❧CHAPTER FIVE❧

RHETT.

Blood. There was too much of it. The only thing worse than the sight of it was how still she was in my arms, too damn quiet and for the first time in my life I felt fear grip me.

It wasn’t the kind that made my hands shake or my vision blur, it was different. Sharper that it clawed at the edges of my mind, pressing against my ribs like a deficiency demanding to be acknowledged. I shoved it down and buried it beneath logic, control, anything that would make it disappear.

Fear was useless. Fear didn’t fix a damn thing.

People had gathered around, each of them watching as I tightened my hold on her limp body and moved fast. Her body was a dead weight pressing onto my chest, her blood soaking into my shirt—warm, sticky, and irrelevant.

I hated it.

I shoved the door to my car open with my foot and laid her at the back seat of my car.

I didn’t bother to check for a pulse. What good would it do? If she was dying, she would either survive the ride or she wouldn’t.

“You always were a damn inconvenience” I muttered to her unmoving body and closed the door to the back seat.

I got into the driver’s seat and pulled out my phone while I ignited the engine.

“This is Rhett Otis, I am bringing in a patient, female, mid-twenties, have a trauma team ready”My voice was steady, as if I were handling a business deal not a woman bleeding out in my back seat.

The dispatcher was asking questions.

“Is anyone hurt?”

I paused, my pulse pounded in my ears but it was wrong. Too fast and too erratic like my body was turning against me.

“I think I am having a heart attack”

“What? Sir—“

I ended the call, interrupting his questions and threw my phone on the passenger seat.

Talking wouldn’t stop the bleeding.

My heart was beating fast, so terribly fast that my vision swayed and my hands shook.

Tired. That had to be it.

I must just be tired.

I slammed my foot on the gas and sped, looking back briefly to see her blood soaking through my back seat.

Fuck!

That was no doubt a lot of blood, I almost felt overwhelmed at the sight of it.

I hit the brakes hard and the car skidded to a stop.

I was out in seconds and opening the back door, pulling her out.

I could barely breathe now but that didn’t matter.

I needed to get her into the hospital. I stumbled with her in my arms but I continued moving forward with a precision that I didn’t feel.

Rather poetic…not.

Christ, I was panting now. Full blown sweating and I could swear that it wasn’t about the dying woman in my arms.

That would be an atrocity.

Perhaps I hated her too well.

“Sir, we will take it from here.”

I placed her on the gurney, not bothering to push it along with the medic, they knew their job.

I rather slumped down on the couch nearby, still struggling to breathe, my lungs were burning.

Were these symptoms of a sickness I wasn’t aware of?

“Were you in the accident too?” I looked up. “You have blood on your shirt.”

I shook my head and the female nurse was looking at me with something akin to sympathy?

She probably just wants me to fuck her.

“It is her blood” I wheezed out.

Her hand laid on my shoulders. “You clearly can’t breathe. What is wrong?”

“Poison” but it was nothing more than a whisper.

She gasped. “How?”

If this was how she handled cases like this, they must have lots of dead people on their radar.

Death.

The thought of Nicole dying hit me like a brick to the stomach.

“Sir, breathe. In and out” She demonstrated.

Yeah, I just needed to remember how to do that.

In. Out. In. Out. That was all I had to do.

Damn it for being too simple.

“You look less red now. Are you feeling better?”

I nodded my head even though my neck threatened to fall off.

“Let’s get you admitted.”

I looked at her for the first time and I could see her.

She looked young. Almost like she was too young to be working.

“What are you doing here?”

She stared at me, her brow raising. “What do you mean?”

“Don't you have school or something?”

She scoffed.

“I am 26” She bit out. “And here I thought you were actually poisoned”

“Yeah, get going kid”

“I guess you have just the looks” She scoffed…again.

“You scoff a lot for someone who probably didn’t pass her boards”

“Are you always this shitty?”

I stared at her and folded my arms. She was only a distraction I needed right now and definitely a liar.

“Most of the time. Do you play nurse often? You are terrible at it”

She was the one who looked red now and was turning a light shade of purple. “Fuck you.”

“You are underaged.”

And she stomped away just as the emergency wards opened.

I stood up and approached the doctor. “Is she dead?”

“No, Mr…”

“Otis. Rhett Otis.”

And his eyes widened in surprise.

“Otis enterprise?”

“The patient, doctor Williams”

“Oh right” he cleared his throat. “She made it but lost the baby.”

Nicole was pregnant?

I didn’t know what was more unraveling, her being pregnant or the fact she would get to hear about the loss of her baby.

I wouldn’t be able to stomach seeing her break.

“Can I see her before she wakes up?”

The doctor hesitated.

“She is awake, Mr Otis.”

“What?”

“She woke up asking for a Marcus.”

My heart didn’t just skip, it fucking turned on me.

Marcus was my step-brother. Marcus used to be her husband and yet I felt every urge to hurt him for what he did to her.

Or probably because he had her when I couldn’t