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Kade Martinez was in her bed.
Surreal.
Kade, who’d turned down her stumbling invitation to their senior prom, and took the football quarterback instead.
Kade, who she’d loved since before she’d even understood what the emotion twisting through her chest meant.
The boy she’d run from.
“Mya?” His voice held a truckload of rasp, gravelly with disuse and sleep. The fact he immediately knew who she was should be a plus, but there’d been too many years for it to tease her hopes more than a tickle. “How’s the head, honey?”
“Manageable. I think I need something to eat and then to take some painkillers. I’ve got some OTC stuff in the bathroom.” She wiggled away from him, creating space between their bodies. His arm tightened at first, then relaxed, his forearm, then wrist, and finally, his large hand trailing across her ribs. “I was surprised to see you last night.”
And I don’t remember why you’re here. But we’ll ignore that for now.
“I’ve been in town a couple years.” The mattress moved as if he’d shrugged. “Didn’t know where you’d landed after school.” His hand slipped back around her waist, and he tugged slightly. “Let me see your face, Mya. See what the bruising looks like.”
“How am I here instead of the hospital?” She held her breath before letting it out in a rush. “I remember sitting on the ambulance, but really nothing past that.”
“You were talking a mile a minute but seemed coherent enough most of the time. It’s concerning you don’t remember now.” The tug came again, more insistent this time. “Come on, turn over, honey.”
Mya shifted to her back slowly, the movement waking more pain all through her body. Shoulders, arms, ribs, hips—it seemed like everything hurt right now. But her head was worst of all, pounding in time with her heartbeat, racing along at speed.
“Oh, Mya.” Kade’s eyes shifted, looking back and forth across her face before moving to take in the bruising across her chest. “You got slammed around but good.” He grimaced. “Well, bad, but you know what I mean. Let me look.” His hand drifted from her belly to her hips, and fresh goose bumps broke out on her arms when the chill air hit a span of flesh previously covered by her panties. “Yeah, hips too. You’re lucky you didn’t break anything.”
“Except my head. That seems pretty broken.” She flexed her fingers. “Everything’s sore. We weren’t even going that fast.”
“No, but the guy who hit you was. Well over the limit, both speed and alcohol. Cops took him in, and from the way they talked, he’s a frequent flier.” Kade’s head shook side to side. “How someone could put innocent people at risk like that is beyond me.”
“Addicts have a skewed sense of reality, and once they’re under the influence, their decision-making capabilities reflect that perception. He’s probably told everyone he knows that he’s fine, and he likely believed he was fine last night too.” In her practice, she saw the fallout from that kind of behavior all the time. “It’s hard to feel compassion, but as with any mental condition, the disruptive behavior is driven by the—sorry, that’s me going into lecture mode. Sorry.”
“No worries,” he said softly, his gaze drifting across her face again. His mouth twisted to the side. “I remember your daddy.”
“I try not to talk about him.” She softened the chastisement with a small smile. “Except to my therapist, of course.”
“You’re in medicine, right?” Kade shifted, folding an arm under his head, using his bicep as a pillow. “That’s what I read in the class newsletter, at least.”
“I’m a psychologist, yeah. And you’re in emergency medicine? I didn’t know that was an interest of yours.”
“It wasn’t back when. I was convinced I’d make it as a country music singer, but after a single year playing low-rent music in some of the roughest bars, I decided it wasn’t the gig for me.” The grin he gave her was wry. “EMT was easy enough to get into. Seemed like I was first on scene a lotta times, so I learned on my feet, so to speak. Got that certificate, and then I’ve added to the credentials through the years. I could work in an ER, but riding the bus fits me better.”
“How’d you wind up here?” It could have meant in her house or on the coast, and Mya didn’t care which way he took his answer. She just wanted to hear his voice. Slow and still tinged with a faint drawl, the tone of it was as comfortable as a warm blanket.
“After I got my little brother through school, there wasn’t much left for me in the hometown. All my buddies had left, and my best friend had been gone for years. That’s you, if you didn’t remember.” His lips shifted into a pink pout, then slid easily into another grin. “Riley joined the military. He went into the Navy, and it’s been good for him. Gave him the structure he’d been lacking.”
Mya remembered the Martinez house as a place of refuge, but she knew the surface could be very different from reality. Take my own childhood home as an example.
“Your mom?” She didn’t need to ask about his dad. Mr. Martinez had died their freshman year.
“She passed a couple years ago.” Kade didn’t hide the grief that settled on his features, brow pulling together into a dark frown, mouth downturned with the pain. “Was a blessing when she went.”
“Doesn’t change how much it hurts, though.” Mya closed her eyes. “Daddy’s been gone for years, and Mom only lasted a few months past that. She’d been hurting so long, I couldn’t hold her responsible when she decided to end things.”
“God, Mya. I didn’t know that was how it went down.” His palm settled on her belly, a warm weight that reassured her. “I’m so sorry about your mom. That’s a hard thing to live through.”
“Thanks. I’ve come to understand. Like I said, it doesn’t change how much it still has the power to hurt, though.” Blowing out a breath made her flinch, and she lifted her head, staring down her body. She thought the bruising might look worse than it had only half an hour ago, and she now saw the stripe of blue across her lower belly. “This is all from the seat belt, right?”
“Yeah, and your head is from first smacking the inside of the car and then falling from nearly a meter up when you unbuckled the belt. That wasn’t the smartest thing to do, FYI. We were right there when I saw you fall. Another ten seconds, and we’d have been able to get you out in a way that wouldn’t have caused additional pain.”
