It's Always Complicated (Her Billionaires Book 4) (31 page)

“People don’t get to that inner circle with me, Lydia. My parents were the first, but that’s because they were my parents. They loved me. Mike was the second. You’re the third. That’s it. That’s my core identity. And my parents are gone, so it’s just you and Mike.” He turned and looked at Mike. “And if you fucking die, I’ll hate you forever.”

“He can’t hear you.”

And just then, because Michael Bournham was
exactly
the type to prove someone wrong out of sheer determination, his eyes opened.

Alex

He had his marching orders, and as Alex walked outside to discover the rain had stopped, he took a cleansing breath. The antibacterial cream and bandages on his arm prickled with pain, but it was nothing compared to what the two Mikes were going through.

Luck had a whole new meaning to Alex tonight.

The past few hours ticked through his mind like those old flipbooks from his childhood. Josie walking in on Dylan, Mike and Laura having sex. Dragging Josie away. Calming her down. Talking to his mom about some minor wedding detail. Chatting with his aunts and grandpa. Greeting Trevor and Joe. Urging Darla to go find Josie and talk to her on the shore. Being approached by Laura and Dylan with their worry for Mike.

The search party. The cliff. Hand-pulling the rope up to get Mike Pine out of danger at the very end. The sickening feeling of watching Mike Bournham slide, foot by foot, rock by rock, down that damn cliff.

His arms throbbed with the raw memory of it all.

And then his Doctor Brain had kicked into high gear.

Alex entered a kind of magical flow when a medical emergency unfolded before him. He had no words to describe it. It just was. The concept of a being called Alex dissolved, turning him into atoms and cells that moved in concert with whatever the world demanded in order to return a situation to normal, to get an injured person back to homeostasis.

Births were different. Softer. Sweeter and more about giving nature the time it needed to unfold and let the baby come when the baby was ready. Emergencies in births made him shift instantly into medical combat mode, though, a pairing of states of self that Alex found jarring, but that got easier as time passed.

Right now, he was trying to go back to being Alex.

Whatever that meant.

“Hey. You didn’t answer my texts.” Josie appeared behind him, her voice warm on the cold wind. He turned to find her rumpled and wet, looking up at him with puppy-dog eyes that said everything he was feeling.

All he could do was reach for her. She let him, her tight hug giving him strength.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured into her hair, which tasted like the ocean. “I had to help Lydia and Jeremy with ICU, and then Madge asked me to go to the store.”

“I know. Madge found me and told me to come with you. She got Laura to go and sit with Lydia
for a while, until they called Lydia in to see Mike with Jeremy
. They’re all together now. And I needed to be with you.” Her voice thickened with emotion, which made his throat tighten.

“I need you, too,” he said, the words so true.

“God, Alex, what if that had been you? You pulled on the rope. One misstep and you could have gone down the hill with Mike Bournham.”

The thought never occurred to him. He let out a small sound of acknowledgment.

“And your hands.”

“Fuck my hands. I needed to help Jeremy.”

“I know.”

The “but” she didn’t say hung in the air between them, suspended by exhaustion of fears of a scenario that never happened.

To them.

But was happening to Jeremy and Lydia and Mike Bournham right this very moment.

“Is Bournham going to be okay?” He knew what she was really asking, and it just added to his sense of fatigue. People did this. They weren’t actually asking whether the patient would recover.

They were asking him to predict the future.

“I don’t know.” He answered with the truth.

She nodded. Unlike most people, Josie knew to stop there.

Over her shoulder, Alex spotted Madge’s car. “Let’s talk on the drive.” By the time they were settled in the front seat, heat blasting, Alex’s phone turned into a GPS that said the drive would be eleven minutes long, he felt more himself.

“We can’t have the wedding tomorrow,” Josie declared. “We just can’t. Not like this.”

“Mike’s determined to see it through.”

“Which Mike? Oh, wait,” Josie backpedaled. “Duh. Mike Pine. Will he be released soon?”

“Probably in the morning. He has some broken bones and scrapes, but nothing that stops him from going home after a night of observation.”

“And he still wants to have the ceremony tomorrow. Laura said he’s adamant, unless the rest of us think it would be in poor taste,”
Josie whispered.
 

Poor taste. The image of Michael Bournham seizing in the back of the ambulance overlaid against the words as Alex drove. And yet Lydia’s anger at the suggestion that they postpone echoed what Josie was saying about Mike Pine’s wishes.

“I think we’ll have to wait for morning to know what to do.”

Josie looked at the dashboard clock. 12:49 a.m. “Morning’s coming sooner than we think.”

Alex did Time Math, a kind of calculation that anyone who works long shifts uses constantly. “The ceremony’s supposed to be at four p.m. tomorrow. We have plenty of time.”

“We’ll be zombies at our own wedding.”

“That might not be so bad,” he joked.

“Do you care whether we have the ceremony or not?” she asked.

Alex froze. Was this one of those loaded questions where Josie had a “right” answer in mind, and he was supposed to guess? Or was this a question where his actual opinion counted?

He took a giant chance and guessed the latter. Over time, their relationship had led to more and more of his opinion counting.

“I genuinely don’t care.
T
he wedding isn’t about the ceremony for me. It’s about being married to you for the rest of my life. We could accomplish that with a quickie courthouse ceremony. I’m fine with all the craziness of this double wedding here at this campground, but given the circumstances...” He didn’t finish the thought, the GPS interrupting him to insist he turn right.

A big WalMart sign greeted them.

“We should have just eloped,” Josie said with a sigh, reaching across the car to rest her hand on his knee. “Would have been so much easier.”

“We can’t turn back time.”

“Who are you? Cher?”

His laughter felt good as he pulled into the nearly-empty parking lot, the dull glow of store lights shining on the freshly-wet asphalt.

“What the hell does Madge have you buying, anyway?”

“Condoms. For our wedding night.”

That stopped Josie in her tracks. “WHAT?”

He smirked.

She punched his shoulder.

Maybe homeostasis could be achieved after all.

One coffee machine, two cans of ground coffee, one quart of Josie’s favorite creamer, and a variety of snack foods chosen for maximum protein and minimal sugar and they were at the checkout line, stuck behind a woman who was slow as molasses.

Josie nudged him. “Check out what she’s buying.”

A box of condoms. A jar of coconut oil. Two My Little Pony plush toys. A bag of rubber bands. A jar of Nutella the size of his head. A shrink-wrapped European cucumber.

And a giant tube of Preparation H.

He shot Josie a warning look that said,
Don’t you say a word
.

She just snorted.

He loved her so much.

A wave of appreciation washed over him. He had her. Right here, right now, joking in the checkout aisle, an intimate and domestic moment. Week in and week out they lived together, their work lives separate, the home hours just a series of stolen moments together meant to create a life.

She wasn’t in an ICU bed right now, her brain being monitored by a team of specialists. She wasn’t in a different hospital bed, bones set and casted, body bruised and shredded.

She was here.

She was his.

He checked himself, shoving the rising tide of overwhelming angst into a box inside. He would not fall apart in front of a WalMart cashier in
downeast
Maine.

“You okay?” Josie whispered, her voice not quite reaching his ear. She was so tiny, so short.

“Fine.” He fought to keep his voice calm. Alex slid his credit card through the machine, finished the transaction, and grabbed the large box for the coffeemaker, Josie carrying the rest.

By the time they were settled in the front seat of Madge’s car, he turned to Josie and pulled her into his arms abruptly, needing to smell her, craving her warmth, turning her into a touchstone. An anchor.

“You too?” she asked.

“Me too—what?”

“You feel it. The clawing desperation and the guilt that comes with being relieved that isn’t one of us in those hospital beds.”

“Yeah.” But there was more.

“And realizing that one day one of us will be in a hospital bed like that...and we’ll die. And the other one will be left alone.”

Oh, fuck. She hit the nail on the target. That’s what he was
really
thinking, deep down in the hidden corridors of his cavernous soul.

“I can’t—oh, Josie,” he said, his breath hitched, all the emotion too much.

“I can’t either,” she said, sniffling.

“We have so much life ahead of us.”

“Do we?” she asked. “I thought we did, too. And then something like this happens.”

“He’s not dead.”

“No, but...that was close.”

“Too close. And he’s not out of the woods yet.”

“We defer too much,” she whispered against his shoulder, her hand rubbing his knee. “We push off all the good parts of life because we think that sacrificing now means the payoff will come someday.”

“Someday.”

“What if there’s never a someday? Then what’s all this deferral for?”

Alex’s phone buzzed as he grappled with that question, wondering how to answer it without hearing his own soul scream. He pulled away from Josie and looked at it, heart racing.

“It’s a text from Jeremy. Mike Bournham is
awake
.”

Mike Bournham

“Hey, asshole,” he rasped, his vision blurred, but he was damn sure that was Jeremy sitting next to him on the bed.

“What?”

“You heard me. You’re the asshole. Not me.”

Jeremy jumped up. Mike groaned. The sudden shift in pressure on the thin mattress made his head fall two stories.

Then Jeremy disappeared through a shimmering waterfall.

Where was he? Why wasn’t it raining? That waterfall wasn’t water, he realized, as his eyes adjusted. It was a wall of glass.

Beep. Whoosh. Beep. Whirr
. Machine noises filled the air. Hospital. Was he in a
hospital
?

“Where am I?” he said aloud. No one answered. The shuffle of shoes filled the air, and then strange faces appeared, inches above him. He tried to turn his head to see them but again, his head felt like someone dropped it twenty feet off a roof.

Splat.

He groaned and tried to reach up, but the back of his hand screamed with pain.

“Shhhhhh. Stay put,” said a man’s comforting voice, a stranger, but someone who was used to saying the words. “Don’t move.”

“Where am I?” The words came out one at a time, like perfectly formed shapes.

“MIKE?” Lydia screamed from another planet. “MIKE! LET ME SEE HIM!”

The screams hurt his head.

But made his heart feel better.

Murmurs. Shushes. He heard the cacophony of voices that don’t speak clearly, and then Lydia and Jeremy’s faces, right in front of him.

“Mike? Can you hear me? Say something! I’m here. It’s Lydia.”

“Who else would it be?” he choked out. “It’s you and the asshole.”

“Mike!’ she gasped. “He’s back!”

“You’ll pay for that,” Jeremy said, b
ut
Mike could hear the smile in his voice.

“What’s the asshole’s name?” Lydia pleaded.

“Could we please stop referring to me as the asshole? I do have a name,” Jeremy said dryly.

“Shithead?” Mike asked.

Lydia and Jeremy groaned, but it was a happy sound.

“What happened to me?”

“You tried to bang three hookers and a monkey in Fiji,” Jeremy joked.

“At the same time?”

“Can we stop with the joking?” one of the doctors said in a clipped voice. “We need to examine him. You’re in ICU and I have to ask you to leave for a bit.”

Mike’s head buzzed with pain and he felt himself drift away.

Someone squeezed his hand, and then a bright light blinded him. He closed his eyes and let the doctors and nurses do their job.

And then everything faded to a comforting black, the image of Lydia’s beautiful face imprinted in his mind.

Lydia

“You gave us such a huge scare.” Mike had been awake for a solid hour now, and after a massive wave of staff, and a run through the MRI machine, Mike was settled back in bed, obviously exhausted, but alert and talking.

“I’m sorry.”

“God, don’t be sorry, Mike,” Jeremy said, clearing his throat. “You saved Mike Pine.”

“You saved Mike Pine. And me,” Mike retorted. Then he groaned.

Lydia squeezed his hand. “Need more painkiller?”

“Not enough in the world. My head feels like someone put it through a meat grinder.”

“They’re guessing, based on all the bumps and wounds, that you hit three rocks with your head going down.”

“Lucky me. Why can’t I bat like that?”

Lydia’s phone buzzed yet again, but she ignored it. Her mom and dad and brothers kept everything going at the campground. Mike Pine was doing fine; Laura had joined her in the waiting room and they’d just held each other and cried, with Madge fussing around them, insisting that the coffee wasn’t that bad.

Now that Mike was awake, and the doctors assured her that his neurological functioning seemed to be fine, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself.

Giddy. She was giddy with relief.