What He Promises (2 page)

She sighed.
 
“Charlotte – ”

“Please,” I said.
 
“Please, I …just for a minute.”

She bit her lip, then nodded and gave me a
smile.
 
“Okay, but you have to take
it easy.
 
We’re waiting for the
sedative to leave your system, and then you can be discharged.
 
Don’t make me change my mind about
that.”

I shook my head.
 
“I won’t.”

She got a nursing assistant to wheel me
upstairs to Noah’s room.

He was sitting up in his hospital bed, his eyes
surprisingly bright and alert.
 
He
was shirtless, the whole right side of his torso wrapped in a huge white bandage.
 
His face was bruised and cut.
 
But he was alive.

As soon as the nursing assistant was gone, I
burst into tears.

“Charlotte,” Noah said.
 
“Oh, Charlotte.
 
I was so worried.
 
Are you okay?
 
Are you hurt?”

He started to try to get out of bed, but I
stopped him.

“Don’t you dare get out of bed,” I said.
 
Instead, I glance behind me to make sure
the hospital staff wasn’t watching, then got out of my wheelchair and climbed
into bed next to him.
 

He wrapped his arms around me, and I saw him
grimace in pain.

“Am I hurting you?” I asked, moving away from
him a tiny bit.

“No.
 
This is the best I’ve felt all day.”
 
He pulled me toward him, and I rested my
head on his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, steady and strong.
 
I placed my palm flat against his chest
and felt the rhythm for extra reassurance.

“I thought you were… I thought you were dead,”
I said, and then I began crying again.

“
Shhh
,” he said,
rubbing the back of my neck with his hand.
 
“Charlotte,
shhh
.
 
Everything’s okay.
 
It’s all going to be okay.”

His touch calmed me, but I couldn’t stop
crying.
 
He let me have my emotional
release, stroking my hair and comforting me as we lay there in his hospital
bed, both of us broken physically and emotionally.
 
When I was all cried out, he reached
over and grabbed a tissue from the table next to his bed and handed it to me.

“Thanks,” I said.
 
I blew my nose, embarrassed.
 
I couldn’t even imagine what a mess I
must look like.
 
Someone had changed
me into a hospital gown and a pair of hospital-issued underwear, which I was
pretty sure wasn’t a flattering look.
 
My face felt greasy and I could feel my hair hanging in lank strands
around my shoulders.

Meanwhile, Noah’s ripped torso and broad
shoulders were on full display, his body taut and toned in all the right places.
 
Even his cuts and bruises did nothing to
diminish his sexiness – in
fact,
they made him
look like some kind of hero just back from war.

“Don’t look at me,” I said, turning my
head.
 
“I’m a mess.”

He cupped my chin gently, turned it so that I
was looking him in the eye.
 
“You
are beautiful.
 
The most beautiful
woman in the world, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, overcome with
emotion.
 
“I thought you were dead,”
I said.
 
“You said all those things
to me, and I thought I wasn’t going to get a chance to say them back.
 
I love you, Noah.
 
I love you so much.”

“I know.”
 
His lips found mine, his kiss soft and tender and full of emotion.
 
It was a kiss unlike any other we’d had
before.
 
Before, I’d felt those
emotions for him, that
love
, that connection, but it
had been confusing because we’d only been together for a short time.
 
Now we’d been through something, we’d weathered
a storm and come out the other side.
 
Our emotions matched our reality, and it felt safe and right and
perfect.

He pulled back and looked into my eyes, his
finger tracing a line down over my jawbone.
 
“Did he hurt you?”

I shook my head.

“What did he do?”

“He…he tried to force himself on me.”

I felt Noah’s body stiffen next to me, felt him
fighting against the anger I’d ignited in him with my words.
 

“I’ll kill him,” he said.
 
And then to my surprise, he started to
get out of bed.

“Noah,” I said, grabbing at his arm and shaking
my head.
 
“Noah, you can’t go up to
his room! There are cops all over the place.”

Noah snorted, as if something as stupid as a bunch
of armed policemen weren’t going to stop him from doing what needed to be done.

“Besides,” I said, “you need to rest.
 
I need you to be okay.”

“I am
okay.”
 
But he
laid
back down and I snuggled back up against him, my legs intertwining with
his.
 

We stayed silent for a
moment,
the only sounds the beep of the monitors, the soft voices from the nurses
station, and the rhythmic in-and-out of our breathing

“How did you get out of jail?” I asked finally.
 
“How did you do it, Noah?
 
How did you save me?”

His hand stroked my hair, twirling the stands
around his fingers gently.
 

“I was sitting there in that cell,” he said,
his voice gruff.
 
“I was sitting
there going insane, thinking about you being away from me, about you being in
danger.”
 
His voice cracked with
emotion and his other hand grabbed for mine, our fingers intertwining.
 
“I was so desperate to get to you, and
Colin didn’t seem to care.
 
We got
into an argument, and he stormed out.
 
And that’s when I started putting it all together.
 
So I called Josh, and he agreed to drop
the charges.
 
Once that happened,
they had no right to hold me any longer.”

“Josh agreed to drop the charges?”

“Yes.
 
He didn’t want to, but when I explained you were in danger, he
relented.
 
Then I called Audi, and
got him to agree to bid on you, but it was no use.
 
The auction was rigged.
 
I was going out of my mind, Charlotte, I
thought… I thought I was going to lose you.”

His hand moved lazily down over my collarbone,
dipping into the front of my hospital gown and over the swell of my breast.

His lips found mine again, his tongue entering
my mouth as we kissed.
 
The kiss
deepened, his mouth pushing harder against mine, his hands sliding a bit
further down my body.

“Shit,” he groaned.
 

I pulled back and looked at him in wonder.
 
“Really, Noah?” I asked.

“I’ll be so quick,” he promised, his tone
becoming playful as he pushed at the bottom of my hospital gown, inching it up
and over my hips.

I pushed his hand away, mortified at the
thought of him touching my hospital- issued granny panties.
 
 
“No,” I said, grinning.
 
“You need to rest.”

“Charlotte.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t like being told no.”

“I know you don’t.”

“I’ll have to take it out on you later.”

“I’m looking forward to it, Mr. Cutler.”

We lapsed into silence as he continued to
stroke my hair lazily. His other hand was under my gown, on my bare back,
holding me close to him, making it clear he might be hurt, but he still owned
me, was still in charge of protecting me.
 

 
I
thought he might have dozed off, but a second later he said, “I heard you bit a
paramedic.”

“I didn’t bite him!” I said, sitting up and
looking at him in mock outrage.
 

He shrugged.
 
“That’s the rumor going around.”

“Oh, yeah?
 
Who said?”

“The nurses.”

“Maybe I did bite him,” I admitted.
 
“But it didn’t break the skin.”

Noah shook his head.
 
“You shouldn’t be biting anyone,
Charlotte.
 
You
should
 
be
resting.”

“Yes, sir.”

We lapsed back into silence, and I closed my
eyes until I drifted off to sleep.
 
When I woke up, he was there, watching over me, as I knew he would be.

***

A few hours later, I was allowed to leave the
hospital.
 
I was groggy and my legs
felt wobbly and sore, but other than that, I was okay.

Noah, however, had to stay an extra twenty-four
hours for observation.

He’d needed more than fifty stitches in his
side, and he’d lost so much blood that the doctors wanted to make sure his pain
and injuries were under control before they let him leave.

But he was going to be okay.
 

And that was the all that mattered.

I spent the night at his apartment and then
returned to the hospital in the morning.

Jared had offered to drive me, but I’d insisted
on going by myself, then insisted on being there while Noah’s discharge papers
were signed and instructions on pain meds and wound care were given.

Once we were out of the hospital and settled
into the car, Noah looked at me skeptically from the passenger seat.
 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked
as I adjusted the rearview mirror and turned the key in the ignition.
 
Noah owned multiple cars, but I’d made
sure to pick the least expensive-looking one, a sleek black Lexus that seemed
as if it had never been driven.
 
It
smelled of leather and new car, and I was terrified I was going to crash
it.
 
Luckily there was a spot in
front of the hospital that had been designated for patient pickup, and I’d been
able to snag it.

“Do you drive, Charlotte?”
 
Noah asked.

“I have a license,” I said haughtily.

“That wasn’t the question.
 
I would assume you have a license based
on the fact that you are sitting behind the wheel of my very expensive car, a
car that you have no experience driving, in a city that is known for its tough
driving conditions.”

“I drive.”

“Where?”

“Where?”

“Yes, where and when have you driven?”

“Lots of places,” I said.

“Lots of suburban places?”

“Don’t be a snob, Noah,” I said, sliding the
gear shift
into drive.
 

I turned on my blinker and began to pull out
into traffic.
 
It was supposed to be
the perfect way to cap my declaration, for me to call him a traffic snob and
then pull smoothly out into the busy New York City streets.

Instead, I almost got sideswiped by a cab and
had to slam on the brakes a millimeter before swerving into a parked car.

“Jared?”
 
Noah called, pretending to look in the backseat.
 
“Jared, please, where
are
you?”
 

I giggled and tried again.
 
This time, there were no missteps or
near-accidents.

I got us back to Noah’s apartment safely,
pulling into the garage and cutting the engine with a satisfied turn of the
key.

“See?” I said.
 
“No sweat.”

“The doctor said I’m not supposed to have any
undue stress,” Noah said as he stepped out of the car.
 
“So next time we’ll bring the driver.”

“Are you saying my driving is causing you undue
stress?”
 
I asked as we walked
toward the door that would lead us into Noah’s building.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

I puffed my lip out, pouting.
 
“My driving is topnotch,” I said.
 
“If you’re getting undue stress from my
driving, maybe you’re being too sensitive.
 
Or maybe you’re really stressed about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that you had to give up control
for a moment, and you didn’t like the way it felt.”