment made her reach for explanations or excuses, justifications. It sharpened memories into razor blades.

Sean had stayed with her out of the necessity to catch a killer. Those weren’t normal circumstances. Did that make all the things that happened between them during that time any less meaningful? Did it even matter anymore?

She’d screwed things up with him, and it was over. He didn’t care for her as much as she did for him, otherwise he would’ve made contact. His anger and resentment were so potent he hadn’t even bothered to pick up his clothes and things. She needed to accept that they were finished and move on. The hurt would go away, eventually. Maybe.

She heard a door open and close down the hallway, and she snapped back into the moment.

“I gotta run,” she said, darting in the direction of the stairwell.

“Want me to tell them you checked in?” Mindy asked behind her.

“No, but thanks for the info.”

* * * *

Sean rode the elevator up to the fifth floor of the hospital, an extra-large cup of coffee in his hand and today’s newspaper tucked under his arm. He was relieving Caleb and Olivia so they could go home and get a decent night’s rest. He’d forgotten what that felt like since he’d left Erin’s place, thus the reason for the giant-ass overdose of caffeine.

Thinking about her made him grouchy and uncomfortable, though. Couple all that with the hospital’s stiff chairs and freezing temperatures, and he’d be ready to climb its sterile walls in a few hours.

You’re a real asshole, comparing thoughts of Erin to a fucking chair. A mean asshole who needs his butt kicked into next week.

Yeah, his conscience was having a nonstop field day over the way he’d handled himself in the wee hours of Sunday morning. He was still upset that she hadn’t told him his father was on the verge of a heart attack, but she didn’t deserve the way he’d treated her. It was cruel and thoughtless, and now he’d ruined any shot he had at making amends. Who wanted to be with someone who yelled at them and behaved so irrationally? Someone who said nasty things to hurt them because they were hurting too?

Nobody, you heartless dick.

“Fuck.” Sean plowed a hand through his hair in self-disgust and stepped out of the elevator once it glided to a stop and the doors pinged open.

There was a lot of activity in his father’s room when he got there, nurses milling around his bed, busily unhooking him from the machines.

When he looked to Olivia for an explanation, she burst out laughing and rose from her chair to walk over to where he stood. She tried to fuss with his hair, but Sean jerked his head back. “That’s a cute look for you—disheveled and mopey, with big purple caverns under your eyes. Think you might shave soon, or is a full beard part of the vagrant look too?”

“Go away, Livvie,” he grumbled.

“Done.” She slung her purse strap over her shoulder. “I have an early class tomorrow, but Mom said she’d be here by seven to relieve you.”

“What about Travis?”

“He’s got court. Dad won’t let him postpone.”

Sean aimed a pointed look his father’s way. “Imagine that.”

“I don’t need full-time babysitters,” his dad said sharply, followed by a ripe curse when the nurse flushed his IV line with cold saline solution.

“Then stop acting like such a baby. It’s not like you just had open-heart surgery or something,” Olivia teased before she kissed him on the forehead. “See you both tomorrow.”

“Bye, sweetheart.”

“We’re moving him to a private room,” one of the nurses explained, even though he’d sort of put that together for himself at that point. “So don’t get too comfortable.” She winked when he glanced at the baby-shit-yellow vinyl chair in the corner of his dad’s room.

“Like that would ever happen,” he muttered. “Where’s Caleb?”

“He left a few minutes ago. I’m surprised you didn’t pass him on your way in,” his dad said. He could’ve run smack into his brother, and he wouldn’t have known it. His mind had been somewhere else.

Despite the nurse’s playful warning, Sean sat down and finished off his cold coffee while they readied Tom to be moved. He flipped open the paper, scanning the print for the latest article regarding the hunt for the Riverside Rapist.

The Jacksonville Police Department has few clues, the headline read, and no suspects. Didn’t he know it.

They’d run another small picture of Courtney Meldon with the article. She was smiling for the camera, a ray of blonde sunshine and hopeful dreams, all of it ripped away far too soon.

Seeing the picture brought forth a fresh wave of worry over Erin.

Luke was a damned good cop, and Sean trusted him and the other members of their team to look after her, protect her, just as competently as he would. Maybe more so since he’d been letting other parts of his body interfere with his duties as a cop. But then again, caring deeply about someone made the desire to keep them safe that much stronger.

And fucking hell, he missed her. Except now, it was worse than he’d ever imagined, because there was finality to the way things had ended between them, thanks to him. No shot at a future. No chance of seeing her to end the ache. He was planning to use the excuse of picking up his duffel bag from her apartment, but it had been delivered to the fifth-floor nurses’ station yesterday by someone. Erin, he guessed. That sent a clear signal to stay away. She was over it. Moving on. Here’s your shit, I’m done with you.

Because you’re a harsh, judgmental asshole.

Sean tossed the newspaper aside.

He could stalk her in the hospital. It wasn’t like he didn’t know where to find her. All he had to do was ride the elevator down to the first floor, poke around the emergency room. She typically worked nights. Those were her favorite shifts, she’d said. Busier, more crazies, better cases, and the time flew by. He stood up before he realized he was acting like one of those lunatics.

Christ.

Maybe there was some truth to what she said the first night they spent together.

“Sometimes after intense emotional experiences people crave…sex.”

He’d wanted her so badly he’d thought he might need to handcuff himself to a piece of furniture to keep from barging into her bedroom. And then there she was, standing at the foot of the couch, like he’d wished her there, watching him. Making his heart stop. She was so beautiful and sexy.

She’d tried her best to explain away their deep attraction to one another, justify the strength of the pull between them. He’d been taken aback by what she’d said, and yes, a little ruffled by it too, but it was more a hit to his ego than anything else. Especially when he’d known the logic was bullshit. Desire had been an electrical current zinging from her body to his and back again, over and over. The attraction had started the instant they touched in Blue.

He’d heard stories of people craving sex after funerals, but that was more of a life-affirming event. Because you needed to feel connected to a living, breathing human being, to feel alive and whole again after such a traumatic event. Their experience hadn’t been…

Shit
. The man who collapsed in the bar, Henry. Sean had forgotten he’d almost died. Would have died had it not been for Erin’s quick actions.

“I was terrified,”
she’d confessed afterward.

So perhaps—

“Son, what’s wrong with you?” his dad asked with a scowl. “You’re mumbling and pacing a hole in the floor.”

“Nothing. Just wound a little tight tonight, that’s all.”
Thinking too hard and too much.

“Then lay off the coffee.”

Sean grinned at his dad’s surliness. “You’re just pissed you can’t have any yet.”

His dad eyed the nurses. “If my children loved me, they’d smuggle me some in.”

One of the nurses snorted. “If your children love you, which I’m certain they do, they’ll help wean you off the caffeine.”

“Bite your tongue, woman,” his dad said.

Sean rolled his eyes. His dad was being cooperative, considering, but the longer he stayed in the hospital, the more ornery he was going to get.

They transferred him to a wheelchair for the trip to his new room.

“He’s moving to 525, and we’re going to bathe him once we get him to the room,” the little redheaded nurse told Sean. Beside her, his dad wiggled his eyebrows and Sean squelched a groan. “If you want to hang out in the visitors’ lounge at the end of the hall or run an errand, I can call you when we’re done.”

“I’ll be around,” Sean muttered.

Chapter Fifteen

Instead of lounging, Sean paced some more, up and down the halls, until one of the nurses gave him a look that said he needed to plant it somewhere or leave. So he chose option number two.

He rode the elevator down to the main floor of the hospital, navigating the maze of corridors until he found signs pointing him to the ER. When he got there, he sat down in a corner of the crowded lobby and just watched people come and go. Sick people. Really sick people, with cuts they’d temporarily bandaged themselves and swollen ankles they’d wrapped in bags of ice or frozen vegetables. Cranky, red-faced babies with high fevers and kids with bone-shaking coughs and snotty noses. Outside the windows, red lights flashed and sirens wailed, then died as ambulances pulled into an unseen bay around the corner to drop off more desperately ill or broken people.

It was like waves crashing against a shoreline, one right after another, different sizes and strengths. Unrelenting and depressing as hell too. But the longer Sean sat and observed, the more he understood Erin. It had to be draining to work here. Physically and mentally exhausting, grating on her nerve endings until they were raw and exposed. Some days she might even be bled dry when it was over—the walking dead.

No wonder she loved mindless television so much.
“Reality shows,”
she’d told him one night while they were tangled up on her couch,
“are the furthest things from actual reality.”

“Such a misnomer,”
she’d said with a quiet laugh, and he’d agreed, not thinking much beyond the obvious and her soft, warm, distracting body curled around his.

She knew what reality looked like, and it wasn’t pretty. It was right here in all of its bloody, feverish, contagious, pain-filled glory.

But this was her life force too. Helping people, saving lives, was where she drew her strength. It fed her soul as much as it wore her down. He’d seen it that night in the bar with Henry, the way she’d shut out all the surrounding chaos, determined to see a stranger live to see another day.

Just for the briefest of moments when the paramedics had shocked Henry’s heart back into a rhythm, there’d been a spark of triumph in Erin’s eyes. Sean had seen it and felt an overwhelming rush of awe, a strange sort of gratitude that he’d been there to witness what had happened, despite the dire circumstances.

Then when the paramedics had rolled her temporary patient away, she’d seemed almost lost, as if a part of her had followed them out the door, not exactly trusting they would take good enough care of Henry. And later that night she’d called to check on him, to make sure he was still doing okay.

Her parents’ deaths haunted her dreams and pushed her when she was awake. She knew her purpose, and that was more than he could say for a lot of people. Hell, there were days Sean questioned his own drive. If she was 100 percent devoted to her calling, then she was to be admired for it, not questioned or hassled, which he was guilty of doing.

The night they’d met she’d told him her job was hard for others to handle, namely the men she’d dated in the past. She’d cited the hours, the exhaustion, and the differences in salaries. What she hadn’t mentioned was her devout dedication to the job itself. Because it wasn’t just a career for her. It wasn’t about the money or the accolades. It was a major part of who she was, as if the desire to heal or help had been passed down through her father’s DNA.

Loving Erin meant accepting the fact that he would not always come first in her life. That there would be days and nights she would be an empty shell when she came home, incapable of conversation or comprehension, perhaps even sensation. None of that knowledge tempered his desire for her one iota.

“Sean?”

He snapped out of his reverie when he heard his name. Tess was approaching from across the crowded room, her pretty features etched with concern. “Is something wrong? Are you hurt?”

He held up a hand. “No, no, I’m fine.”

“Oh.” The worry vanished from her expression. A coolness took its place, and rightly so. He’d hurt her friend. Her loyalties lay with Erin’s emotional welfare, not his. “Then what are you doing here?”