Page 84 of The Call She Made That He Never Answered
The ambulance arrived. Paramedics lifted Lucas onto a stretcher.
His hand still gripped mine tightly.
"Stay with me," his gray-blue eyes rolled with pleading. "I don't want to be away from you for even a minute."
Tears crashed down. I nodded hard and squeezed back that cold, blood-covered hand.
Because this time, I couldn't refuse.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lucas
My grandfather's call came at three in the morning.
The shrill ringtone cut through the dead silence of the hospital room like a blade. I jerked awake and hit the mute button, then glanced at Ella curled up on the sofa bed.
After she'd left the operating room, the first thing I'd done was have the staff move that sofa bed right up against mine. Now her slender, ice-cold hand was locked tight around mine. Even in sleep, she gripped it hard, as if afraid I'd vanish the second she let go.
I looked at the missed call from Grandfather on the screen and quickly called him back.
"Grandfather? Why are you still up?"
"You idiot," his voice crackled through the line. "I took over that mess at the company so you could win your wife back, not so you could get into street brawls!"
"I'm fine. I've trained with world champion fighters since I was a kid. If I couldn't handle a few street thugs, all that money would've been wasted." I kept my voice low, not wanting to wake Ella.
"But I heard you got cut."
A rare note of concern had crept into Grandfather's voice.
"If I didn't look pathetic enough, how would I get Ella to stay?" I tried to sound casual.
In the dim light from the window, I studied her sleeping face. Her eyes were swollen, dried tears still clinging to her lashes.
Grandfather went silent for a long moment before letting out a low sigh. "Ella must have been terrified."
Terrified didn't begin to cover it.
I thought back to the ambulance ride. She'd cried the entire way, hot tears splashing onto the back of my hand, burning worse than the knife wound. Her hands had pressed down on my wound, blood covering them completely, while she'd kept whispering "you can't die," "this is all my fault, Lucas, all my fault"—things I never thought I'd hear her say.
But I didn't know if those words were real. Or rather, if they'd still count come morning.
"Listen," Grandfather's voice turned serious. "You'd better never let Ella find out you staged this whole thing, or she'll never forgive you. Not in this lifetime. I can hold down the company for three more months at most. Either win her back or get your ass back to Manhattan and sign those divorce papers. The Rockefeller family doesn't keep deadweight."
The line went dead.
I set down the phone and brushed Ella's blonde hair back from her face, revealing the gauze wrapped around her neck, pink blood seeping through.
I remembered her in that alley. She'd pressed that broken beer bottle against her own throat, thin streams of blood running down her neck. In that instant, every drop of blood in my body had surged, threatening to burst through my chest. I'd almost lost her.
Ella stirred and slowly opened her eyes.
I realized I'd been stroking her face too hard. I pulled my hand back.
She stared at me, confused for a second, then her cheeks flushed pink.
"Why aren't you sleeping?" Her voice was hoarse with lingering drowsiness. "Does it hurt too much? Should I call the nurse?"
