Sound Proof (Save Me #5) (8 page)

My house is empty. Completely empty and silent except for Duke and I and the noises we make. I’m still not used to it and I’m not sure I like it. I’m used to chaos, it’s something I thrive on when the girls are here. With both girls gone for the weekend, I feel like I am going to go insane.

It took Sage less than two minutes to convince Willow to stay with her at Max’s for the weekend, even though she didn’t want to. With Liam, Willow’s father, being away for work this weekend, she had planned on just hanging around the house. That is until Sage turned on the waterworks and begged for her to come so she wouldn’t be alone.

Neither one of the girls like being apart very much. Other than when Willow goes to her dad’s, Sage is usually right under her feet, trying to be just like her. So when she started bawling yesterday because she wouldn’t have anyone to play with, because Daddy is always working even when she is there, Willow caved and packed a bag.

Honestly, it’s lonely without all the movement around me. I don’t have anyone to take care of, no one to pay attention to, and don’t need to worry about missing anything because I can’t hear if they need something and my receivers are off.

I drop my head against my arms and rest them on the table. The stacks of papers in front of me, spread all across the table, have been taunting me for days now. I pick them up, knowing exactly what I need to do, but can’t seem to make myself do it and shove them back into the folder. Twelve years together, nine years of marriage, gone as soon as I sign them. The only things left to remind me of what we had together are some photos, memories, and one very confused little girl.

Taking a deep breath, I grab the pen for probably the hundredth time today and pull all the papers toward me. I have to push myself this time. Have to make myself sign them. Not just for me, but for Willow and Sage as well. I refuse to let girls think that being treated like this is how a relationship is supposed to be, because it isn’t and I know that. If I was being honest with myself, I would have figured out what was going on a long time ago and left then.

Just as I put the pen to the first signature line, Duke jumps up from where he was lying on the floor and rushes for the door. I get up and follow him when someone knocks at the door. As soon as my hand hits the doorknob, Duke skids back and sits about two feet away from me. I pull the door back and come face to face with two somber looking police officers and my senses instantly go on high alert.

“Payton Kinsley?” one of them asks. I can’t do anything but nod because I can’t find my voice. “Your husband is Maxwell Kinsley?”

I take a deep breath and brace myself for what they are here for. “Since you interrupted me signing my divorce papers just now, yes, technically he is. Why?”

Both men exchange glances before turning back to me. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the second officer says, hanging his head. His chest expands with a deep breath as he raises his head. “I’m sorry, but your family has been in a car accident and have been admitted to the hospital.”

Without even thinking I grab my keys from the hook beside me and rush out of the house without even bothering to close the door. Thankfully, when I look back at the house in the mirror as I’m tearing out of the driveway, I see that they have closed the door and are following behind me.

The drive to the hospital takes me twenty-seven minutes. Twenty-seven minutes of not knowing how bad anything is because I didn’t stick around long enough for the officers to tell me what happened. Twenty-seven minutes of hell in my head because my mind drifts to the worst possibility. I spent enough time sitting in backed up Nashville traffic to text Liam, my parents, Max’s parents, and oddly, AJ.

I shove my phone into my pocket and run through the emergency room doors. I rush to the nurses’ station and slap my hands against the counter.

“I’m Payton Kinsley and I was told my family was in an accident and brought here.”

The nurse grabs a clipboard and starts scanning names. Coming from around the desk, she motions for me to follow her and tells me to have a seat while she gets a doctor. I drop down into the hard plastic chair, my legs bouncing and I can’t seem to stop the tears. When she finally comes back, she reaches out for my hand and I don’t hesitate sliding mine into it and trailing behind her. We stop next to an older doctor and she squeezes my hand before walking away and leaving me alone with him.

Without me even having to ask him what happened, he turns to me and starts explaining what happened. I miss a lot of it because the second he tells me that Willow was driving I can’t think straight.

Willow driving.

Sage up front.

Max drunk in the back.

Both girls in surgery.

It’s like my mind only picked up on the worst parts and I start to stumble back. I start to fall as my entire world comes crashing down on me, but the second I think I might hit the ground, a pair of strong arms surround me and pull me back up. As fast as I can, I spin around and tangle myself around AJ, sobbing against his chest. He pulls me into him, holding me close, like he knows I’m breaking and he’s the glue trying to hold me together. I feel his breath filtering through my hair as he talks to the doctor but can’t stop crying long enough to pay attention to what they are saying.

I don’t know how long we stand there like that after the doctor leaves. It could be minutes or it could be days, but it felt like years. I swear I aged thirty years in a matter of thirty seconds today. At some point, AJ backs us against a wall and slides down it. Pulling me into his lap, he continues to try and calm me down. Nothing is working, it’s all a blur of emotion and I don’t think any of it will make any sense until I’m able to see my girls.

My ass is numb and my heart is broken, but I wouldn’t move right now if my life depended on it. At some point in the past hour and a half Payton managed to pass out on my chest from all the crying. I know she will be mad at me for letting her sleep, but crying so hard it makes you sick isn’t good. That’s exactly what she would be doing if I woke her up too.

She didn’t even so much as move when her family showed up. Her father has been eyeing me since he sat down in the chair across from us but her mother won’t make eye contact with anyone. He watches as my hand drifts up and down his daughters back in slow soothing strokes as I tell them as much as I know. I watch this big man, this tough as nails looking guy, break when I relay what the doctors told us. I try my best to talk him out of finding Max and killing him, even though that’s exactly what I’ve felt like doing since I found out he’s still breathing and is somewhere in this building.

The only thing that keeps him rooted to his spot in the hall is the doctor walking up to us. I shake Payton a bit, trying to wake her up. As soon as she opens her eyes they fill with tears again and she springs off my lap, but pulls me with her the second she sees the doctor. I wrap my arm around her waist and pull her up against me so she doesn’t feel like she’s in this alone. If my mind wasn’t so preoccupied with what is going on with the girls, I would probably be overanalyzing all the reasons that Payton is letting me touch and hold her.

“Willow’s out of surgery and is headed to recovery,” the doctor says when Payton finally looks at him and calms down enough to hear him. “When the cars hit, something broke and ripped through her left quad muscle. She’s going to end up with some nerve damage there and a nasty scar, but she’s lucky, if it had been any farther over she could have lost her leg. Other than that, it’s all pretty minor stuff. She broke her collarbone, a few fingers and had some glass embedded in the side of her face. The rest is just bumps and bruises and cuts. She was conscious when the EMT’s arrived on scene and was lucid enough to tell us what happened and where to find you. Those are all good things.”

Payton sags back into me a bit. I squeeze her hip as she reaches up and wipes her eyes. “What about Sage?” she whispers.

The doctor takes a deep breath, like he has to prepare himself for what he’s about to say, and that puts us all on edge.

“Sage has been touch and go for a bit and is still in surgery and will be considered high risk for a while. She was in the front seat, wasn’t in a booster seat, and her airbag didn’t deploy.” He shakes his head and swallows hard before continuing. “Where she’s so small the seat belt wasn’t properly secured for her size causing her to be launched into the windshield. She has an orbital fracture, four broken ribs, and her right lung collapsed. Her shoulder is dislocated and has to be reset and she needs 3 pins in her ankle. She also ended up losing a lot of blood and is being transfused while in surgery.”

Payton’s hands cover her mouth as she tries to stifle back her sobs. “Wh- when can I… are they going to be…” She can’t seem to get what she wants to say out, so I take over for her.

“When can she see the girls? And are they going to be all right?”

“Willow should be waking up soon, you can see her as soon as they move her into a room. As for Sage, it’s hard to say but I’ll come find you as soon as I have an update.”

He starts to turn away but Payton’s father speaks up, his voice booming through the empty hallway. “What about that son-of-a-bitch, Max? And the person that pulled out in front of them?”

The doctor’s face clouds over with the mention of Max and he grinds his teeth together. “He’s downstairs cuffed to his bed,” he bites out. “All he ended up with is a broken wrist and some cuts. As for the other person… she isn’t much older than Willow, seventeen I think. She was awake when they were pulling her out and she told them she’s only had her license for a few weeks. She went to stop at the light and hit the wrong pedal. The way they hit, it totaled her car and crushed both of her legs and pelvis. Her surgeon doesn’t think she’s going to walk again. I’ll come get you in just a bit.”

Payton pulls herself away from me for the first time since I walked in and kept her from falling to the floor. Her father reaches out, grabbing onto the back of her shirt and signs something to her. Her hands move a mile a minute but she talks at the same time so at least I know what she’s saying.
I really need to learn to sign.

“Where the hell do you think I’m going, Dad? I’m going downstairs to make sure Max is all right… and then I’m going to kill him. I’m going to make sure he has every single wound he caused my daughters. And then I’m going to cut his dick off because he’d be fine with all those injuries as long as that damn thing still worked!”

She spins around and marches out of my sight with her mother hot on her heels. Her father sighs beside me and shakes his head.

“Should we go after her?” I ask.

“He’s probably got a guard outside of his room. She won’t be able to touch him even if they do let her in the room.”

I nod and make my way back to the chairs and sit. I pull my phone from my pocket and text Abby, letting her know what’s going on since I rushed out of her house like my ass was on fire. A pair of huge Redwings step into my view as soon as I hit send and I tilt my head up.

“You’re him aren’t you?” her dad grunts. “The drummer guy…”

I stand back up and reach out to introduce myself. “Yeah, that’s me. My name’s Andrew, but please just call me AJ.”

“Roger,” he says, squeezing my hand a bit too tightly. After he drops heavily back into the chair on the opposite side of the hall, he stares at me. “Tell me the truth, because my daughter refuses to talk about anything. Are you why she left Max, or did she actually walk in on him with her secretary?”

I squirm uncomfortably in my seat. “Sir, what you saw today is the most touching I’ve done to your daughter. For the past year and a half she’s worked her way into my heart, but as much as I want to, I haven’t attempted anything with her. I won’t lie to you, though. I flirt shamelessly with her as much as I can, and given the opportunity, yeah, I would be with her in a heartbeat. But I would never attempt to break up her marriage. Now that she’s home, if she decides she wants to go back, I won’t stop her. I won’t like it, but I wouldn’t interfere.”

Roger nods slowly before dropping his head against the wall. “The girls seem to like you too. I may have done some Googling to find out more about you. What I saw, though, doesn’t impress me, and it doesn’t sound like what just came out of your mouth.”

I choke out a forced laugh. “That damn Google is the bane of my existence.” He chuckles right along with me, and I’m glad, at least for a moment, that I have his mind in a better place than it was a few minutes ago. “You’re right. I haven’t always been like this. I lived on the road, had the status, the money, and everything else going for me that a random chick would want for a few hours and I didn’t even have to use the degree I have. Except Payton. Very few women put me in my place, but she’s one of them. She deserves to have everything she wants, so do Willow and Sage.”

“I guess someone taught you right.” He leans forward and rest his elbows on his thighs.

“Yes, sir.” I nod and look down the hall, hoping Payton comes back soon because this conversation is getting too personal for my liking. “My parents have been married for almost forty years. My father taught me that if you want a woman to stick around, you gotta treat her like platinum and one thing you don’t do, is cheat.”

He cuts me off quickly when he sees Payton and her mom rush back up the hall.

“Fuckers,” Payton mutters, sliding into the chair next to me. “Wouldn’t even let me in the room. But that asshole could scream out at me how Sage getting hurt is all Willow’s fault. He’s lucky they wouldn’t let me in because I’d be in jail right now.”

We all sit back and let Payton rant, because it’s a hell of a lot better than watching her cry. I know the tears will be back soon, probably as soon as she sees one of the girls, or the doctor comes out with another update, so we don’t stop her. I do, however, slide my arm around the back of her chair and relish in the feeling of having her this close to me while we wait for the news on Willow and Sage.