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I let out a laugh. “The one time when I wished I didn’t have anyone staying here, I’ve got a full house. Or, I guess I should say, I’ve got full houses. I have one reservation that is checking in today, but the other guests either checked in earlier this morning or sometime yesterday.”
“I know it probably doesn’t seem like it, but that’s a good thing, Hanna. It just gets you one step closer to your goal,” she reasoned.
There was that.
Maybe if nothing else good happened in my life, I’d have that. Even if I didn’t get to where I wanted with my business, the fact that I had what I had here was already enough to be grateful for.
Before I could respond to Whitney, there was a knock at the door before it opened. I turned around, expecting—or possibly, hoping—to see Leo there.
He wasn’t.
But what I did see left me feeling a bit unsettled.
I stood, moved toward the door, and felt an odd sense of foreboding.
“You need to come with us.”
Those six words were all I needed to hear to know that something really bad had happened. My breathing grew shallow, my throat became painfully tight, and my belly was twisted in knots.
“What happened?”
As though I hadn’t had enough sympathetic looks passing between Whitney and me ever since she’d arrived, right then, I got another one.
It came from Ellery before she revealed, “It’s Leo. He’s been hurt.”
And with those five words, it was as though all the life had been sucked from my body. The only thing I felt was cold. Cold and fear.
“Oh, God,” I whispered. “Oh, God.”
Kane took that opportunity to share. “He’s alive, Hanna, but he’s in the ICU at Steel Ridge General right now. He’s in a coma.”
“Oh, God,” I repeated, feeling myself begin to panic.
“Hanna,” Ellery said. “Tell me what you need, so we can take you to the hospital.”
“Is he… is he going to survive?” I asked. “What happened to him?”
“We’ll tell you everything on the way,” Kane assured me. “But we need to get you in the car.”
I turned around, my horrified eyes searching for Whitney. Tears were welling in hers. “Go,” she urged quietly. “I’ll stay here until you get back.”
“Are you sure?” I rasped.
A tear escaped from her eye and rolled down her cheek. “Yes. Just go.”
Nodding my understanding, I turned around again and focused my attention on Kane. “Shoes, darling.”
“Right,” I said. But for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to move.
“I’ve got a pair of flip-flops here for you, Hanna,” Ellery declared, coming up beside me.
Feeling like I was having some kind of out-of-body experience, I glance down at the floor and saw the sandals there. I slipped my feet into them.
“Here’s her phone and handbag,” I heard Whitney announce.
“Okay, come on,” Ellery said, placing her hand on the middle of my back and urging me forward.
By some miracle—likely the fact that Kane and Ellery were flanking my sides—I managed to march forward out of the house and toward Kane’s truck. The next thing I knew, he was pulling out of the lot and racing to the hospital.
