CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

TELL ME WHERE IT HURTS

 

Okay, so I didn’t die. But with the excruciating pain in my leg and shoulder, I almost wished I had.

 

I opened my eyes to see an IV drip hanging on a stand over me, the tube leading to a vein on the back of my right hand where the needle was taped. My left hand felt warm and I turned to see the top of my dad’s gray head bowed, my fingers gently sandwiched between his rough, calloused hands.

“Dad?” I managed to squeeze out.

 

His head shot up, his expression changing in an instant from grief to joy. “Marnie!”

 

He dropped my hand and started to grab me around the neck in a hug, impeded by the cast running from my left wrist all the way up to my shoulder. My left leg felt heavy and I looked down to see that it, too, was in an ankle-to-thigh cast. I was more plaster than person.

 

I reached over with my right hand and dad took it in his. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the motion hurt like hell, activating the still-raw scrapes on my palm.

 

“About time you woke up.” Uncle Angus stood from a chair in the corner of the tiny curtained space, his face as pink and swollen as Dad’s, his forced casual tone fooling no one.

 

Dad held my hand to his cheek for a long moment, then gently let go. “How are you feeling, honey?”

 

“Never better.”

 

He shook his head and emitted a strained chuckle. “That’s my girl.”

 

A nurse pulled aside the curtain at the end of my bed and stepped into the space. “Good evening, Captain Muckleroy.”

 

“Evening?” Last I’d known, it had been morning.

 

I learned the doctors had kept me in a medically induced coma for two days while they performed X-rays, cat scans, MRIs, and generally poked and prodded me all over for injuries.

 

“Was Tiffany Tindall caught?” I asked.

 

Dad nodded. “After you flipped the bike Andre stopped to tend to you, but some guy on a Ninja cycle followed her, jumped from his bike into her convertible when she floored the pedal, and forced the wheel to keep her from running you over. He restrained her until the ambulance picked you up and Andre could take her off his hands. He drove off afterward before anyone could speak to him.”

 

Oh, my God. The Ninja rider could’ve gotten himself killed. What kind of guy pulls a stunt like that for a total stranger? Risks his life to save someone he doesn’t even know?

 

Bartholomew Edmund Jonasili was definitely a hero.

 

Dad and Uncle Angus stood as the white-headed doctor toddled in a few minutes later. The man perched on the end of my bed, giving my foot a friendly squeeze. “You were lucky, young lady. No head injuries, no internal injuries. But you’ve got a dislocated shoulder, a broken arm, and a broken leg. The break in your leg wasn’t clean and will cause you some pain for a while, but you should be back on the road harassing motorists in two to three months.” The doctor shot me a wink and a smile.

 

“Thanks, Doc.”

 

After the physician left, Dad turned his chair to face me more directly, sat down again, and leaned in. “Lucas Glick called to check on you. He saw the report on the news. Trey came by the hospital, but the doctors wouldn’t let him in to see you since he’s not family. He’s phoned me a dozen times for updates.”

 

I harrumphed.

 

Dad stared intently at me. “The guy’s a wreck, Marn. You should talk to him.”

 

I shook my head, wincing with the pain it caused in my shoulder. “I don’t want to talk to Trey, Dad. It’s over.”

 

Hell, it was over the minute it started. Regardless of the recent developments, with me unable to leave Jacksburg and Trey unable to find suitable work in the area, the relationship had been doomed from the start. His plans to work on Felony Frenzy 2 had only sealed the deal, made the break cleaner, in fact. Besides, he’d left on Wednesday. By now he’d be back in California, programming sadistic pimps to beat the crap out of the poor prostitutes who sold their bodies for them.

 

While I’d slept, my father and uncle clearly hadn’t. The bags under their eyes told me they were exhausted. “Go home, you two,” I told them. “Get some rest.”

 

“You sure you’ll be okay without me?” Dad asked.

 

“The nurses can take care of anything I need.”

 

“All righty, then.”

 

Dad and Uncle Angus gave me a kiss on the cheek and left, leaving me the TV remote and my phone, which miraculously had not been damaged in the incident. I cued up Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” Alone with my music and my thoughts, I realized that no matter how bad my shoulder and leg felt, the physical pain Tiffany Tindall inflicted on me was nothing compared to the pain Trey had caused. He hadn’t merely disappointed me as Madame Beulah predicted, he’d devastated me. His betrayal hurt worse than any of my broken bones. Tiffany had broken my body, but Trey had broken my soul.

 

When the song ended, I thumbed through my phone, looking for suitable self-pity music, eventually settling on “Love Stinks” by the J. Geils Band.

 

Yup. Love stinks.

 

***

 

The following morning, two orderlies arrived to move me out of intensive care and into a regular room for my final night’s stay. The doctors wanted to keep an eye on me one more day as a precaution. The good news was that I’d be going home tomorrow. The bad news was they’d lowered the potency of my morphine drip. It hadn’t only numbed my battered body, it had also helped to numb my battered heart.

 

A knock sounded at the door and I looked up to see two big, bald, brown and identical men in the doorway. Andre and Dante. So there are two of them, after all. With the identity theft case concluded, that made two mysteries solved. One of them carried a huge bouquet of yellow roses, the other a box of pecan fudge.

 

They greeted me in unison. “Hey, Captain.”

 

The guys took seats on either side of the bed and filled me in on the latest police action. With Lucas Glick in rehab, not much had been going on the past few days. Andre had clocked a donkey doing eighteen miles an hour on the highway, taking a kick to the groin when he’d tried to stop the escaped beast. Dante had pulled Sheriff Dooley over in his personal vehicle and issued him a citation for expired registration. When the sheriff had argued, Dante had told him that no one’s above the law.

 

I got a good laugh out of that one. “Wish I could’ve been there to see it.”

 

The two of them stood. “We should get back out there,” Andre said. “You get better quick, okay?”

 

Shortly after the twins left, a nurse came into the room, bringing me a lunch of colorless baked chicken in congealed gravy, plastic-looking green beans, and blue Jell-O that must’ve been sitting around a while because it had long since lost its jiggle. But after two days on IV fluids only, I was ravenous, inhaling the tasteless glop on my plate in record time.

 

I had just dipped into the gelatin when a shadow appeared in the doorway. I glanced up and froze. Trey. He must’ve sneaked past the nurse’s station while they were busy delivering meals.

 

His face bore a dark three-day growth of stubble, which might have looked incredibly sexy if I hadn’t been so enraged, so hurt. His eyes were sad, pained, his shoulders sagging as if he bore the weight of a tremendous unseen burden. His shirt and jeans were wrinkled, looking like he’d slept in them.

 

I didn’t give him a chance to speak. I pointed at the door with my good arm. “Get out.”

 

He stepped into the room. “Marnie, please listen to me.”

 

This was unfair. With my leg in a cast clear up to my thigh, an IV drip in my arm, and a catheter shoved into my girl parts, I couldn’t exactly get up and walk away. I didn’t want to talk to him again. Ever. There was nothing more to say. I glared at him. “Get. The hell. Out!”

 

Trey walked to the foot of my bed, a pleading look in his eyes. “Marnie—”

 

“Go!” I screamed.

 

He paused a moment before shaking his head.

 

Damn him! If the bastard wasn’t going to leave, then he was going to get an earful. I struggled to sit up in the bed, grimacing against the pain. I threw back the covers, exposing my mangled leg and arm, the casts, the bandages covering my abrasions, the line of stitches across my right knee.

 

“Take a good look, Trey! This is real life cops and robbers.” I wrapped a hand around the metal stand for my IV drip and shook it, the clear bag of fluid swaying back and forth. “I’ve got pain-killers dripping into me, an arm that’s fractured in four places, and a shattered leg. There’s a four-inch metal screw holding my thigh together. The doctors say with a lot of luck I might come out of this with only a slight limp. Does this look like entertainment to you? Does this look like fun?”

 

He flinched, but his eyes never left my face.

 

“This has been an absolute joyride for my father and Uncle Angus, too, wondering if I’d make it through, if I’d come out okay.” By this time my voice had risen to an all-out shriek. “Dealing with the bills and the insurance company will be a regular laugh riot. Woo-hoo! What a great game! Fifty points for me!”

 

Trey opened his mouth to speak but there was nothing he could say that I had any interest in hearing.

 

“Game over, Trey!” I grabbed the plastic bowl of Jell-O off my tray and flung it at him with every ounce of energy I could muster.

 

Trey didn’t even duck, taking the bowl full-force to the forehead as if it were some sort of penance. The blue gelatin stuck in his hair, a cube of it sliding down the side of his face, dropping off his chin to his shirt, sliding down until it disappeared into his breast pocket.

 

Trey stared at me for a long, silent moment and, despite my best attempts to hold back my emotions, I burst into angry, frustrated sobs, my fists clenched at my sides. He turned to go, glancing back one last time with a face so full of shame I felt a tinge of shame myself for making him feel that way. But it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve it.

 

He took one last look at me. “I’m sorry, Marnie,” he said softly. “I am so, so sorry.”

 

He walked out of my room. And out of my life.

 

I grabbed the white cord draped across my blanket and pushed the call button on the end. Seconds later the nurse stuck her head in the door.

 

“More blue Jell-O,” I sobbed, tears running down my cheeks. “Please.”