Standing By: A Knight's Tale #2 (21 page)

I call in
reinforcements. Cade, my cousin, is free, and he’s here helping me with the customers. Sophie has no idea what happened, but she’s a good sport and continues with the task of baking everything on the list that Hayley handed her earlier. My lawyer is looking into suing Bridget for defamation. I called the health department and was able to get in touch with some of my friends in high places; they confirmed that Bridget offered a large amount of money to one of the inspectors, but he had come forward regarding the bribe. They weren’t planning on closing the place. Though they wouldn’t make him return the money yet, not until they could give us enough evidence to plant a civil lawsuit against her.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this,” Cade says. “Because as a doctor, I feel like my talent wastes away, just as my waist expands.”

I don’t know, whatever happened to Hayley is a puzzle. It’s been a few hours since the incident. I picked up the knife, and it was wet with blood. Now I’m pondering how I’ll get to the truth of what’s going on with her. She’s been using that knife each time her father and mother stop in and by the time I catch her she’s either washing it or putting it away.

“I told you that you could eat only one,” Cade gives me a sheepish look. “How many cupcakes have you eaten so far, Caden?”

He hunches his shoulders and heads back to the kitchen. My pocket vibrates and when I pull my phone out, I see an incoming text from Liam.

LAK:
Where are you?

MAK:
Working, why?

LAK:
I had an emergency.

MAK:
Can I help you, what can I do from here?

LAK:
Work emergency at the NYC office, it’s fixed; can we have lunch?

MAK:
You know what sounds better? Feeding me.

LAK:
Don’t you own several restaurants?

MAK:
I’m at my wife’s bakery; she had a real emergency. I’ll tell you later.

LAK:
K, I’ll feed you.

MAK:
Cade wants food too, go to the sushi restaurant and get enough for five.

*

“You own this
too?” Liam asks and purses his lips, upset because he’s out of the loop. “I leave for two months and you transform yourself into this whipped character.”

“Shut up.” I bark at him. “Hayl had a family emergency and since she’s supplying me with her products, I thought it’d be fair to help her.”

“Nice shit,” Liam nods. “I like how you started this one. It’s way better than the friends with fucking benefits crap that Emma and—”

“Wife,” I remind him and abstain from saying
without any fucking benefits
. “What happened with my family free summer? I’m still honeymooning without you.”

One of the new advertising directors in his company quit yesterday and is now working for the competition. The man sold important information to the opposition. Liam really knows how to pick them. The same happened with Sam, our old partner. Dumbasses.

“You missed me.” He says. “Don’t deny it.”

“I did not, Sparky. We speak over the phone at least twice a week. Should I remind you that we worked on the advertising campaigns of the restaurants, and you modified
Willows
image some because Emma couldn’t work on it and—wait, actually we talk almost every day. How can I miss you?”

I have family drama to deal with—Hayley’s family—there’s no use thinking about adding my own family to the mix. Hayley would have trouble handling everyone at the same time.

“Don’t eat the store, this isn’t Hansel and Gretel,” I warn. They both laugh and say nothing about my warning before I head to the small back office to call Welsh and find out about Hayley.

“Knight, what can I do for you?” He answers at the first ring.

“My wife, where and how is she?” I hear a female voice-over hospital, airport… where are they? “I have the right to know, legally, I’m now her next of kin.”

“How much do you know about the marks on her stomach?”

I can’t answer him. I’ve seen them, touched them while we’re asleep when she doesn’t kick me to the guest room. I had bought a little time by teaching her to trust me; maybe I should have pushed her. “Knight?”

“She doesn’t talk about them.” Because I don’t ask, I don’t share.

“We’re in the hospital. She’s on a suicide watch for the next forty-eight hours,” he finally says. “Hayley doesn’t want to talk or see anyone. After the period is up, they’ll assess her. For what the psychiatrist said, if they think it’s necessary, they’ll assign temporary conservatorship. Hopefully to me.”

“No.”

The hell I’ll let him have any say about Hayley’s well-being. Whatever she has going on, she doesn’t need babysitting. I bet she needs her family’s real support instead of them fucking with her head. Once she’s out of there, we’ll address the issues she struggles with, and I’ll try to help her anyway she wants and needs.

“I’ll talk to my lawyer about this but I rather we don’t end up on a trial fighting for her conservatorship, sir.”

Now I wonder if she tried to kill herself. I regret leaving her alone to deal with her family knowing that they like to make an appearance between ten and eleven just to make sure she doesn’t have any peace.

“You don’t know her well enough,” Augustine Welsh says with a cracked voice, the voice that stops me from telling him that it’s he who has no idea who Hayley is and what she wants or requires to live. “I think she should stay with me.”

“Sir,” I interrupt him again. “I can guarantee that you’re the one who needs to get to know her. Call me when you know more about this forty-eight hour watch. I’ll see you in the hospital once the bakery closes.”

I hang up just as Liam knocks at the door. “Mitch. There’s a lady outside who wants to order dozens of muffins for tomorrow morning.”

I head out and look at Sophie hard at work, wondering if she’ll pull through. Another sleepless night awaits me.

“What’s going on?” Liam asks as we head to the front. “Mitch?”

“I don’t fucking know, Liam,” I say between clenched teeth, my heart continues pounding against my chest. “I headed out to make a delivery, left my wife alone and when I came back, her father took her to the hospital. As much as I’d like to close the place and go, I can’t. I need to get my shit together first and then find out how to help her, Li.”

“I’m staying for a few days,” it is a statement, not a question or an offer.

I shake my head because I don’t want to involve him.

“You look like shit, and you need family. It’s me, or I’ll call her.”

Anything but Mom. She isn’t the person I want to deal with right now. The baby of the house isn’t stupid and innocent; he’s more dangerous than Jake. Liam doesn’t believe in force, but he’s the master of manipulation—or is that me?

“Let’s fix the muffin or was it cupcake emergency?” Shit, he said it only minutes ago and I can’t remember. “Then we’ll check if we have everything for tomorrow. We’re hiring the new cake decorator today and perhaps another hand to help us keep the place running smoothly and tidy.”

Liam comes to a halt and arches an eyebrow then shakes his head. If he only knew the amount of phrases and words, I’ve been saying in the past few weeks that don’t fit with who I am, he’ll pick another brother to be his favorite. Or send me to some psych-ward to have a lobotomy performed.

*

I arrive at
the hospital; Augustine is sitting outside the room number they gave me at the reception. “How is she?”

He shrugs. “She still doesn’t wish to see anyone.”

I head to the nurse’s station. Behind the white wide and long desk that holds several monitors, phones and files there’s a young petite woman who smiles as she sees me. That friendly,
we’ll make everything better
smile. I hand her the bouquet of flowers with a note I brought for Hayley.

I need to hold you, can you let me in? Promise not to talk, unless you want me to.

MAK

P.S. I have mac-n-cheese with me.

“She wants to see you, sir.” The nurse smiles as she comes out of Hayley’s room. “I think you’re exactly what the doctor prescribed.”

As I enter the room, she lifts her head. She smiles slightly and then her eyes glitter with moisture. I leave the bag of food on top of the blue chair and bend to embrace her tightly; her head pressed to my chest, my fingers stroking her back. Tears seep through my shirt as she sobs and gasps.

“Take me home, Muffin boy,” her words are almost lost through the beeping of the machines to which she’s connected.

“Soon, Hayes.”

I want to ask her what happened. I want to check her wrists and make sure they’ll heal but I promised not to speak, and I don’t want to make her feel inadequate with my questions. Later, when she stops crying and is strong enough to talk. I wait, and suddenly her sobs decrease, her breathing steadies and her limbs relax but her hands grasp my waist. I don’t move. I’ll stay with her until they kick me out of the room or she wakes up. I fear she’ll push me away once she feels strong enough, and I have no idea how to keep her with me.

Hayley

I
feel dirty,
a fugitive, guilty for getting caught. This time the urge for release overtook my brain and I blew my cover. After so many years of practice, the actions of one person let everyone onto my secret.

“I can’t believe you did this to yourself,”
my father said.

Now he thinks even less of me, he vowed, “
I’m going to fight the court and I’ll be your guardian.
” I’m not a child or a troubled starlet making bad decisions.

“What is wrong with you, Hayley?”

The psychiatrist told me self-mutilation is a way to beg for help.

Help from who?
They all are busy judging my every move, too weird, too stupid, too smart, too naïve, too fat… I don’t do anything right.

“Why do you do it?” The doctor asked.

“To release the pressure inside my head and my chest,” I responded.

“What creates that pressure, Hayley?”

“I need to be perfect, one defect, and they stop loving me,” my bottom lip quivers but I continued. “Mom needed me to the smartest of the school, win awards, have the perfect test scores and look beautiful so she could say she was my mother. If not, she’ll say: I was a waste that I wasn’t worth everything she sacrificed.”

“How did it start?”

“It started with a bad hour, a bad day, progressing to a bad week and as though someone had switched the channel from children’s programming to a movie by Stephen King, it became a bad life. There is no silver lining to my life. I am unable to find the release of all the pain because it sounds delusional. I’m not starving on the streets; no one assaulted me. Anyone would think what I feel, the struggle I have inside me is childish. There are other more important things to focus on than what’s rotten inside me. It only takes a few minutes for me to feel better, though after the cut it doesn’t take long for everything to come back and for me to need a deeper longer cut to let it out.”

“You’re awake,” Mitch moves around the bed. I can’t believe they let him stay with me. Between dreams, I heard him tell the nurse that she’ll have to take him by force. That there was no way in hell, he’ll leave his wife alone in a cold hospital.

“Did you have a good rest?” he asks.

I nod.

“Good I did, too. I hope you don’t mind that I left Liam in charge of the bakery. We have the same crew that covered for you during Jake’s wedding and Sophie, of course.”

“You promised not to talk,” I remind him because I fear he’ll begin to ask questions, questions I don’t know how to answer. He smiles and nuzzles my neck, sending shivers through my body. “Thank you for the flowers and staying with me. Can you take me home? Make them lift that stupid watch?”

Tenderness turns his eyes a softer shade of green.