“I want you.”
He looked straight into my eyes. “Now you’ve got all of me.”
18
Liam
Those 36 hours before Sophie woke up were the longest hours of my life. The doctors kept assuring us her vitals looked good. She’d been through a trauma and rest was her body’s way of helping her heal. Sleep was the best thing for her.
I knew these things already, having received extensive medical training as an EMT and firefighter. I knew all about smoke inhalation, since rescuing people from fires was my job and had been my father’s as well. But this time it was different. Wondering about how other people recovered from injuries after a blaze was one thing. Worrying about the woman I loved was entirely another.
All those doubts and the dark cloud of confusion that had chased me the weeks since she’d been back? That all evaporated the second I found her lying on the floor in that yacht. The second I’d thought I might have lost her, I realized I had to do everything I could to hold onto her for the rest of my life. Sophie was my one and only.
True, I was still the same flawed beast I always had been, but that now seemed irrelevant. There was no off switch for what I felt for her anymore. I’d stop trying to look for one.
I would try to be a better person, though. As I sat in the hospital waiting for her to awaken, I made all kinds of promises, to myself, to the God I’d been raised to believe in. I wasn’t exactly sure who or what out there in the universe might be listening to me, but I sent it up anyway, my intentions to be a better man. I’d try to live up to my own ideals, be the man I aspired to be, not just the helpful, friendly man on the outside but on the inside, too.
I didn’t want to live my life afraid that I was exactly like my father. All my fear that I was like him was pushing me into making that fear a reality. It had been holding me back from Sophie, making me alienate myself from her, ultimately hurt her in a very real way. And I didn’t mean the spanking, I meant the way I’d kept hurting her by leaving. This time, if she let me, if I just got one more chance, I’d stay.
At first, her mother wanted nothing to do with me. She didn’t want me in the room with Sophie.
“Family only!” she’d barked at me, glaring as if I’d injured Sophie, myself. Of course my guilt agreed with her. I had pushed her into a mental and emotional state that had made her go to that party. If I’d only just stuck around and held her in my arms, kissed her and told her how I felt like Chase and Emma had advised me, none of this would have happened.
But then someone must have talked to her. I wasn’t sure who it was, and maybe it was more than one person. This was a small, local hospital where my mom worked. In fact, my mom was working a shift when Mrs. Douglas walked toward me in the waiting room with bleary, red eyes.
“Come on,” she said, turning on her heels like a soldier and leading me back to the room where Sophie lay. I didn’t ask any questions. I followed her, understanding that this must be extremely hard for her to voluntarily invite me back to see her daughter. It was a lot easier to hate and blame than it was to open up your heart.
Seeing Sophie lying there looking so pale made my heart lurch. She was such a lively, sparkling person, moving so gracefully as if dancing through even everyday activities. Even in the waiting room, doctors and nurses had kept me informed and updated. I was Jackie Connolly’s son, after all, and word also got round fast that I’d been the one to rescue her. If my mom’s influence didn’t make all the difference—and I was pretty sure that was all it took, she was universally loved—my having found Sophie and run her out to an ambulance got them the rest of the way.
Once I’d gained access to Sophie’s room, I didn’t leave. I brought her mother coffee she didn’t drink and pastries she didn’t eat. I wondered where Sophie’s father was and Margot, too, but I didn’t ask. That wasn’t my business. And all I really cared about was the woman lying in that cot motionless under hospital sheets, looking far too frail and wan for a 25-year-old in the peak of health.
The thing about smoke inhalation is you never could be too sure what chemicals had gotten into your lungs. The materials burning in that boat released all kinds of dangerous toxins—sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, chlorine, ammonia. They weren’t just irritants, they were poisons that could kill. Just because she’d survived the initial onslaught didn’t mean she wouldn’t sustain permanent damage to her brain, and the longer she went without becoming conscious again, the more likely that possibility grew.
I didn’t voice any of that to Mrs. Douglas. I was pretty sure none of the doctors told her, either. Knowing each minute her daughter lay unconscious increased the likelihood that she’d never recover fully would only jettison her into a panic. As it was, I was sure she was reliving the injuries her son Ian had sustained, after a fire on a boat no less. The coincidence would be stranger if both accidents hadn’t taken place on Naugatuck. Almost everyone who’d spent serious time out there had some close-call story about the ocean, usually on a boat. But this one did take the cake in terms of flagrant violation of fire code. Theo had clearly been trying hard to impress, going way over-the-top in some kind of opulent ancient Roman theme, thumbing his nose at fate as he welcomed guests into an enclosed area with poor ventilation, hundreds of open flames and tapestries supplying the kindling.
Lost in my own thoughts of vengeance, largely against Theo for being the most arrogant, selfish, reckless man on the planet, but also against myself for pushing her into his arms, I was unprepared for Mrs. Douglas’s words.
“Thank you,” she said, sitting behind me in the arm chair she’d barely left the whole time we waited.
I turned around, not sure I’d heard her correctly.
“Thank you,” she repeated, not speaking loudly but she did speak clearly. “Thank you for rescuing her.”
I nodded, not able to manage much else. So someone had talked to her, told her my role in getting Sophie out. I turned back to Sophie, not wanting to prolong the moment, mostly in deference to Mrs. Douglas. She must have had to rip those words out of her heart. I’d always known she’d blamed me for Ian’s injuries.
I’d never explained everything that had happened that night when we were 14 to her. Almost the second we hit dry land we had lawyers swarming over us, telling us to talk to them and only them. The Douglas and Carter families were on it, and somehow the fact that we’d stolen the boat for a joyride had been kept out of the papers and we never faced any legal action.
But it also tamped a cloak of secrecy over the night, leaving us each unable to talk about it with anyone other than our parents. I’d never even been able to tell Sophie everything. But the fact was, when that storm rose up out of nowhere, I’d been the one on the boat who got us into life jackets. I’d been the one to radio the Coast Guard and give them our coordinates, even though Jax and Ian had both told me not to. They’d still been too worried about getting in trouble, but neither of them understood the ocean like I did. I knew we faced much greater trouble than the law. Mother Nature wouldn’t care that we were minors, she’d mete out vicious punishment no matter how clean our prior records.
I had left Ian on the boat, but when I’d done that he wasn’t trapped under anything. He and Jax were doing all right, lashed in place with rope that I’d tied, each wearing a life jacket. I hadn’t known that the rope would keep him underneath a burning mast. I had no way of knowing that, even though it still did make me feel guilty.
But I’d responded to the emergency right before my eyes, not the one that hadn’t happened yet. In sudden hurricane-force winds, the front end of the boat had snapped clean off, flipped on its side and Chase got thrown into the water. But I’d already located and inflated a raft, not because I was some kind of hero but because I knew about that kind of shit. My father was a firefighter and I’d grown up on an island listening to grown men talk about the water with true reverence and even fear in their eyes. I’d tied the raft’s cord around my waist and dove in after Chase. And somehow, in the m
iddle of all that churning black chaos, I’d caught a lucky break and been able to find him and drag him up and onto the raft with me.
Ian hadn’t been so lucky. The Coast Guard had arrived, but only after severe damage had been done. Jax had done what he could, but he hadn’t been strong enough to lift the mast off of Ian. I knew that had nearly killed him. He’d only talked about it once with me. His parents had split up after the accident, and his mom moved him down to Texas. We didn’t talk much, though I kept in touch enough to always know where he was living. It wasn’t until he was 21 that he came to visit. One night, when we were sitting out and drinking on the deck, watching that damn ocean, he came out with it.
He still had nightmares, he told me. Watching Ian trapped, his screams. He’d never forget or forgive himself. I’d told him all the things I’d told myself. That there was nothing he could do.
“But you saved Chase’s life,” he’d told me, his eyes looking dead. “And I watched Ian die.”
“He didn’t die,” I’d pointed out.
“He wishes he did,” Jax had answered, with such condemnation in his words.
All that guilt, all that turmoil and pain swirled around Mrs. Douglas and I in the hospital room as we waited for yet another of her children to recover from yet another accident involving fire on a boat. And yet she’d found the words to thank me. To say it meant a lot was an understatement.
Back turned to her, I spoke from the heart.
“I love Ian. And I’m in love with Sophie. I’d do anything for them. I wish…” I struggled for the words, wanting to tell her I wished I’d done more for Ian that night. I wished I’d been smarter and never even hopped on that boat Ian and Jax had stolen. I wished I’d thought to get Ian and Jax safely off and into a lifeboat. I wished I’d somehow been able to split myself in two so I could both rescue Chase and Ian. “I’m sorry,” I began, but she interrupted me.
“It’s all right,” she said, and from the choked sound of her voice I could tell she was crying. “I know what happened with Ian wasn’t your fault.”
Then I had to wipe a tear from my eye. Hearing her say that lifted something I hadn’t even realized had been weighing me down. I’d always told myself I’d done all I could, but to hear her say it, I felt it.
By the time Sophie finally awakened, both Mrs. Douglas and I had recovered ourselves into an uncomfortable, awkward silence once again. She and I would never be besties, but I wasn’t sure she was that type of person. I couldn’t imagine her letting down her guard with anyone, really.
Even with her daughter, once Sophie regained consciousness, I noticed she rarely came over directly to the bedside. She obviously cared deeply. She’d barely left Sophie’s side the whole 37 hours she’d lain in that bed. But she didn’t move to hold her hand, or tell her she loved her. I couldn’t imagine anyone stopping my mother from doing those two things if I lay in a hospital bed. Hell, it was hard to get her to not do that on a typical Tuesday morning.