“Thanks.”

I slid the card away.

Calvin got in his black Lexus and I crossed the lot, reaching Jamie, who was waiting for me by my Jeep.

“See?” He held his hands out, looking arrogant. “Told you somethin’ would work out. Now you can go get your girl.” He slapped my shoulder.

“Yeah.” I nodded, scrubbing at my face with my hands. “Fuck,” I muttered.

I couldn’t believe I was about to get her.

“You got the store, right?” I asked him, tugging out my keys.

He backed away toward his motorcycle.

Fucking idiot actually bought the thing.

“We’re good, man. Go. Do what you gotta do.”

“Appreciate it.”

He jerked his chin, spun around, and got to his ride.

I climbed in the Jeep and started it up. I made it to the end of the lot when my phone started ringing in my back pocket.

Leaning over, I yanked my cell out and checked the screen. I didn’t recognize the number.

“This is Brian,” I answered, pulling out onto the road and heading in the direction of Tori’s house.

I wasn’t sure if Syd was working today or not so I was starting there.

“Brian, it’s Mona.”

“Oh, hey. How’s it going?” I asked.

It was weird she was calling me, but I was too focused on Syd to think anything of it.

“I …I didn’t know if I should call you or not, but I figured you’d want to know if something happens. You were so involved with helping him.”

A strange pressure built in my chest.

I stopped at a red light and pressed my foot down hard on the brake.

“Mona, what’s going on?”

“It’s Owen. He’s sick, Brian. He’s really sick, and they don’t know if he’s gonna make it. I just got a call from his mom. It doesn’t look good.”

“What?”

I sat forward in my seat. My heart dropped to my stomach.

“He’s at NHC. He’s been intubated.”

I floored it, ignoring the light, cutting the wheel, and turning around in the middle of the intersection. I nearly sideswiped a van and gave a half-assed apologetic wave as I sped down the road in the opposite direction I was heading, passing the warehouse.

“Brian? Did you hear me?”

“Yeah.” I gripped the wheel tight. I felt sick. “Yeah, I heard you.”

“I’m sorry,” Mona cried softly.

Chapter Twenty-two

SYDNEY

I kept replaying my last conversation with Brian over and over again in my head.

I relived it. I allowed myself to feel that agony all over again, seeing the pain in his eyes and hearing the hurt and hatred in his voice as he admitted what he’d been doing and why he’d been doing it.

The why was getting to me. And the disgust for his own actions, I felt that right along with him.

It was what had me telling Tori under no circumstance was she allowed to let me leave the house the past two days. I handed over my keys and my cell. I wasn’t on schedule to work, and I knew if I had my phone, I’d call, or if I left, I’d go to Brian and give him the comfort I was dying to give him, to tell him I understood why he did it and to ignore my own broken heart to make sure his was still beating.

Only my boy would let guilt swallow him up like that.

And I felt sorry for him. I did.

I cried and I cried, thinking about what had to have been going through his mind five months ago. How shattered he must’ve felt. The internal struggle he was battling and how it probably tore him apart.

He didn’t want to shoot those videos. He didn’t want any part of it. I believed that in my gut.

I wondered how different it would’ve been if Marcus had tossed me aside before that accident and if I would’ve met Brian under different circumstances. In my soul I knew I would’ve, Brian and I would’ve found each other somehow, and maybe I could’ve gotten him to a place where he never got to feel that blame the way he did, meaning he never would’ve sold himself to pay back that debt.

I could’ve stopped this entire nightmare from happening.

I could’ve kept Brian from that dirty.

I could’ve given him Wild like I’d promised so it was the only thing he was feeling.

My heart was crazy.

Officially.

Love made you stupid and I was now the reigning mayor of Idiot Town.

I was hurting, unbearably so, but I cared more about how Brian was doing through all of this. I wondered if he was crying or ripping shit apart. I wondered if it was killing him not reaching out or coming over. I wondered if he was staring up at his bedroom ceiling thinking about me like I was thinking about him.

See? Crazy.

It took everything in me not to go to him.

Time ticked away my misery while I lay in my bed wrapped up in Tori’s Christmas quilt. I thought about the past two months with Brian, the strange way we came together and the unbelievable weeks that followed. I smiled at the memories we’d made already, and I cried at the ones I didn’t know if we’d ever have. I thought about everything, from start to finish and in between, and I asked myself the same questions over and over again.

Would I have left Brian if he’d given me the truth months ago when I deserved to hear it? Would I have walked away from everything, including the best thing I ever felt?

I couldn’t answer those questions.

I tried. God, I tried. It should’ve been easy. Yes or no.

He broke my heart—yes, I would’ve left him.

I understood why he did it and I felt his guilt-driven reason as if it were my own—no. I loved him. I would never leave. Not even if he could never get those videos taken down, which I was convinced of. I didn’t see how that was possible.

Still, I would’ve stayed by his side because of what I knew.

Brian said he was trying to protect me. I believed that.

That heart was mine.

But he still hurt me. Worse than Marcus.

I couldn’t give an answer.

What was I supposed to do?

I was grateful for work on Tuesday. It was supposed to be a distraction, one I desperately needed. NHC was a demanding hospital, and normally, even on days when I didn’t want to keep my mind off Brian, I was too busy to think about him.

Of course, that wasn’t the case today.

We were so slow, my supervisor had sent one of my co-workers home.

When I got word of this happening, I hid in the bathroom for fifteen minutes so I wouldn’t get the ax, too.

I couldn’t go home, because I wouldn’t go home.

I’d go to Brian.

There was no doubt in my mind.

Taking my chances and returning to the department after an amount of time I felt was appropriate, I relaxed, realizing with three of us left and two OR cases going on at the same time, the other two techs handling those upon my return, I was safe from being told to leave.

I sat by the printer waiting for a requisition to print out, and when it did, I’d go handle house patients or x-rays that needed to be done in the emergency room.

Even handling all of that by myself, I still wasn’t busy.

But at least I was here and not in my car on my way to Brian’s.

Things were looking up.

Sort of.

I say this because I was currently filling out a crossword puzzle from the Sunday paper we had lying around the department, waiting for another requisition to print out, thinking about Brian because I was filling out a crossword puzzle.