Road Rage (18 page)

After several beautiful, quiet seconds, he whispered her name and brushed kisses over her face. Moisture on her cheeks told her she was weeping.

“Don’t cry, baby girl,” he said. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

“Don’t let go,” she said. “When dawn comes, don’t let go. I won’t leave you again.”

“I won’t let go, sweetheart. You’re mine now.”

As he smoothed her tears away with his thumbs, she noticed the gray circles under his eyes. Her own problems vanished in the face of his exhaustion. “You need to sleep.”

“No. I won’t lose any time with you.”

“You can’t keep this up.”

He exhaled, clearly knowing he’d reached his limit.

She wiggled out from under him and clicked off the light. He didn’t protest as she guided him to lie down, and stretched alongside him. Darkness and Derek’s scent surrounded her, along with his strong arms.

“You’re right,” he said. “I need sleep, but I won’t let go. I promise.” Keeping one arm around her, he set his alarm for a few minutes before five AM. “I hate this.” He settled beside her, tucking her against him like a treasure. “We never have enough time.”

“Whatever we have, it’ll have to be enough,” she said, her fingers stroking his forearm.

“It’ll never be enough,” he murmured, already half asleep.

The sound of his steady breathing created a soothing rhythm with the tingly caress of his breath over her hair. It was almost peaceful. But she would never be completely at peace until she knew the coming dawn wouldn’t rip her away from the one place she truly belonged.

* * * *

Derek buried his nose in the cool silk of DG’s hair. Her melon scent curled around him and conspired with his sated body to drag him into oblivion. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay with his woman, wanted to make love to her again. Once was not enough. A thousand times wouldn’t be enough.

But she was right. He couldn’t keep this up. He needed some serious shut-eye, even if the thought of going to sleep filled him with dread.

“Every time I close my eyes, I have bad dreams,” he said, fighting the inevitable.

“I’ll watch over you.” Her voice was a soothing balm.

He knew she would wake him from the nightmares when he had them again, but that wasn’t the issue. The first nightmare, the one where he relived the accident from last Friday, always caused a dark feeling he had trouble naming in the pit of his stomach. And the other one, the one where he worked in vain to save the older man, that one left him feeling so damn empty he could hardly breathe. DG would wake him, but not before the nightmares did their worst. He didn’t think his psyche could take any more, and he knew his body needed hours of uninterrupted sleep.

The dreams were breaking him. And poor DG was his only salvation. He hated being a burden to her. He should be her rock, not the other way around.

Sleep crept up on him even though he resisted. He felt himself falling into that place where a person could never be sure what was real or imagined.

Blackness gave way to a floating, twisted knot of living, pulsing matter. He recoiled from it, disgusted, even as his mind gave it a name. Guilt. The thing in the pit of his stomach he had yet to fully acknowledge.

“It was me.” He didn’t know if he’d said it out loud or just in the dream. “I caused the accident.”

The knot pulsed with approval. It swelled before him, but he also felt a sickening pressure in his gut, like the knot existed within him and this glimpse was just a projection. Its sides ballooned until he feared they’d rupture and poison would flood his system. The thought made him sick, but he knew it had to happen. Like puking: once it was over, he’d feel better. Then he could forget about the accident and the guilt.

The memory of yanking the wheel of his truck to cut off the little Honda assaulted him. The knot had grown painfully large, pushing at the walls of his stomach.

“I was an asshole. I hurt somebody.”

“It’s okay,” DG said, stroking his hair. She probably thought he was dreaming again. Maybe he was.

“No. It’s not. I did bad. I really hurt somebody.” Sickening, pulsing pain radiated to his limbs from that frigging knot.

“Then you need to make it right.”

Horror crashed over him as her words penetrated. He startled awake. A layer of sweat had chilled his skin. The full weight of what he had done on Friday sank in. Shame made his face flame and seared the knot into a lump of hard coal that would sit heavy in his gut forever.

So much for getting it to rupture and disappear. That would have been too easy. He didn’t deserve easy. He deserved to suffer.

“Derek?” DG smoothed away the sweat on his brow. “Are you okay?”

He shook his head. He wouldn’t be okay until he made it right, like DG said, and maybe not even then. He turned to her and stared at her figure in the dark, terrified by what he knew he had to do.

“Derek.” Her voice turned urgent. She cried out in pain. She coughed as if she were choking.

He turned on the light to find her clutching at her throat. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she coughed. “My head hurts. I can’t breathe.”

He reached for her, but his hands didn’t connect with her shoulders. He blinked hard to clear his vision, because what he saw couldn’t possibly be. She was transparent.

“DG! Baby, what’s happening?”

She tried to speak, but could only cough. Her face turned red. Her eyes flew wide. Terror pulled her face taut. She reached for him with one hand while her other scratched pink furrows into her throat.

“DG!” He grabbed for her, but his hands came up empty.

She faded into mist. Her coughing drifted into nothingness. Faintly, he heard her choke out, “I’m not ready to go.”

Then there was nothing left of her.

He clawed at the covers, searching in vain for his dream girl. He launched out of bed, his hands swiping at the air. “DG! Where are you? Come back. Come back!”

Only silence answered him.

He wheeled around to stare at the bed while his pulse pounded in his ears. She didn’t reappear. The clock read 11:47.

His knees hit the floor. DG was gone.

She’d woken him from his nightmares with more than just pleasure. She’d told him she loved him. And he’d never told her he felt the same way about her.

Chapter 13

A woman’s voice faded in and out with the throbbing pain crushing DG’s entire head. “Camilla? Cami? Oh, honey, come back to me, please.” The voice was familiar, and too loud. The light pushing at her closed eyelids was too sharp.

A whimper climbed her throat and got stuck. She choked. Her body convulsed as she fought for air.

“Yes, hello? Hello? Cami’s waking up. She’s waking up! She’s in pain. Please hurry!” She recognized the voice she’d heard in the fog when she’d been trying to get back to Derek.

“I’ll be right there, Mrs. Arlington.” Another voice, staticky and small.

“Oh, Cami sweetheart, hang on,” the first voice said.
Cami
meant nothing to her, but
sweetheart
did. She was Derek’s sweetheart. His DG. The pain could not rip her in two as long as she had an identity.

Hands on her shoulders tried to restrain her, but they were tentative and therefore didn’t belong to Derek. She fought them.

Noise bombarded her in a rush of urgent voices and the rattle of wheels over tile. More hands restrained her, not tentatively.

She fought those as well, still choking, dying.

Someone pried one of her eyes open and blinded her with needles of light. An authoritative female voice said, “Stop fighting the tube, Cami. You need it to help you breathe. You’ve been in an accident. Squeeze my hand if you understand.”

She squeezed the cool hand gripping hers, not sure why she obeyed. These people…they were killing her. Where was Derek? She tried to ask and only choked more.

“Cami, I need you to calm down.” The no-nonsense voice sounded clear and close to her ear. “You’re in the hospital. You’re hurt very badly. You need to calm down so you don’t hurt yourself worse.”

The words
hospital
and
hurt
registered. She forced herself to relax in stages. Air filled her lungs.

Is Derek coming?
She wanted to ask, but the air-giving tube prevented it.

He’d said he wouldn’t let go, but he must have, because she’d been ripped away from him again, just not by the fog this time.

Agony at the forced separation burned her from the inside out. She scrunched up her face with the empty ache, only to have pain scour her cheeks and forehead, her left eye and ear, her scalp.

“You have to relax, Cami. Please try to remain calm.” Someone Velcro’d a blood pressure cuff around her arm. Other hands were on her, too, and other people spoke nearby, but she focused on the calm voice. “Your face is bruised, and you have some stitches. I need you to try to keep still. You won’t be able to talk, but we’ll bring you a pad and a pencil so you can communicate. I’ll answer all your questions, but first I’m going to examine you. Can you open your eye on your own?”

Eye? Not eyes? That didn’t sound good. She tried to breathe through the impossible sense of loss, and focused on opening her “eye.” The right one opened a crack. She slammed it shut again as angry sparks of light stabbed through to her brain.

“Good, Cami. That’s really good. You other eye is swollen. You won’t be able to open it just yet. You were in a car accident. We’re taking care of you here at Mercy Med. I’m Dr. Grant. Squeeze my hand if you understand.”

She obeyed the voice, because it brooked no argument.

“The pain should be better now. I’ve increased your morphine drip. Squeeze my hand if your pain is tolerable. Let go of my hand if your pain is bad.”

She squeezed, grateful the pain was fading.

The next hour was both grounding and terrifying. She’d been in a coma for four days, they told her. She’d had part of her skull removed to allow for swelling. Her name was Cami.

Once she started remembering, she couldn’t stop. She saw that white tailgate again, too close. Way too close. She heard the groan of buckling metal, the crash of breaking glass. She relived the surge of terror until her skin flashed with cold sweats.

It had happened again. She’d had another accident.

As the last nurse left her room, she tried to sit up, an important question doing battle with her blasted breathing tube.

“Don’t try to talk, sweetie,” the auburn-haired woman she began to remember as her mother said. “Easy, easy does it.”

She made frantic hand motions, wanting the promised pad and pen.

Her mother fished in her purse and finally put a pen in her hand. She smoothed an old receipt out on the bed.

Cami wrote on it,

Was anyone else hurt?

Her mother shook her head, her lips quirking despite sad eyes that remembered a time when smiles had been impossible. “Just like you, sweetheart, always thinking of others. Two other cars were involved, but other than some mild whiplash, everyone else is okay.” Her voice faltered at the end. A tear slid down her cheek, and she discretely blotted it with a tissue from her purse.

Her chest relaxed a fraction to know no one had died, even as her heart ached with eight-year-old guilt. She’d been driving then, too. It had been raining, and her father had been in the passenger seat. They were coming home from a daddy-daughter date. Pizza and a movie. His last words to her had been, “Don’t rush it, sweetheart. Merge when you’re ready.” She hadn’t listened, had rolled her eyes at his overreacting hand clenched on the armrest. She’d been impatient. She’d been eighteen and invincible.

Focused on the car she’d be slipping behind, she’d clipped the bumper of the car in her blind spot. The wheel jerked in her hands, and she’d overcompensated by yanking it in the other direction. They’d spun out of control. Her world had changed. She was not invincible. Neither was her father.

She closed her eyes against the fresh wave of remorse. When she opened them, she picked up the pen again and wrote,

I’m a menace. I’m never driving again.