Gasping for breath, she looked at the fire quickly engulfing the living room and closing in on where he lay. And left him to it.
Stumbling to the foyer, Alexa could barely walk. And then she found Maverick lying face down across the threshold of the open front door, something wet darkening his hair. He’d come for her, just like he said. And Grant had hurt him. Oh, God, let him be okay.
But she couldn’t focus on her worries just then. She had to get them both out of there.
Using every last piece of herself she could pull together, she stepped clumsily over him and grabbed his feet. She got him clear of the door, and then the world went wavy around her. Wavy and fuzzy. And then there was nothing at all.
CHAPTER 30
Maverick came awake on a gasp that hurt like hell. His throat felt like it’d been scoured with coarse sandpaper, and his body felt like someone had dropped a house on it. He’d been in and out of it a hundred times, but never been able to keep his hold on reality.
The fire. Something . . . hit me. Alexa!
On a moan, he sat up, his hands clumsily pulling at tubes and wires.
“Hey, hey, none of that,” a nurse in pink scrubs said, gently stilling his hands. “Just calm down, hon.”
“Alexa,” he rasped, his voice like gravel. “Alexa Harmon.”
“She’s right next to you, Mr. Rylan.” She pushed the curtain back and revealed an unconscious Alexa propped up in a bed identical to his. Only she had a tube in her mouth and her hands were fully bandaged. “You two have got a lot of, uh, friends out in the waiting room and they pushed hard to get you in the same room. Miss Harmon is gonna be fine but her situation is a bit more serious right at the moment, so I need you to let her rest or I have to move her.” She arched a brow at him.
More serious? The pain in the center of his chest had nothing to do with the smoke he’d inhaled. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked, his heart fucking breaking. The nurse looked at him like she was debating, so Maverick pushed. He glanced to her name tag. “Erica, I’m going to marry that woman. Please, tell me.”
“She had a severe asthma attack exacerbated by the smoke inhalation. Her lungs didn’t sufficiently respond to anti-inflammatories, so we had to intubate her to stem the possibility of respiratory failure. Once her lungs are recovered and able to work on their own again, we’ll be able to remove the tube. Probably in the morning. She also has burns on her hands and forearms.
Christ, from pulling the burning pieces of ceiling off of him, he bet. Sonofabitch. “But . . . but she’s going to be okay?” he asked, needing to hear her say it again.
“She will. You both will. Your burns are minor and your CT scan was clear. You just have a pretty killer bump on your head.”
He put his hand to his hair and flinched. Bump? That thing was a fucking mountain. “I don’t know how that happened.”
She frowned. “When you think you’re ready, there’s a police officer here who’d like to talk to you. He might be able to tell you more. Want me to send him in?”
Maverick nodded, and she turned to go. “Wait. Alexa’s mom. Cynthia Harmon?”
Erica returned to his bedside. “I’m afraid her mother was in severe respiratory distress from prolonged smoke inhalation, and she also had a bump to the head. The doctors are hopeful for a recovery, but we’ll know more in the next twelve to twenty-four hours.”
“Fuck. Okay.” Maverick shook his head, his thoughts a wreck. “Sorry for the language.”
She smiled. “Don’t worry about it, hon. You’ve had a rough night.” She disappeared out the door. Martin came in shortly after.
“Christ, Maverick. You look like hell,” Martin said.
“Fuck you, too,” he said.
“We found you and Alexa lying together on the front porch of her mom’s house. It looked like Alexa pulled you out before passing out herself.”
His gaze cut to her. She’d pulled him out?
He shook his head. “I don’t remember. Something hit me, and then—” He shook his head again. Flashes of disconnected images came together, but he couldn’t piece them together to make any sense.
Martin sighed. “Grant Slater hit you. With a liquor bottle, as best we can tell. The house is a total loss, so it’s going to take us a while to sift through all the evidence. But if I had to guess, I’d say he set the fire.”
Rage was a living beast inside Maverick, stalking around and demanding release. “Goddamn Slater,” he bit out. “I—”
A moan.
His gaze whipped back to Alexa. Her eyes fluttered, her wrapped hands struggling to move.