Notbreathing hurt.
Ah, fuck, the pain.
He jerked violently into awareness. Memory flooded. Doctors. Police officers.
Cassidy.
Mac’s eyes swept the hospital room frantically, desperate for answers to the questions in his mind. He remembered screaming, vomiting from the terror. Hands held him down to the bed, a faceless doctor’s words were hanging in the air around him: “There was an accident.”
Mac blinked, focusing. A figure was leaning against the darkening wall, evening casting the room in shadows, his hands shoved in his pockets, black hair military-short. Grady.
“She alive?” Mac’s first words, his ultimate fear, out there. To his own ears, his voice was scared, broken. In the space of time between his words and Grady’s response, coldness gripped his heart.
Grady nodded.
A sob of relief tore from him; he hadn’t realized emotion like that was inside of him; his chest feeling as though it would cave. He lifted his hands to allow himself this moment of selfish tears, filling the room with ragged cries. Thank fuck she was alive.
From the shadows, Grady’s dispassionate voice caught him up on what he knew, which was very little: He and Cassidy had been in a boating accident. Mac had assaulted Cassidy. The bites on his arm were from Fred. Grady relayed lake patrol believed Fred was trying to protect Cassidy.
Of course, Fred was trying toprotect Cassidy. Dogs don’t attack people they know. So whatever he did… Mac closed his eyes.
Why the fuck was Cassidy even out there with him? None of it made sense. He hadn’t seen her since…
Taking deep breaths, roughly wiping at his cheeks, he asked, “She okay?”
“Could be better.”
Mac’s face contorted with pain as he stared up at the ceiling.
“Fred’s barely hanging on. They said they’ll need to amputate a leg if he, you know, makes it to that stage.”
“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Mac gasped as he dissolved into tears again. Why the fuck did he have to wake up? He didn’t deserve to be here; to be breathing. Day and Fred both hurt, by his hand; the only two things he cared about? It was a new kind of hell.
“Where is she?”
“She’s here, in ICU,” Grady replied. “She has swelling in her brain from the trauma. They’ve got a drain coming from her skull.”
TBI; he had familiarity with that, and now—fuck him—he’d now done it to Cassidy. “What the fuck happened, Grady?”
Grady shrugged. “Only you and Cassidy know.”
He didn’t remember, and her brain was swollen. “But… what? I did this in the bar? Nobody stopped me? How were we in a boat?”
Grady cocked his head. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
Mac was on the verge of panic. “No, damn it!”
“It started in the bar.”
“Started?” He had no memories—none. He was drawing a complete blank. Closing his eyes on a pounding head, he said quietly, “Josie.” He remembered Jason calling him about Josie; remembered the anger and the pain, realizing her death meant he was a killer.
The last coherent thought he’d had was to get away; from what, he couldn’t remember. There was no getting away from Josie’s death or that he’d caused it. Still, he remembered the need to get away from the cabin.
Grady pushed off the wall and approached the bed. “Jason has his hands full right now. He doesn’t have time for your bullshit. I can report he’s livid; he did not need you to pull this shit right now since he and his family are burying his cousin. But he mentioned killing you for hurting Cassidy. Said something about warning you?”
“Let him kill me.”
“No, sir. Easy way out.”