Love Is Beautiful (Chelsea & Max) (4 page)

He’s beside us, his touch gentle, his eyes concerned. I flinch from him anyway.

“Come on,” he says, wrapping us up like two injured birds. “Let’s get you guys to the hospital.” I leave with him, resenting how much I need his strong arm around my shoulders.

O
f course
the asshole had to run. Of course, he couldn’t just pull over and take the speeding ticket like any normal person. No. He had to be a jerkoff with a dirty conscious who panicked and bolted before I even got out of my car.

So, of course, I had to take off after him. And now, wouldn’t you know, I hurt. My knee is on fire. Throbbing and laughing and pointing out just how very weak and vulnerable I actually am.

I caught the bastard. Got him in spite of my knee. In fact, I even made sure to jam it in his back as I took him down, just to prove a point. Then I cuffed him, dragged him back to the car, and drove him into the station. It’s taking more out of me than I want to admit to manage walking without a limp while I’m here because I’ll be damned if anyone sees me and tells Bossman. I will
not
ride a desk. I sure as hell didn’t join the force for the paperwork.

I manage to maintain an even gait all the way to my car and let a long breath out through my mouth as I lift my leg inside and shut the door behind me. Rain patters on my windshield while I take a moment to let the pain dissipate. First just a few drops, and then a whole mess of them come gushing down, detonating on the glass as I twist the keys in the ignition. The thump of the windshield wipers keeps me company while I wait for my Bluetooth to connect to my phone so I can turn on some music. The last thing I need right now is silence.

The ride home is an exercise in frustration. A little rain on the roads is more than most people can handle and all four lanes on the highway are going about ten miles per hour under the speed limit. I get the need to feel safe, I really do. But how about you go ahead and feel safe over in the right lane so I can go the speed limit in one of the other three lanes?

My knee throbs and I hate to admit it, but I’m actually looking forward to physical therapy tomorrow. I was sore the first day after my first appointment last week, but I’ve been faithful with the exercises I was given to do at home. Diligently following all the directions that little blonde nincompoop gave me. Over the weekend I actually started to feel like I was making progress. The pain was receding. I was moving with more freedom. Wouldn’t you know that right now I hurt worse than I did the day I twisted the damn thing playing basketball with Charlie? Maybe the nincompoop will get me back on track with her freakishly strong hands when I go see her tomorrow.

I pull into my garage, the roar of the rain hiding the familiar squeak of the garage door rolling up on its hinges. Reagan’s losing her mind just inside the house, a disaster of pent up energy. Poor thing is in desperate need of a walk but with the rain and the knee, she’s just going to have to wait. I grab a beer and head right through my silent house to sit on my covered back patio, bringing Reagan with me so she can at least enjoy a change of scenery. I have to chase her out in the yard so she’ll pee.

“You’re such a girl sometimes,” I say as I twist off the cap to my beer and take a seat. “Too worried about getting your poor feet wet.”

Reagan does her business, cocking her head like she’s listening to me before she runs back and curls up at my feet. Her nostrils flare and her chest heaves as she scents the air. Even with the rain pattering all around me, it’s too quiet. I pull out my phone and load up some tunes just in time to hear the sliding glass door on the other side of my privacy fence slide open.

“You sure?” asks a small voice, almost totally overpowered by the rain. “I’ll get really wet.”

“Totally sure,” replies an adult voice, a mother to a child. “I used to play in the rain all the time when I was a kid.”

And just like that all the air is sucked from my lungs. As the neighbor kid shrieks with laughter, his mother’s voice a low hum of joy twining with his, a memory transports me to one of the few good moments I had with my own mom. The images are old and tainted by age, idealized over the years, I’m sure.

I hear my mom’s voice, the voice of an angel, warm and lyric and soft. The sound of comfort and safety. “Look, Max! A rainbow!”

I’m five again. Maybe four. And the sun shines through a rainstorm. Everything is golden and I laugh and laugh, arms out to the side, twirling in a circle while the rain drops onto my upturned face. I stop and stare in the direction my mother points. “It’s so pretty!”

She crouches down and wraps an arm around me while we watch the colors arch across the sky. “It’s just for us, Max. A perfect rainbow for a perfect day.”

The happy sounds of the neighbors twine themselves with the sound of my mother’s voice in my memory and I can’t stand it. The days she sounded like that were few and far between. I don’t want to taint it with anything.

“Happy birthday to me,” I mutter and throw back the rest of my beer before I stand and head back inside. Reagan stops just outside the door, reluctant to go back in after just breaking free of the place, but she’s a good dog. “Go on,” I say and she does.

Today is not the day I was actually born. I don’t celebrate that day. Birthdays are meant to celebrate the day a person came into existence and I didn’t really exist until I was accepted into the police academy. All the stuff that came before that is just what keeps me awake at night. Besides, if we get really deep and really think hard about the way things unfolded, the day I was born set things in motion that led up to the first great tragedy of my life. Why in God’s name would I celebrate that?

But the academy saved me. Gave me purpose. A reason to exist. A way to make sure there’s at least someone out there making sure the bad guys don’t get to do bad things to good people and get away with it.

I limp upstairs to take a shower, haunted by memories of my mother. Her skin, soft like silk. The way she always smelled like a cupcake. Her eyes, blue like mine, staring empty and lifeless at me where I hid under the kitchen table, blood pooling under her cheek, matting her dark hair…

The shower isn’t cutting it. Rage boils in my veins. Like Reagan, I feel trapped in this house, the walls and the silence closing in on me. Fuck it. I can’t be here, memories churning like knives in my stomach. I’m seeing the physical therapist tomorrow, she can fix whatever damage I do.

I pull on a pair of shorts and a shirt, lace up my running shoes, and clip Reagan’s collar to her leash. She’s going to like being out in the rain about as much as my knee is going to like going for a run, but neither of them get a say in the matter. If I stay here, the demons in my head are going to get me.

I
didn’t go
to work on Monday. The weekend was all about me getting my emotional shit in order and hiding my bruises from the world. By the time Monday morning rolled around and the bruise on my cheek was still vivid and my lip was still swollen, I just couldn’t bring myself to face all the judgement and sympathy from my colleagues. I called in and I never do that.

Like, never ever.

Believe me, I’m totally aware of how much I’ve been saying that lately.

Is this some kind of not-quite-mid-life crisis? A just-past-quarter-life crisis? An I’m-turning-thirty-next-month crisis? Or has it just been a really bad week and I’m over thinking everything? Because that’s something I
never
do. Ha. Even I can’t bring myself to believe that.

I’m going to work today. I don’t think I could handle another day alone in my house with nothing but the bitch in my head to keep me company. Sitting still has never been one of my strong points. If I’m not actively working towards something, I start to go a little stir crazy, a little stagnant. I need a project. A goal. A reason to believe I’m worthwhile. Spending a few days alone in my quiet house did nothing to make me feel like there’s a purpose to my existence. It just made me feel, what? Not worthless, although that’s part of it. Not invisible, because I know people care about me. But, what? Inconsequential. That’s what. And as much as I don’t want to deal with the judgement and sympathy of my co-workers, I really don’t want to feel inconsequential.

That’s a dangerous way for me to feel.

I tried texting with my sisters to keep me company, but Maya had a crisis at work—and as a pediatric surgeon, her crises are pretty damn all-encompassing—and Dakota was somewhere halfway across the world and was in and out of cell reception. They both know what happened to me and are both absolutely mortified. We have plans to get together over the weekend when Dakota’s in town so we can talk about it in true London sister fashion.

By then I should actually be ready to talk about it. Truth is, I’m ashamed and don’t know why. I’m so embarrassed, like my bruised cheekbone is some kind of scarlet letter, marking me as faulty or broken. Like I am somehow to blame for what Sloan did to me at Aura.

Intellectually, I know I’m not to blame, but for some reason that hasn’t stopped the torrents of terrible thoughts from circling around in my brain like vultures over carrion. So, today I go to work sporting a bruised body and battered ego. I also get to face Hudson, my first appointment of the day. Somehow, that just triples the embarrassment. He was a spectator of the lowest moment of my life and now I have to face him as a professional. I can’t hide from him. I can’t ignore him. I have to smile at him and touch him and talk to him when all I want to do is push him away. Which is silly, I know. But I’m not in a place where knowing something seems to do me any good at all.

Yesterday’s rain brought the first real chill of fall with it. I’m almost too thankful to bury myself in my favorite chunky sweater. Like hiding my body under a shapeless piece of clothing will make it all better. I keep reminding myself that Sloane’s bad behavior had nothing to do with my dress and everything to do with his own broken mind, but it’s not helping. Because, for one, how lame am I? Who calls assaulting two women in a bathroom ‘bad behavior’?

I pull into my parking space outside of Cincinnati Orthopedics. Bruised face and battered ego or not, today is not about me. Today is about getting my patients put back together again. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, check my face in the mirror and head inside, steeling myself against the inevitable hubbub that my appearance will cause.

Mina’s the first person to see me. Shock drops her jaw before she manages to school her face into something more professional. I was honest when I called in yesterday and told my boss about what happened. Mina was the one who took over my clients so she knew what to expect from me when I walked in today. Her initial reaction makes me all the more conscious of how I must look because even being prepared, my face still shocked her.

“Hey Bruiser,” she says, somehow sensing my need to make light of the situation. I have to give credit where credit’s due because I appreciate the hell out of the smile on her face and joke in her voice.

“You should see the other guy,” I reply. She gives me the run down on my patients from yesterday as if I didn’t have a huge glowing beacon of embarrassment on my face and it’s so nice to just forget about what happened and feel like myself again. If only the rest of the day would go so well.

“So, honestly,” Mina says after she finishes telling me about how yesterday went. “If you need to go home before the end of your day, my afternoon is light. I’d be more than willing to take over for you again. I had a lot of fun yesterday, working with all the big names.”

“I appreciate that, Mina. I really do. But I just have to make it through Hudson’s appointment and then Max Grumpy-butt Santoro and then it’s a slew of dancers from the Cincinnati Ballet. Hudson’s appointment will only be as awkward as I make it and I’m mature enough to make it very easy. Mr. Santoro will be hard but that’s just because he’s kind of a jerk. But between you and me, I really like the appointments with the dancers and I really could use a huge dose of normal.”

Mina puts a consoling hand on my arm and I resist the urge to shrug it off. She’s only trying to be sweet, but it feels a little too much somehow. I smile and show too much teeth and Mina smiles and it doesn’t reach her eyes and it sure says a whole lot that I can’t wait to find Hudson waiting for me so I can go ahead and put an end to this uncomfortable encounter.

Well, that is, until I see Hudson staring at me from across the room. His arms are crossed over his chest, and not in that proud, badass kind of way that a lot of men adopt when they’re trying to look tough. This is a little more sunken. A little more reserved. There’s nothing proud about his posture. His bottom lip is caught between his teeth and there’s a storm cloud of worry and regret and embarrassment weighing down his pretty face. He hasn’t gotten any better at supporting that kind of emotion and for all the strength in his body, he looks almost crumpled under the burden of carrying it.

I must be a coward because the moment I see him my heart speeds up and my breath catches and I just want to turn and run away. This isn’t even the guy that hurt me. And it’s not like the guy that hurt me did actually did anything to me…

Wait, what? Who is this woman in my head that sounds eerily close to poor June? Sloan sure as shit did something to me. He hit me. He hurt me. He doesn’t get a pass because he didn’t get a chance to rape me.

And Hudson doesn’t get to carry the burden of his friend’s bad decisions either. I refuse to let him feel so bad when all he did was drink too much and strut around like the player I knew he was. What happened to me is not his fault and I won’t let him make it his fault. I take, like, my fifteenth deep breath of the morning and head his way.

“Hey,” I say, conjuring up a smile as I get close to him.

“Holy shit.” His jaw drops in an approximation of Mina’s. “Chelsea, I am so sorry—”

I hold up my hand and cut him off. “Nope. I don’t accept it.” His face crumbles and I hurry on. “You didn’t hit me, Hudson. This isn’t because of anything you did.” I wave a finger over my still tender cheek.

“I’m the one who took you to Aura.”

“I went with you willingly. By that logic, I’m also to blame.”

Darkness settles in his eyes. “It’s not your fault that Sloan is an asshole.”

“Nor is it yours.”

And just like that, the weight slides off his face. His unfolds his arms. Straightens his back. “No, I guess it isn’t, is it?” The sparkle is back in his eyes, the light back in his voice. He’s so much more comfortable being happy than he is being tense, it doesn’t take him much to get back there. “Doesn’t change the fact that I’m sorry it happened to you, though.”

“How’s June?” I ask, leading him back towards the treadmills.

“She’s okay, I guess. I see her a lot because she’s one of those girls who just wants a football player, doesn’t matter which one. I don’t think this was her first rodeo, if you know what I mean.” He grimaces.

“Is she pressing charges?”

He stops in his tracks. “Are you?” He grabs me by the arm. “Because I guarantee she won’t.”

I’m busy trying to decide if he wants me to press charges or if he wants me to protect his teammate. I’m also busy trying to cover up the fact that it wasn’t the very first thing I did. Because let’s be real here, it should have been the very first thing I did.

“Probably,” I say and watch his face carefully, trying to gauge his reaction.

“Good.” Hudson nods like things are all settled and starts walking again. “I’ll be a witness if you want. Too many guys think that just because they’re professional athletes they’re above the law. I like Sloan, but I don’t want him thinking he can just get away with that kind of stuff. I’ve got my own career to think about. Can’t be all wrapped up in that shit. Not after starting my first season with an injury.” He gestures down to his ankle.

“Speaking of, are you ever going to start leading with that heel?” We stop in front of one of the treadmills.

“Today. I will fix that shit today if it’ll get you off my back.”

“Sure. I’ve heard that before.”

“Is that a challenge?” Hudson smiles and hops up on the machine, walking with a very exaggerated leading heel. “Because I never back away from a challenge.”

We joke a little bit more and I’m glad to put all the heavy stuff behind us. As much as I don’t want to admit it, I was kind of hoping that June would be the one to press charges because she was the one Sloan initially assaulted. But now that I know she isn’t going to press charges, now that I know it’s all going to fall to me, well, there’s this tight little ball of resignation in my belly. If what Hudson says is true, if this isn’t the first time Sloan’s done something like this, then I’d be socially remiss not to report him. I’d be partially responsible for each woman he hurts from this point forward.

And with that kind of logic, I have to report him. I can’t just sit here and let him get away with what he did because it’ll be easier or less embarrassing or whatever. My heart sinks as I think about the ramifications of admitting assault by a professional athlete. The media. The coverage. The last thing I want is my name dragged through something like that.

I push it all out of my mind for right now. I’m at work and I’m here for my patients, not for myself. Hudson really is doing his best to lead with his heel and I examine his gait for any other oddities for a few minutes. I don’t really see anything to speak of. He’s just a few appointments away from not needing me anymore and that’s one hell of a good feeling. It’s not easy to recover from a ruptured Achilles. It takes a good surgeon, a good patient, a good PT, and just the right amount of luck.

Luckily for Hudson, he had a healthy dose of all four.