Looking down with a spinning in her head, she stared at the bottle sticking out of her side. Reid had accidentally smashed his bottle against the car, sending vodka spilling onto her foot and driving part of the broken bottle through her thin work dress and into her body.
“Fuck! Oh fuck! Juliet, fuck!” Reid staggered backward, his eyes huge. “Juliet, what do I do?”
“Call an ambulance.” She couldn’t see her phone and her head didn’t feel right.
Sliding down to sit on the ground, she said, “Reid. Ambulance.”
He scrabbled in his pockets for his phone just as a door opened nearby.
Reid looked up, relief harsh on his features. “Call an ambulance!”
The last thing Juliet saw before she lost consciousness was Everett’s horrified face coming around the car.
“Jake,” she whispered and was gone.
36
Love
Jake and Esme had just sat down in front of the TV to watch a bit of her princess movie for the seven billionth and thirty-seventh time when he got a call from Everett. Wondering why Juliet’s boss was calling him, he answered—and felt everything inside him turn to ice.
“You’ll stay with her?” he said. “I have to drop my daughter off at my parents’.” It was hard to form words, hard to think.
“I’ll stay right here,” Everett promised. “The doctors are with her.”
“Daddy?” Esme was looking at him, her face scared. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, baby,” he said and hoped he was telling the truth. “But Juliet needs my help with something. I’m going to drop you off at Grandma and Grandpa’s.”
But Esme was too smart to fall for that. “No, I wanna come with you.” She clung to him as he rose.
Gathering her up in his arms, he found his keys and took her out to the car. He didn’t argue with her, just drove to his parents, and though she cried, he dropped her off into her grandmother’s arms.
“Hush, Boo.” A big hug, a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll call you soon.” A hospital waiting room was no place for a little girl who’d lost a mother and adored the new woman who’d come into her life.
Jake’s heart was a rock in his chest as he drove through the night to the hospital. It wasn’t far from his parents’ home, and all he could think the entire way there was that he hadn’t told her he loved her. Juliet might go into surgery never knowing how much she meant to him.
He squeezed the steering wheel so hard that he was afraid he’d break it.
The hospital building appeared in the distance, big and white. After finding a parking spot, he ran to the emergency ward to which Everett had told him she’d been taken. The slender man jerked to his feet as Jake arrived. A nurse appeared at the same time.
“You’re Juliet Nelisi’s family?” she said, looking from one to the other.
“Yes,” Jake said, even though legally he had no right—and that pissed him the hell off. He was hers and she was his. He wanted the right. “Is she all right?”
“Yes.” The nurse smiled. “She’s fine. In recovery. The glass didn’t penetrate as deeply as it initially appeared.”
Relief shook his knees. “Can I see her?”
“Yes, follow me. We used local anesthetic to stitch her up, so she’s lucid.”
Jake was aware of Everett following, didn’t ask him to stay back. The man’d had a hell of a shock—and he might’ve saved Juliet’s life. “Everett, how did Juliet get cut?” He hadn’t bothered to ask that question during the initial call.
“I’ll let her tell you that. I’m not sure myself.”
“Here you go.” The nurse pushed aside the curtain around Juliet’s cubicle.
She was sitting up in bed in a hospital gown, a scowl on her face. “I fainted,” she muttered the instant Jake appeared. “I fainted like a great big drama queen.”
“It was shock, dear,” the nurse said soothingly before leaving.
Jake, meanwhile, was having trouble maintaining any kind of composure. Which was why he stood by the curtain while Everett rushed over to gently embrace Juliet. Their conversation was a buzz in Jake’s head. He barely even saw the other man say his goodbyes and leave.
The antiseptic smell of the hospital, the noises of the machines, even the bed, it all had nausea churning his gut. Again and again, he saw Calypso’s lifeless face, except his brain kept trying to superimpose Juliet’s on the memory.
“Jake.” Juliet held out a hand.
Jake jerked forward because he’d made a promise to himself to never let Juliet down. Sinking into the chair beside her bed, he took her hand, and then he dropped his head and his shoulders and just shuddered. He didn’t cry, not this time. The waves of emotion were too huge and too merciless. He squeezed her hand until it had to hurt, and he tried to find a way through the chaos.
“Hey.” Her voice cut through the mess, made him look up.
She gave him a tight smile. “Every time you run onto that field, I worry. Rugby isn’t a gentle game. But I can’t protect you from the world. So I live with it. Just like I live with knowing that I can’t wrap Esme in cotton wool.”
His entire soul twisted and torn, he looked at her and he knew he’d be savaged if she died. He’d be destroyed. Broken to pieces. “Do you know how much I love you?” he rasped out and saw an expression on her face he’d never before seen. “Until it hurts me to breathe sometimes. Until seeing you in this bed is my worst fucking nightmare come to life.”
He pressed his lips to the hand he’d gripped. “Fuck, Juliet.” Shaking, he rose and got up onto the bed, then—with care—wrapped her up in his arms. “Fuck.”
Silence… and a bloom of wet heat on his T-shirt where Juliet had pressed her face.
“Jules,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “God, I’m sorry to be such an ass. I should be—”
“Tell me again.” A teary but firm request. “Tell me again.”
“I love you, Juliet. I love you.” He repeated the words again and again as she cried. “I’m sorry I was too chickenshit to say that before. If I’d lost you and you’d never heard it from me…” The idea tore him apart. “Forgive me.”
She shook her head against him, mumbled, “Nothing to forgive.” It came out bleary. “Words are nice,” she said on a hiccup of breath. “So nice that I’m stupid-crying like a baby, but I’ve felt you loving me all this time. You love hard, Jake. Impossible to be yours and not know.” A salt-laced kiss pressed to his lips. “It’s okay, baby.” She stroked her hands over his trembling shoulders. “I’m right here. Loving you back just as hard.”
Unable to speak, Jake held on, just held on.
The doctors released Juliet a couple of hours later with strict instructions for her to not physically exert herself for a week.
Esme was mad at both of them when they picked her up that night and refused to say a word. She stomped to her room and shut her door. Jake, well aware his daughter had a full measure of the Esera stubborn streak, let her be.