“You’re okay, baby,” Brady whispered, his other hand coming down on the wet cloth on my head. “Just take it slow and don’t try to move too quickly.”
“What happened?” I muttered with a mouth full of cotton.
“You don’t remember?” he asked, his voice nonjudgmental and comforting.
I rocked my head on the pillow a couple of times and sorted through the gauzy haze in my brain, pushing aside the headache to sort through the last few hours of my life. My breath hitched, and I moaned. “Oh, God, it was Darla.”
My eyes came open and stared directly into Brady’s ice blue ones. Those eyes told me he was scared, and I instantly felt terrible for making him feel that way. My hand came up to cup his cheek, his beard prickly against my palm. “I’m sorry,” I said, emotion clogging my throat. “I’m sorry. I should have been smarter.”
He tenderly grasped my hand against his face. “Shh, it’s over now. I’m going to take care of you. This wasn’t your fault, cupcake. Let me call Officer Stevens in before you tell me what happened. He’s been waiting for you to wake up so he could talk to you.”
“I need a drink.” My mouth was so dry and sticky that I was afraid I’d never swallow again.
He held the cup and straw for me while I drank thirstily, finally pulling it back from my lips. “Not too much at a time, or you’ll get sick,” he said with a smile. “Let me get Officer Stevens.”
He jogged out of the room, and I tried to sort out what happened to make sure I told him everything in the right order. It wasn’t going to be easy when my mind was so scattered, and my body hurt so badly. My shoulder was on fire, and my neck felt like someone hit it with a baseball bat. Add to that the pain in my heart when faced with Brady, knowing he was going to leave me sooner rather than later, and a tear ran down my face before I could stop it.
He returned at that moment, and his frantic gaze landed on mine, zeroing in on the tears immediately. “Hey, it’s okay,” he promised, wiping the tear with the cloth from my forehead. “God, I love you so much, cupcake. My heart has been on pause in my chest for the last three hours since I found you.” His hand was in his hair, and I swallowed down the sob bubbling up in my throat.
More tears fell, and I wasn’t able to say what I wanted to say, so I just bit my lip to keep it from trembling while he wiped the tears.
“Officer Stevens will be right in. Take a few deep breaths, sweetheart. I know you’re out of sorts.”
“Why does my shoulder feel like it’s on fire?” I asked, trying to look at it, but my head hurt, and I got dizzy if I moved my eyes that way.
“You had a wound there that the doctors had to close in surgery. The doctor said it was to the fascia and tissue, but no other damage. He was able to close it up on the inside and then close the incision on the outside. He said you’d have a small scar, but he did the best he could to make it less noticeable.”
“Surgery?” I asked, confused. “How did I end up with a wound on my shoulder?”
“The doctors said it was a stab wound,” he said, his lips in a thin line.
“Haylee, man, it’s good to see you awake,” Jack said from the doorway as he walked into the room.
I waved and smiled the best I could. “Hi,” I said weakly. “I didn’t mean to hold you up.”
“It’s no problem, Haylee. I wanted to touch base with you because some of the things you told Brady before they brought you in were concerning.”
I nodded, which I instantly regretted. My brain bounced around inside my skull, and I put my hand to my head to make it stop. “It was Darla,” I managed to say. “She was waiting for me.”
Brady had his hand on my hip, holding it tenderly to remind me he was there. I don’t know why it mattered to me so much since I knew he was leaving, but it did. It mattered that he cared enough to keep soothing me when I struggled to make sense of this attack. I held onto that warm spot on my hip for all it was worth. “When you left the apartment?”
“Yes,” I agreed, remembering not to nod. “I decided to start baking early, and it was just after midnight.” I gasped and grabbed for Brady. My coordination was absent, and I missed his shirt by a mile. “The baking! There are so many special orders!”
“Shh,” he said calmly. “Everything is taken care of at the bakery. I’ll explain after you tell Jack what happened.”
My heart was pounding out of my chest, and the monitors showed it, a warning beep filling the room until Brady started breathing with me to slow my heart rate again.
“Slow your breathing down, or they’ll kick us out,” he warned, watching the monitor until my heart rate went back to normal. “Good,” he said, smiling encouragingly, “you’ve got this.”
“You were going down to the bakery to start work,” Jack said, and I nodded, scooting up higher in the bed, grateful when it didn’t send shooting pain through me. “I was halfway down the steps when Darla stepped away from the building. She was slurring her words, and I immediately smelled the alcohol on her breath. She walked up the stairs and trapped me in, so I couldn’t go up or down.”
“And you fought?”
My head started to shake until I remembered not to do that. “No, she was angry that they took her crown away from her before she got on the float for the parade. Said she was tired of me playing the victim, and she was angry that I recorded her without her permission.”
“When you recorded the incident at the cupcake bake-off?” Jack asked.
“Yeah. I explained that I didn’t know the phone was still recording, but since it caught the exchange, I wanted the committee to know the kind of person they had representing the community. I stood up for myself for once against the woman and look at what happened.”
Brady’s hand came up to smooth the hair back off my forehead, his smile soft and loving. “I’m proud of you for having the courage to take that to the committee. You did the right thing, and you didn’t deserve this.”
Jack agreed with Brady. “He’s right. You’ve put up with enough from her over the years, and you’ve always been gracious about it. The fact is, you could have done more with that footage than spoken privately to the committee about it. They could have done more than speak to her privately. They could have told everyone the truth instead of saying Darla decided she didn’t have time to perform the duties of the crown and gave it to the runner-up.”
My brow went down in concentration. “Is that what happened?”
“According to Mrs. Mulberry, when I spoke to her earlier, yes. It was done quietly, in private, and without public knowledge of the reasons why.”
“Well, you know Darla. Once she feels slighted, it’s all over.”
“It’s going to be all over,” he agreed, pointing at my shoulder. “What happened after Darla spouted off?”
“I remember telling her not to step foot on my property again, and she got mad that I was always rubbing in how successful I was. Then she said she could make me unsuccessful. Next thing I know, I’m staring up at the stars from the bottom of the steps, and she’s spitting on me.”