Calamity Rayne II: Back Again Read online

  Tyler liked to shoot out random doubt bullets, little ballistic, heat-seeking reality checks that knocked me on my ass from time to time. I hated when I started questioning things. I was not what one would call a heavy thinker. But when I hit thirty I went on a soul-searching adventure to shake up my life. Lots of heavy conundrums since then.

  Working for Remington Davenport was my version of Jack Kerou-acing across the country on someone else’s dollar. Okay, maybe Jack Kerou-acing wasn’t the right term. The Davenport lifestyle was galaxies away from roughing it in the woods. But there had been some soul-searching and it turned out, I’m actually pretty complicated.

  Not that I’d invested my time in anything as extreme as ending world hunger or solving global warming. We’re talking strictly about girl problems. I’ve been inflicted by all of them—the butterflies, the strange twitterpated sensations one gets when near a certain someone, the gawky misfortunes that happen regardless of how hard I tried to imitate class and grace. Simply put, I was a fucking disaster, a steaming, hot mess. A calamity—thus the nickname. It’d been a rough haul…

  I typically got a kick out of four-letter words, but love was a new one in my vocabulary. Sometimes kids said shit, fuck, dick, twat, or piss without knowing what the words actually meant. Grown-ups had a habit of tossing out the word love without ever really knowing the actual definition first hand.

  Me, I was one of those grown-ups—until recently.

  Hale loved me. All of me. And I loved him. We were L-O-V-E sitting in a tree and I wanted the world to know that I’d finally found someone. Aside from Elle, there weren’t many who could tolerate my weird quirks. Hale, Elle, Tyler, and my mom did not scare easily. They were my people for that very reason.

  Remington should probably be lumped into that tolerant clump. I mean, there had to be some reason he hired me. I was easily the worst personal assistant on the planet, no business acumen, zero typing skills, the attention span of a gnat, and the grace of a goat… But those Davenports loved me. And I loved them.

  My hand closed around Elle’s, drawing comfort from the warmth of her fingertips. I wanted to shake her, demand she wake up and look at me. I wanted someone to tell me this would all be okay, but those guarantees weren’t coming and I was stuck in this silent room trying my best not to break.

  It had never been so hard to put on a brave face, but I forced the words out, needing to hear some sort of reassurance. “It’ll be fine.”

  “Did you get to talk to the doctor?” Tyler asked.

  “Yeah.” Anxiety made my chest tight so I breathed through my mouth. “He came in around seven this morning. The nurse said until Elle shows signs of waking, he’ll be checking in every few hours.”

  “The nurses seem nice. They let you sleep here?”

  I nodded. “If anyone asks, I’m her sister.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Drawing in a deep breath, I gave Tyler a wan smile. “Yeah. Just thinking.”

  “About work?”

  He seemed to be fishing for a distraction. “Sort of.”

  “I haven’t talked to you since you started. How’s it going?”

  I left Oregon only a month ago, but so much had changed “I love it. It’s exciting and fast-paced. I meet a lot of interesting people and live in an incredible mansion in Key West.” The first half of the month had been spent on The Lady Parr, Remington’s yacht—one of them.

  “What’s your boss like?”

  My smile turned genuine. “We’re polar opposites. He’s a conservative egomaniac with the virility of a Fidel Castro.” Little known fact, Castro slept with thirty-five thousand women, one during every lunch and dinner of his reign. My boss was sort of like that, but not with me.

  He managed to sleep with many young, pretty things, despite his four marriages. Yeah, Remington didn’t really respect the word fidelity unless it was in reference to a bank. I wasn’t praising these attributes. I personally disdained them. But the facts were the facts. Remington was a pig.

  Tyler scowled at me. “Do you have a thing going with him?”

  “Ew! Gross! No.” I tried not to gag. “He’s a total chauvinist. And he’s old.”

  “Good. I don’t think I could handle the image of that.”

  I scrunched my nose. “Why would you imagine it in the first place?”

  “If you said you were having an affair with him my mind would’ve gone there.”

  “Well, stop it.”

  I sheltered my boobs with my arms. Staring at Tyler, I concentrated on the crotch of his jeans until his hand dropped protectively over his lap. “What are you doing?”

  “Picturing your penis.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “Fair is fair.”

  He sighed and rolled his eyes—so very Ty. At least we distracted ourselves for a few minutes.

  Not that I’d tell Tyler that I recently discovered how much I liked having sex, but it was definitely notable news I wished I could share with someone. Not only did I like it, I looked hot having it—at least with Hale. He had this mirror at his house in Georgia and one time we…

  Stop.

  My brain—and my body—couldn’t handle sex recollections at the moment. I’d gone almost a complete lifetime without a carnal appetite, but Hale opened my eyes to a literal smorgasbord.

  Figured, now that I started enjoying sex, I’d have to go without. Maybe I should think of it as fasting rather than some sort of starvation.

  “Will you go back to waitressing?”

  “I like my job with the Davenports.” My words tumbled out on a wave of panic. Going back to serving fries and beer filled me with a terrible sense of meaninglessness. Nothing against waitresses. I was one for the majority of my life. But now I wanted something more … impactful.

  “I was just saying, you have options if you want to stay around for Elle.”

  Waitressing might actually be my only option. I needed to be here until Elle recovered and there was no telling how long from now that would be. My gaze lifted to her battered face.

  “Her hair will grow back.” Tyler’s words whispered through the silence. The least of my fears, but one of the few guarantees we had to offer each other.

  I nodded, appreciating his attempt to console me.

  God, it was suffocating in this room, stuffy, yet there was a steady chill to the air. I shut my eyes and tried to picture Hale sitting beside me. A tower of unshakable strength and calm control. Devastatingly handsome, tall, broad shoulders, athletic build, dirty blond hair, and those signature gray, Davenport eyes.

  He could be intense and tender, balancing the two with utter perfection. We were so different, yet so perfectly suited for each other. Hale smelled like authority. I smelled like catastrophe. He showed me that sex could be phenomenal and I, well… I let him.

  He was selfless and noble and so much a man to admire if you could actually see beneath the stuffy, reserved façade he wore for the rest of the world. Hale had deep feelings and honorable secrets. For instance, he adopted a little girl who needed a dad. That was the clincher that tied my heart to his.

  Even now the truth made me sigh. He was the best man I’d ever met, and through some freak turn of events, we found each other.

  A nightshift nurse entered the room. “Pardon me, hon. I just want to check her IV.”

  I watched as she inspected the many tubes connected to my best friend. My stomach hurt as I wondered if Elle felt any pain. A shiver climbed my spine as my vision blurred, her shimmering image appearing far too delicate for such a strong woman.

  When the nurse left, I looked at Tyler. “Has anyone called Chris?” Elle’s brother wasn’t my favorite person, but someone should have notified him by now.

  “I left him a message. Don’t know if he’ll get it.”

  Chris had once been a fun, normal guy until he got involved with drugs. When Elle stopped supporting him he robbed her blind. Not only did he steal her debit card and clean out her accounts, he stole her ov
en. Who steals an oven? He took other things too, her jewelry, some furniture, and her laptop. But the oven really got to me.

  “I hope he doesn’t come here,” I muttered, knowing his presence never brought anything but stress to Elle’s life.

  “I was sort of hoping the same, but I had to call him. He’s her brother.”

  I stayed at the hospital until seven that evening, knowing I needed to get home, find a phone charger, and sleep in a real bed. I ate some sort of pastry from a vending machine on my way out of the hospital but was pretty sure it expired in the nineties.

  I took a cab because my car had been in my mom’s garage since I started working for the Davenports. When I climbed out of the taxi and stared at my childhood home, a crushing ache formed in the pit of my stomach. Back again.

  Everything inside of me demanded I shouldn’t be there. I was supposed to be taking care of Remington, in Florida, with Hale. Moving forward. This felt like a humongous step backward. Reminding myself of the circumstances that brought me back to this place only intensified that ache, heaping a good amount of guilt into the stew. I was here for my friend and, as much as I’d expected to be somewhere else, I accepted that this was where I wanted to be—with Elle. I was just tired, and juggling so many conflicting emotions wasn’t helping matters.

  I lugged my suitcase to the porch and the door opened before I even slid my key into the lock.

  “Hi, honey,” my mom greeted softly, eyes heavy with worry.

  I’d been so good about keeping my tears locked inside after the first shock of seeing my friend, but my mom’s concern and Elle’s continuous stillness, on top of my lack of sleep and abundant hunger, was a weight I could no longer bear.

  My face pinched, as a high-pitched wheeze scraped past the lump in my throat and my shoulders drooped forward on a sob. My mom pulled me into her arms, hugging me tightly.

  “I know, sweetie. She’ll get through this. Elle’s strong, honey.”

  I wept inconsolably, as my mother ushered me into our little kitchen and sat me at the table. She continued to offer words of hope, but nothing would erase the memory of Elle’s battered face from my mind.

  “They had to shave part of her head,” I cried.

  “Hair grows back, Rayne.”

  But Elle was a hairdresser and her hair was lovely, nothing like my plain, brown, poker straight mop. It was her source of pride and they’d cut it away. Her face had been so battered, it hurt to see her wounds.

  A plate of cookies slid in front of me as my mother patiently waited for me to sniffle through the last of my tears. “Thank you.”

  “You need to eat. I figured cookies would do the trick.”

  I peeled back the plastic wrap and broke off a crumble, but even homemade cookies tasted like sawdust on my tongue. I’d never been too sad to eat.

  Sliding the plate aside, I stole a napkin from the basket on the table and blotted my eyes. “Do you have a charger?” Hale was probably going nuts trying to reach me.

  “It’s in my bedroom.”

  Too tired to talk, I lurched to her room. The familiar, dated décor welcomed me and distressed me at the same time, every glimpse of my surroundings a strange reminder that I was far away from my other home.

  Sliding the plug into my phone, I sat on the edge of my mother’s bed and waited for any signs of life—a reoccurring theme for the day. When the screen lit, several messages and texts appeared, but I ignored them and dialed Hale.

  “Rayne?” he answered midway through the first ring.

  I curled onto my side and held the phone to my ear, shutting my eyes so my tears wouldn’t make the screen slick. “Hi.”

  “Oh, babe.” Two words, but I knew he understood. Never in my life had I wanted to touch a person as much as I did in that moment.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner. My phone died and I left my charger at your place.”

  “Have you been at the hospital all this time?”

  “Yes. She’s…” My voice seized. “I’m so scared, Hale.”

  “Shh… We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. Just shut your eyes and pretend I’m there with you, holding you tight.”

  My arms closed over my hollow belly as my eyes squeezed tighter. I could almost feel his strength banding around me.

  “Everything will be okay, Rayne. I’m here.”

  For the first time since returning to Oregon, I felt an acute sense of balance return. “I love you.”

  I knew he wasn’t there. I knew they were my arms hugging me. But if I could just believe for a minute that they were his, maybe the pain and fear would stay at bay.

  “I love you, Rayne. Don’t worry. I’m not letting go.”

  Chapter Three

  The Things We Shouldn’t Think

  I went to the hospital every day for three solid weeks and there was no improvement. Seeing Elle hooked up to a feeding tube truly terrified me, that I might never hear her voice again. Hale called every morning, texted throughout the day, and was the last voice I heard at night before I went to sleep. But even he couldn’t cheer me up.

  Realizing Elle wasn’t getting better meant making some tough decisions. I needed to stay in Oregon for my friend, but staying without an income would be impossible. There was no choice but to return to work and that meant going back to the bar where I’d waitressed since college.

  “Are you sure that’s what you want to do? If you need money—” Hale protested and I cut him off.

  “Hale, I can’t live off your money. I can’t leave until I know she’s okay and I have no idea how long it will take before she’s back to her normal self.” If that was even a realistic goal.

  His objection came in the form of silence. Although he understood my circumstances, I knew he’d rather send me money than see me get tied up in commitments that might hold me here longer.

  Taking his money was out of the question. Remington had given me a credit card when I left, but I couldn’t use his money either. Nor could I expect my mother to revert to supporting her thirty-year-old daughter.

  “I don’t want to be a burden on anyone.”

  “You’re not. Rayne, let me help you. Please.”

  “You are. In other ways.”

  As much as I appreciated his offer, I’d always managed to support myself. Even when I decided to give up a well-paying teaching career, I’d made things work. My independence was my only testament to adulthood, and reverting to a time when others supported me broke some sort of cardinal rule in my head.

  “It’ll just be temporary,” I repeated for myself as well as him. “I promise.”

  Thankfully, he accepted my decision without further argument and my previous employer welcomed me back with open arms.

  Placing the bar tab on a table occupied by a young couple, I forced a smile. It was tough keeping a pleasant expression while waitressing and serving drinks, but most of the patrons at the bar were my old regulars and knew through the grapevine about Elle. So my lack of congeniality was mostly excused.

  “I’ll take that whenever you’re ready.” It was a familiar script with the same lines day in and day out, but I knew it by heart and not having to think too hard about how to do my job helped me focus on other issues in my life.

  Shuffling back to the kitchen to check on my next order, I blew out a slow breath. My anxiety had tightened to such a strangling knot in my chest I sometimes had to concentrate on simply breathing.

  It wasn’t just Elle’s health. It was everything.

  While Elle remained unchanged, Elara, Hale’s daughter, was growing like a weed. Hale sent me pictures often, and every time I saw her little peanut face with those silver Davenport eyes my ovaries grew more depressed.

  Elara wasn’t mine and I didn’t pretend to have any claim to her, but she’d shown me babies weren’t so scary. I mean, having a child of my own would be disastrous, like riding a bike with a flaming seat and no brakes as it raced down a steep hill through a Civil War-like rendition of
Bull Run where bullets were binkies and cannons fired diapers full of baby shit. But, again, not my kid. Hale managed to ride that bike just fine.

  I couldn’t keep a plant watered. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate everything Hale was doing. Elara was his responsibility. I was only a bystander—a bystander who really missed seeing her boyfriend’s daughter up close and personal.

  So much was happening and I was missing it. Never in a million years did I expect Elara to garner so much of my affection. But with each passing day, I missed her almost as much as I missed Hale. And with every ticking minute, came the certainty that they were surviving just fine without me. All of them—including Hale.

  Not a good place for my mind to go. If Elle were awake, she’d tell me to knock it off and assure me that the distance between Hale and me wouldn’t change our love. But if she were awake and could tell me that, there really wouldn’t be a need for me to be here. And without her generous guidance, my mind seemed to spiral into the darkest depths of my own doubts.

  God, I was completely dysfunctional without my best friend. She was my Jiminy Cricket. Without her, I was just…wooden.

  As I finished up my shift, I approached Tyler at the bar. He often came there to read, which was rude, but that was just who he was. “How was she today?”

  He closed his book, using a cocktail napkin as a placeholder. “The same.”

  It was wearing on all of us. Chris, Elle’s brother, had never shown up. He called Tyler back and said he would, which filled us with dread, but in true Chris form, he broke his word. It was probably for the best.

  “I think I’m going to head over to the hospital once I cash out my tips.”

  My phone pinged and I lifted it from my apron pocket. Hale. His text, a simple I miss you, should have made me smile but it only added to my stress. Three weeks of good morning chats followed by a slew of redundant texts throughout the day and one solid goodnight conversation did not equal the level of intimacy we had in Florida.

  Every time I got another I miss you it subliminally hit me as a you’re still gone and time is moving on without you… I shouldn’t complain. At least he was thinking of me. If the I miss yous ever stopped I’d be devastated. But I wanted more. I didn’t want to miss him at all. I wanted us to be together.