Page 50 of Under His Command
“Dove Finnegan?” a woman asks almost immediately.
A beeping sound in the background muddles her voice, along with a bunch of different conversations happening all at once.
“Yes, it’s me,” I say, my body frozen in place.
“I’m calling from St. Francis Hospital. Your mother, Clarise Finnegan, was brought here an hour ago after an unfortunate car accident. She’s in surgery right now.”
My eyes snap to Rowan’s, wide in shock.
“Um,” I say, swallowing back tears. “How bad… how bad is it?”
There’s a short pause. “We’re doing everything we can to save her.”
I nod frantically, even though she can’t see me. “Okay, thank you,” I mumble, shutting down the call.
I get up from the couch, moving past Rowan, who follows me around with his eyes.
“Dove?“ he calls out from somewhere behind me.
I go into the walk-in closet and choose a random pair of jeans and a T-shirt, trying my hardest not to have a breakdown right now.
“Angel…” he echoes, and I turn to meet his eyes, rage and despair twisting all my features into an almost ugly cry.
“I’m going, Rowan! Don’t even think to tell me otherwise.”
“You know that’s not possible,” he says.
“I don’t care! Besides, I bet you have spies working for you in the hospital anyway.” I laugh nervously. “I’m surprised you haven’t implanted a GPS tracker in me yet.”
His eyes narrow, jaw clenching at the same time.
“It’s on the list.”
“Oh, is it now?” I shake my head while pulling the jeans up to my hips and buttoning them up. “What about a shock collar too, then, like the fucking President put on his wife? God!”
“Keep giving me this attitude, and I’ll buy you one today.”
I sniff back tears, going into the en-suite bathroom to roughly brush my hair, tugging at the tangled ends until some of them break.
“Come here,” he says, following me inside. His hand brushes my shoulder, gently pulling me into his chest.
“No,” I cry out. “You don’t get to touch me after what you told me last night. You had no right, Rowan. No right to do what you did all those years! Watching over someone is one thing. But stalking me? Watching me in my privacy, following every step I take?”
“Come here, angel. Let me hold you.”
He pulls me in, more forcefully this time, and I have no choice but to follow his command.
“I hate you. I hate you so fucking much!” I cry, pounding his chest with my open palms.
He holds my head with one hand and my waist with the other, keeping our bodies close together.
“It’d probably be better for you if you did, but you don’t. Not really. You just hate that you love us so much.”
“What you did was crazy. Do you at least understand that?”
“I never said it wasn’t.”
I take a few long breaths, trying to calm down, before I push myself away from him once again. To my surprise, he lets go this time.
