“Who said those words to you?” I asked. “About you never being enough.”
“The three stepmothers from hell,” she replied. “They made me believe that everyone else’s feelings were more valid than my own.”
“So, you allowed any kind of treatment because you believed you didn’t deserve better.”
“All I wanted to do was make them happy,” she explained. “All I ever wanted to do was make people happy.”
“Even at the expense of your own happiness?”
“Always at the expense.” She removed herself from my hold, and I let her go.
I gave her a broken smile, and shit, I didn’t smile at most people. So, within seconds it dropped into a grimaced frown. Her thumb moved up to her lips as she took a moment to stare at me.
“It was almost there,” she whispered, brushing her lower lip with her finger. “Right against your lips.”
“What was almost there?”
“Your soul. Then again, I can also see it in your eyes.”
She turned and began walking away, limping as she moved.
“Your ankle,” I called out. Clearly, she was in pain.
She didn’t look back at me as she muttered, “I’m fine.” She left me standing there, wanting to murder every single person who led to the creation of Stella’s pain.
“Damian, Damian, wake up.”
I was shaken from my slumber and sat up straight and in defensive mode. The room was still dark, and no light was coming in from the windows, making it clear that the sun hadn’t awakened yet.
“What the hell?” I growled, rubbing the palms of my hands against my eyes. When I removed them, I found those brown eyes that’d been hypnotizing me over the past few weeks. “Stella, what are you doing?” I asked.
Her face was clean of all the makeup she wore that evening, and her eyes were filled with a concerned look. The defensiveness I’d woke with disappeared instantly when I saw her worry.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“My ankle,” she softly spoke as a tear fell from her eye. She wiped it away swiftly but sniffled a bit as she nodded her head down to her leg.
I grumbled a bit as I reached toward the lamp on my nightstand. As I hit it on, my eyes fell to her ankle. “Fuck!” I yapped, staring down at her ankle that was the size of a melon. It was black and blue up her leg. I could only imagine how painful that was.
“We gotta get you to the emergency room,” I said, fully awake, standing from my bed.
“Okay.” Tears kept falling down her cheeks, and she didn’t even try to stop their descent. It must’ve hurt extremely bad because Stella wasn’t one to show weakness. “Can you drive me?”
I hesitated. “I’ll call a driver to come take us.”
“No. It’s fine. You can drive my car,” she said. “The keys are in the front hall.”
I already had my phone out and had dialed my driver. “Yeah, Chris? I need you to come pick me up. We have to take Stella to the emergency room. All right.” I hung up the phone. “He’ll be here in about fifteen minutes.”
She parted her lips to disagree but then shut them. Obviously, the pain was too much for a witty comeback for her.
I looked down at her ankle. “We have to ice it.”
“Okay.”
“You should be off it, too,” I told her. “Can I carry you to the living room?”
She nodded, still with tears streaming down her cheeks.
I walked to my closet and grabbed a gray T-shirt, and slid into a pair of black sweatpants before moving over to her. I held my hands out toward her and paused. “May I?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
I wrapped my arms around her, making certain to be nowhere near her injured ankle, and lifted her into my hold. She didn’t tense up like I’d witnessed her do with other men. Instead, she leaned into me, allowing her head to rest against my shoulder.
I set her down on the living room sofa and headed to get some ice for her ankle. When I came back, she was relaxed on the couch with her eyes closed.
“Ice coming in,” I warned, so she wouldn’t be surprised by the coldness hitting her skin. As I set it against her ankle, she flinched a little before relaxing into it.
It didn’t take long for Chris to show up, and I carried Stella to the car. We rode to the hospital in complete silence. We sat in the waiting room for over an hour and thirty minutes. I was certain the front desk staff was getting sick of me barging up to their desk and asking what the hell was taking so long.
Stella told me it was fine, but it didn’t sit right with me. She had a whole elephant ankle, and they looked at her as if she had a scratch on her arm or something.
When it was time for her to go back to get checked out, a male worker came out to take Stella back.
Stella tensed up a little, then turned to me. “Will you come with?” she asked, clearly uncomfortable but putting on a brave face.
“Of course.”
I offered her my arm to lean on so she wouldn’t put weight on her injured leg.
The employee took us in the back, to where he, thankfully, offered a wheelchair for Stella to sit. I pushed it for her to the patient room that was given to us. The worker informed us that a nurse would be with us shortly.
I took a seat beside Stella. She kept fidgeting with her fingers as she grazed her top teeth across her bottom lip. When the nurse came in and checked out her ankle, we were relieved to hear that it was nothing but a bad sprain. They gave her some pain meds, wrapped it up, and a pair of crutches she’d have to use for a while.
When they left, we waited for the discharge papers. Stella and I hadn’t spoken a word the whole time. I wasn’t much for small talk, and she wasn’t either when she was sober. But when she looked my way, she said, “You don’t know how, do you?”
“How to what?”
“Drive.”
I shifted a bit in my seat and shrugged. “Grew up in New York. Never really had a reason to learn when the subway could get me everywhere I needed to be. And if that couldn’t, a taxi could.”
“That doesn’t really work out great for California.”
“You’re telling me,” I huffed. Even if something was only five miles away, it took about fifteen years to arrive. There were a lot of things about California that I hated, but the traffic situation was at the top of my list. At least in New York, the subways run on a consistent schedule, and we didn’t have to sit at stoplights or at a standstill on freeways.
Her head lay on the hospital pillow, tilted in my direction. She took a deep breath, turned away from me, and said, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll teach you.”
“Teach me how to drive?”
“Yes.”
“No thanks. Not interested.”
“Do you know how much you could save on money instead of paying someone to drive you around nonstop? Plus, I know you hate people. Wouldn’t you like to drive yourself with no people in the car?”
“My driver knows not to talk to me.”
“Yeah, but you’re you, which means you probably hate having someone sitting in the same vehicle as you.”
Touché.