Forever Mine (Providence Series Book 1) (31 page)

I watched her as I wiped my mouth. She was looking at me with hurt, but she still had that deluded look about her. Why hadn’t anyone noticed this before?

“I think we need to sort a couple of things out with you…ladies, and I use that word loosely,” Ren said walking towards the group as Cole and the men let out a snigger.
 

“Loose is such a dirty word,” Cole snorted.

After this, I needed to get back to my girl and explain all of this to her. She needed to know it all, and as soon as possible. Firstly, though, it was time to call the Police. These psycho’s had just messed with us for the last time.

25

____

Ren

Sitting at the bar, I looked at yet
another empty beer bottle. Why would someone give someone an empty beer?
 
I know I’m already past drunk, but come on!
 

Luke and I had gone back to the office after the police had taken the witches and photo’s away, but Maya and Isla had been away for different reasons; Tony hadn’t been there to talk to either.
 
I still didn’t understand why Francheska was so fixated on me and why she’d go to the lengths she did to break us up.
 

“Beer and Jack Jilly.”
 
Her head snapped around to me, and her eyes narrowed. I was drunk but not drunk enough not to know what that meant. “Please?”

“That’s better!” She walked towards me uncapping a bottle and picking up a glass on her way. She set the beer down in front of me and walked back to get the Jack Daniels.
 

I watched her pour a generous amount into the glass as I mulled over my problems.

“Hey, Ren,” Ava said as she sat down beside me.

“Ava, what are you doing here on a weekday?” I looked around to see if Mace was with her, but apparently she’d slipped her guard dog tonight.
 
Looking back at her, I belatedly noticed that she was drenched. “What the hell?”

“It’s raining hard outside, and I couldn’t park closer, so I had to run,” she explained pulling her hair up into a wet mess on top of her head. “So, you drowning your sorrows?”

“Absolutely,” I saluted her with the jack and drank it back before putting the glass back on the bar.

“Gonna tell us what’s happened,” Jilly asked, waving the bottle of Jack. I wasn’t a very open person, but the alcohol was hitting me now, and girls did this shit all the time right; so maybe it would help?

Taking a deep breath, I sat back and let it rip.

*
 
*
 
*

“OK Ren, one step, then the next step,” Ava said as she helped me up the stairs to Mace’s.
 
I’d had the most fantastic idea after I’d told Ava and Jilly everything that had happened and they’d let me know their feelings about it. I was getting the tattoo that I was meant to get while Maya was away and Mace was gonna do it. Drunk ideas are the best ideas!

“No, they’re really not,” Ava muttered. Maybe I’d said that out loud?

Banging on the front door, I leaned against Ava even more.
 
Mace really needed to fix his damn porch; the fucking thing was moving. Someone could get seriously hurt!

Lifting my hand to bang again, the door suddenly opened, and a pissed off Mace stood in the doorway looking at me. “What the fuck are you doing, Ren? Are you drunk?”
 
His eyes moved to Ava and for a second they softened, and then turned pissed as he looked her over. “What the hell are you wearing? Your fucking shirts almost see through!” He ended it in a roar which really didn’t help my current balance predicament, Ava took a step back and leaned away taking me with her.

“It was raining you asshole and so fucking what? It’s my body,” Ava snapped and shifted to push me forward to him.
 

Just as I was about to break into the conversation and share my brilliant idea with my best best friend forever and ever and ever, Ava gasped and let go of me completely. Aw shit, I was going down.
 
I started to tip slowly forward towards Mace, who was still glaring at Ava; then it was a case of timber, and I landed on him, taking him down with me.

“Mace, what’s going on?” A female voice sounded from inside. Looking up I couldn’t believe my eyes; there was Calista Brennan, Isla’s bitch stepsister, standing in nothing but Mace’s shirt looking like she’d been fucked thoroughly.

“What the fuck?” I was starting to sober up now. She’d played a part in helping Francheska’s bitches; he knew all of this because I’d told him the plan they’d had.
 

“It’s not what it looks like,” Mace gasped out from underneath me trying to catch his breath with my weight on top of him. Good, fucker!

I got to my knees and slowly got up using the wall to steady me as I glared at Mace. How else could it look? Oh, shit Ava!

She was now walking back towards her car, and I could see her shoulders shaking. “You’re an asshole and a piece of fucking shit,” Mace stiffened as I let rip, “and now you’ve lost her. I hope it was worth it, but I doubt it”. I ran after Ava now on slightly more sober legs, catching up with her just as she got into her car.

“I’m done, Ren,” she whispered as she started the engine and began to back out the drive. “Never again.”

Was there something in the water? What the hell was going on just now?

Maya

Luke and I walked around the site, inspecting all of the scaffolding and machinery to make sure it was safe.
 
He’d told me what had happened yesterday explaining that the photos were photoshopped and not real. It sounded a bit far-fetched to me, but then this was Francheska, and she was capable of anything I’d realized. There were no limits, no boundaries; she would do as she pleased even with the restraining order that was being served to her.
 

We were walking under some low scaffolding when I saw something hanging down and grabbed it. It was a piece of dark material; I wonder where it came from? Turning it over, I saw the word “SURPRISE!” written in white paint.

Luke had just grabbed my arm to pull me out from under the structure when all of a sudden something hit me, and everything went blessedly black….

Ren

Waking up this morning feeling like I’d been licking sandpaper all night was not a pleasant thing. I hated the morning after the night before, but today I had a purpose. I was going to fix this once, and Maya was going to move in with me. Why? Because I loved her and I wanted to experience more moments with her, and with us two-ing and fro-ing between each others houses, those experiences weren’t as often as they should be.

My phone started buzzing beside my head and letting out the most god awful tune…was that the song from Armageddon? When did I do that?

“Lo?”

“Ren, it’s Tony.”

Pulling my phone away from my ear, I saw he was calling from Maya’s phone, and instantly I sat upright. “Where is she, Tony?”
 

So help me God, if that bitch had touched Maya, I would end her.

“There’s been an accident Ren,” he was crying now, and his words were hard to figure out. “You need to get to the hospital.”

Jumping out of bed and running to get some clothes a million thoughts went through my head. I couldn’t lose the girl that I never saw coming and was never going to let go of!

*
 
*
 
*

Running through the hospital entrance, I saw Tony sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and his head in his hands.
 

“What’s happened?” I didn’t even recognize my own voice; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this scared.

“Ren,” a hand landed on my shoulder, and a deep voice said.
 
Turning around, I saw George looking like he’d aged ten years since I’d last seen him and Christie behind him with tears pouring down her face. “Son, there was an accident, and Luke and Maya were hurt,” he stopped, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “They were under a scaffolding when it collapsed on top of them,” his voice broke, and I could see tears running down his face now.

My legs gave out beneath me, and I fell to the floor. Was this it?

*
 
*
 
*

“Montgomery and Price families?” Two doctors wearing scrubs with masks around their necks entered the waiting room where we all sat waiting for news.

“Yes,” George stood up immediately with Christie beside him wringing her hands. I went to stand beside them eager for any news that I could get.
 
It had been eight hours since Maya had been taken to surgery, eight hours waiting and dreading them coming through and telling us that we’d lost the most beautiful girl ever to walk the earth and the amazing guy with a heart of gold.

“You are?” The Doctor on the left asked looking us all over.

“I’m her Uncle and her next of kin on her medical forms, George Montgomery. This is my wife Christie and beside her is Maya’s fiance, so you may release medical details to us.”

The Doctor on the right came forward pulling his cap off his head.
 
“Maya sustained some severe injuries,” he started.
 
I could feel my heart beating so hard inside my chest that I was surprised I was still breathing. “She has two breaks to her tibia and a hairline fracture of her fibula. She also has severe bruising around her femur, and her knee was dislocated when she arrived at the hospital.
 
We stabilized her leg with metal plates and cast it, but we will keep a close eye on the bruising and also ensure that the breaks are in alignment.
 

“She also has severe bruising on her right kidney and had a collapsed lung which we have fixed and inserted a drain into to ensure that it heals. Four broken ribs, a bad break to her radius which we have operated on and she now has a plate holding that bone together.” I couldn’t breathe listening to him listing all of these things wrong with my baby. Knowing that my beautiful girl would be in so much pain was killing me.
 

“Her shoulder was also dislocated which we fixed,” the Doctor continued, making eye contact with all of us one by one. Surely there couldn’t have been any more? Seeing him swallow before taking a deep breath I knew I was wrong. “Finally, the most worrying injury was the impact on her head.
 
The CT showed a small amount of swelling that we will be monitoring closely. The tests that we carried out though showed her reactions are okay and assured us that at this moment in time, there was no issue with her brain. If the swelling continues, though, it might be necessary for us to place a hole in her skull to allow the pressure to stabilize, but we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. At this moment in time, she is being moved to ICU and is in a critical but stable situation.”

She was stable; that’s all I needed to hear, and she was reacting normally, so her brain was all right.

“I operated on Luke today,” the other Doctor stepped forward.

“Is he okay?” Christie asked, tears running down her face.

Taking a deep breath, the Doctor began. “Luke’s right leg was badly broken in his tibia and ulna. We have placed a plate in both areas as when he arrived the bones were badly out of place. He also has a tear to his right kidney which we are monitoring closely and hope will heal without surgical intervention. Like Miss Price, Luke has broken ribs, one of which pierced his lung. We have fixed this, and again we need to monitor this extremely closely as patches do not always take the first time. Luke’s head injury is more complex than Maya’s however,” I heard a sob behind me and saw Isla standing there looking so pale she almost disappeared into the white wall behind her.
 

George reached back and took her hand, pulling her forward between him and Christie. “I’m afraid that he had too much swelling, and his test results were not good.
 
At this moment, he has a suspected subtentorial hemorrhage Should his symptoms get worse or the pressure in his skull goes up further, then we will have no option but to drill some holes in his skull. At this moment in time, it is looking likely that we will need to do this and soon. His reactions to stimulus were not what we would like them to be, and he is currently in a medically induced coma. He is also being moved to ICU and at this moment, we have labeled him critical and stable.” I could hear Christie and Isla sobbing as we all stood taking in what the doctors had said.

Walking away from them all, I went and sat in the hall and stared down at my feet thinking through everything. The first time I saw her in Coopers, the first time we spoke, going around to hers that night, our first kiss and all of the memories that followed it including what had happened recently.

“She’ll be okay,” my Mom whispered sitting down beside me and putting her arms around me.
 

“I can’t lose her, Mom.”

“You won’t honey, you just have to find a way to prove to her that you’re in it for the long haul,” she said in that sage wisdom that only parents can come out with.

“Yeah bro, instead of showing her with semen, find a way that actually shows how much you love her,” Cole the fuck face said from beside me. “Holy shit I wonder if Hallmark does Valentine cards with that shit on? ‘Nothing says I love you more than semen!’ No no ‘Show her with semen!’ wait…” As we all sat there staring at him with our mouths open, because who the fuck says that shit, Mace smacked him round the head, followed by my Dad, shutting him up. “Sorry,” he mumbled realizing his timing and his words were inappropriate.