Sacrificing Sloan (Sloan Series Book 3) (17 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Aaron

6:45 PM

I
WANTED
S
LOAN.

Ray was there, and I was grateful for that. We’d hugged. I’d told him I loved him… and now, I wanted Sloan to be in there with me. I felt lost without her, and that scared me. I didn’t want to be that dependent on someone, but I was on her.

I could tell there was another place Ray wanted to be, too. He kept pacing the floor.

Truth be told, I wished I could have paced. The bad part about having a severely broken leg which, as the doctor informed me, would need surgery in the morning. Thankfully, they had given me enough pain medicine to knock down a horse, and I couldn’t feel a thing.

I didn’t want to feel.

I didn’t want to think.

Definitely not about Boyd and watching him fall.

“Something is bothering you.” Ray stopped pacing long enough to say.

“You should talk, brother. You are the one leaving a dent on the floor.”

He rolled his eyes and sat down in a chair next to the bed, but his foot just kept on tapping. “Sloan’s alright, you know? I saw her. I don’t even think she has a scratch.”

“Good… that’s good.” I was happy for her because she didn’t deserve a scratch. She didn’t deserve anything. “I bet she’s not alright, though. Not really.”

“I doubt if she is.” Ray sighed. “Mackenzie is in critical condition.”

I sat up in my bed, which was a feat, thanks to all of the wires and medicine taking hold of my worn down body. “What happened?”

“She has the flu. I didn’t know that, but I knew I didn’t want her out trying to find you, so I made Sloan ditch her. Only Sloan… in her infinite wisdom… decided it would be best to leave Mackenzie a note to tell her where we were going.”

“That sounds like Sloan.” I groaned and laid my head back against the pillow.

“Don’t it?” He sighed. “I got upset with her and said some things I probably shouldn’t.”

I must have given him a bad look because he added, “Don’t hate me for it or nothing. I was upset and scared—scared about you…”

“Awww… you care.” I teased, but I knew the truth. Ray loved me as much as I loved him, which was a whole lot. I don’t know what I would have done if Boyd had killed him. It would have killed me and, I’m sure, turned me into the type of man I hated.

“Only until I’m eighteen… you know… so I don’t have to go back into that foster home.” He winked, and I pretended to be offended.

This was what I had been missing. All that time away from Ray, I needed this. I wanted him to know that I missed him, but I didn’t exactly know how to say it. I cleared my throat. Here came the serious part of the conversation. I wasn’t much of a serious person. I wasn’t one to let my feelings come out either, but I was going to have to now because if I didn’t, my chest would explode. “Ray, I need…”

He held out his hands to stop me. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“I do.” I wouldn’t stop this time. So many times I had wanted to tell Ray something, and I’d stopped. Not this time. I wouldn’t face dying again without telling him what I needed him to hear. “You need to listen. For once, I just… I need to say this to you. Ray…” This wasn’t easy for me, and I ran my fingers over the blanket on my bed to keep from crying. I had to stay calm. “Ray… I want you to know how much it would have killed me if something happened to you.”

“Same for me, brother.” Ray lip quirked, and I saw tears well up in his eyes.

“I just… I don’t tell you this. But I don’t want you to think of yourself as a burden to me,because you aren’t. You never were, and you never will be. You are my brother, Ray. And I’m glad I get to take care of you. Yeah, I wish Mom had stayed around, but I can’t think about that. I just…”

I had to tell him. I had to tell somebody. It was eating me alive inside, just like Sloan said it would. “I wanted… Look, I don’t know how much you know, but I could have saved Boyd’s life. He slipped and was hanging off a cliff…”

“Ironic.” Ray interrupted.

I half-heartedly laughed. There was nothing happy about me at the moment except I was warm, safe, and with Ray. Okay, a little happy, but I still had to get this off of my chest. “I had his hand in mine, and I was going to pull him up because I needed him to help me get back to the main road. I’d told him I’d let him go if he just got me that far.”

“You lied.”

“I lied.”

I cleared my throat again and went on. This was so hard to get out. “And I was pulling him up when I heard Sloan. And I knew she could help me get back, and I wouldn’t need Boyd so…”

Ray’s brow furrowed, and he winced. Guess that’s what happened when you had a bullet graze your head. “You what? What did you do? …Wait…” he held up his hands and shook his head. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know… Don’t… I won’t have to lie to the police.”

“Nut. I didn’t drop him.” I let that be known right off. “But… I wanted to. I wanted to let him go so badly. He’d hurt you and Sloan and me. You should have heard the things he said to his father and then cried when we found him dead. He was a horrible, horrible person, and I wanted to not have to think about him anymore. I didn’t want to have to keep looking over my shoulder and wondering when he was going to do something stupid.”

“Sounds reasonable to me.”

“Now who is the liar?” I called his bluff, and Ray leaned forward on his knees.

“Okay, no, it’s not reasonable. But I mean, it’s reasonable that you hated Boyd. We all did, and I bet none of us are unhappy he’s dead.”

And this was where my chest ached. “But none of you felt his hand leave yours. None of you know you could have saved him. There isn’t a part of you that wonders that maybe, just maybe, you didn’t try to catch him. That for a split second, you didn’t just give over to the voice in your head—and let him go.”

Ray got very quiet. If he was waiting for me to continue, he was going to have to wait a while. I couldn’t keep going. There was nothing more to say. I felt guilty—a feeling I never thought I’d feel, when it came to Boyd Lawrence. Because for a split second, just a split second, I thought about not helping him. And that split second cost him his life.

And I’d have to live with that.

I couldn’t tell anyone except Ray. Not even the police. Definitely not Sloan. I couldn’t stand to look at the disappointment in her eyes.

“What did you tell the police?” Ray said finally.

I shrugged. Man, the painkillers were beginning to wear off. I’d need some more soon. “Told them I tried to help him, and he fell. Don’t know if they believed me, but thank goodness Sloan was there to give them a statement.”

“Think they believed her?”

“Don’t know. I hope so. I hope they don’t think I killed him on purpose.”

“Truth be told, I doubt they’ll look into it too strongly. I don’t think anyone in Chapel Hill will miss him. Except maybe his mother.”

His mother…
Even monsters had mothers.

“Don’t tell Sloan what I told you, okay? I don’t want her to worry. And I think it goes without saying not to tell the police.”

“As if you even had to tell me that.” Ray got up and scooted his chair closer to my bed and patted my hand. “I won’t tell a soul, but if you need to talk about it…”

“I can talk to you…”

“No,” he said, surprising me. My head was too groggy for any of this. Warm room. Soft bed. My eyes were having a very hard time staying open. “You can talk to God about it. I think you need Him more than you need me right now.”

My brother. A bible thumper to the end. Who would have thought?

I smiled at him and squeezed his hand, as I stopped fighting the medicine. “I love you, Ray.”

“I love you too, brother.” I closed my eyes, and the world disappeared.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Sloan

The next day

T
HE WAITING ROOM WAS PRETTY FULL
for a weekday. I guessed everyone wanted to get their surgeries out of the way before the weekend. Seemed logical to me.

I found a chair under the window and shut my eyes, and the most wonderful thing happened—sunshine. It stopped raining during the night, and, much to the weatherman’s surprise, the sun came out. It felt so good on my skin and made everything feel like it would be alright.

I wanted it to be alright.

Ray sat beside me. We hadn’t spoken much, and that was okay. It was a bit awkward, but I wasn’t sure what to say to him. He’d been different in the last few days, and I wasn’t sure how to approach him.

That made me sad.

He’d been my friend. I hoped he still was.

Aaron had been in surgery for about thirty minutes, and I was already getting restless. His broken leg was bad, the doctor said, and it would take a while to fix it. I tried not to think about what was going on in that surgery room, but I couldn’t help it. Too much of an imagination.

To my surprise, Ray placed his hand on top of mine and gave it a little squeeze. “He’s going to be fine, you know. We all are. You don’t have to stress so much about it.”

“I do.” I fought the urge to jerk my hand back because he shouldn’t be comforting me. His brother was in surgery because of me…

“My brother is in surgery because of Boyd, not you.” Ray always had a way of reading my mind. “You didn’t cause this, and I’m sorry I said what I said on the road. It was wrong of me.”

“You were tired.”

“No excuse.”

“You were right.” I felt the tears sting my eyes, and I wasn’t sure I could keep them in check. My mom had left a few minutes earlier to get me some coffee, and I didn’t want to be crying when she got back. I’d worried her enough.

Ray twisted his hand until mine was inside his, and he squeezed it gently. He placed his fingers under my chin and turned my head until my eyes met his. “Sloan… I mean it. What I said was out of line and wrong. None of this—None of this is your fault. Boyd did it. Even if he was upset that you broke up, didn’t give him the right to attack you. Even if he was upset over anything, didn’t give him the right to stalk you or kidnap you. He wanted to kill you, Sloan. He took you to the falls to kill you. That’s on him.” He swept his fingers across my cheek. “And I’m very glad he didn’t do it. I’m glad I got to be there and take the bullet. I’m glad Aaron got to be there to protect you, because I don’t know what I’d do without you in my life.”

I stared at him not knowing what to say. I’d spent the better part of a week thinking he hated me… now this. I didn’t think I could deal.

Ray wiped the tears that streamed down my face. “I love you, Sloan. Not like my brother loves you… though I did at one time. And I don’t love you like I love Mackenzie. A fact I plan on telling her today, when I go see her.”

“I’m glad she’s doing better.” I whispered, not trusting my voice to even register on the sound meter.

Ray smiled. “Me too. Looks like I got her back just in time.”

“Just in time.” I repeated.

“Stop. That. Just stop. Mackenzie made her own choice in coming out there. She knew she was sick, and she took the chance. We all took our chances, Sloan. And it is pretty selfish for you to take all of the blame.”

Selfish. I snorted. Yeah. I guess it was.

“So…” he went on. “Don’t be selfish. Share the blame. Or at the very least, give it all to Boyd. He’s the bad guy, remember?”

“I called his mother last night.” I hadn’t told that to anyone. Not even my mother.

Ray sat up straighter. “You did? Why?”

“I needed to ask if it was okay for me to come to the funeral home. Not the funeral. I thought that would be disrespectful. But to the funeral home. I needed to say good-bye to Boyd. I needed to make sure he was in the casket and out of my life.”

“And what did she say?”

“She hung up on me.” Not that I could blame her. I would have probably hung up on me too.

“You don’t need to see him in his casket. You saw him on the rocks, right? You saw the police take him away?”

“I saw him on the rocks. We left before we saw the police move him. I just have a few things I need to tell him, so I can move on.”

“You know he won’t be able to hear you.”

“I know… but sometimes you just have to do things for yourself.”

Ray sat back and pulled my head on his shoulder. For the first time in forever, I settled next to him and shut my eyes. I could relax. I could breathe. I could think.

If I tricked myself, maybe I would believe that everything would be okay.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Aaron

7:16 PM

O
WWWWWWWWWWWWWW…

It didn’t hurt, until the pain medicine wore off and then…. owwwwww…

Who knew a broken leg would hurt so bad?

Probably everybody who had ever had a broken leg.

Ray was in the room with me when I opened my eyes. He was the first person I saw. Not that I wasn’t happy to see him, but I kept looking around.

“She’s not here.”

“Who?” As if I was trying to hide it. Like we both didn’t know.

Ray rose a brow very slowly.

“Okay. Fine. Where’s Sloan? Is she with Mackenzie?”

Ray’s face fell.

“What? Did something happen to Mackenzie? Is she okay? Why are you here, if your woman is hurt?”

“My woman?” His brow rose.

Okay, so if he laughed a bit, then she couldn’t have been hurt. So… that was good. “I take it she’s okay? Mackenzie?”

“Yeah. The medicine they gave her worked really well, and they put her in a real room this morning. She’s not critical anymore, and even her parents let me see her.”

“I take it they didn’t before.”

“Well… they sort of were mad at the world. Can’t fault ‘em. Mackenzie is their baby.”

“But she’s better.” Because I just couldn’t get my foggy brain around it.

“She’s better than better. She said she’d be my girlfriend. And I told her I loved her.”

I nearly fell out of my bed. “Brother! That was quick!”

“Didn’t want to wait. Near death experience and all that.”

I understood, but what sort of big-brother guardian would I be if I didn’t have something parental to say about it. “You’re sure about this, right? I don’t think this girl is one you can say that to and not mean it.”