Page 88 of Offside Angel

After a few minutes, her eyelids twitch and my heart jolts. I lean forward, studying her face. “Mira?”

Nothing. No movement. Just the soft, steady sound of her breathing.

I drop back into the uncomfortable chair next to her bed just as the door flies open.

“Evan is awake.” Daniel waves me towards the door, his every movement frantic. “You go talk to him. I’ll stay here with Mira. Go, go.”

Evan is just down the hall. I jog to his room.

There’s a pretty, dark-haired nurse taking his blood pressure. The cuff is wrapped around the arm not covered in scrapes and purpling bruises. Even with all that, Evan doesn’t look like he’s in pain.

“You look healthy to me,” she’s telling him. “Most people I see in an accident like that are more banged up from the airbags, but you’re so big…” Maybe I’m imagining things, but it looks like the nurse’s hands linger around his arm as she removes the blood pressure cuff.

He gives her a warm smile. “I count myself lucky.”

The nurse notices me and steps back guiltily from Evan’s bed. “Looks like you have a visitor. I’ll leave you two alone.”

If Evan is sad to see his pretty nurse go, he doesn’t show it. The only thing on his face is guilt. Before I can say anything, he dips his head.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry, Zane. I shouldn’t have let her drive.”

“The police said the accident wasn’t her fault.”

“It wasn’t,” he agrees. “The light was green and Mira was doing fine, but I would’ve been more alert if I was driving. Maybe I would have seen the car coming. I could have gotten us out of the way.”

“No offense, Evan, but I saw a picture of the car.” The mangled metal took me right back to that night four years ago. To the blood on my leather interior. The smell of oil and gas in the air. “It hit on the passenger side. If you’d been driving, it would have been Mira sitting in the passenger seat.”

I don’t need to explicitly say that I’m glad it was him and not Mira. I’m glad he’s okay, too, but if I had to choose…

Evan thinks that over and blows out a heavy breath. “You’re right. It could have been so much worse.”

“Did you see who it was?” I ask. “The other driver?”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t see a fucking thing. We were driving and then—lights out. I was telling Mira—” Evan’s eyes go wide. “Shit, I was telling Mira about Dante. It was Dante.”

I stiffen. “In the other car?”

“No. Or, maybe. I don’t know.” He waves his hands like he’s scattering a swarm of gnats around his head. “But it was Dante at the gym. I’d just gotten the call from the security guy at the gym that Dante was on camera. He was inside the gym. Inside the women’s locker room.”

I knew that was the most likely possibility, but I still didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to cling to what little hope there was that Dante would move on and leave Mira alone.

Before I can come up with anything more profound to say, my phone buzzes. It’s the damn security system again. Front Door Alarm Activated.

I’m about to swipe away the notification for the third time when I realize…

“What is it?” Evan asks, on high alert even from his hospital bed.

Maybe none of this is an accident.

“Nothing. Rest up,” I tell him, hurrying out of his room.

Owen catches me just outside the door. “Whoa there. Moving quick for someone with no place to go. Your lady is still asleep.”

“The alarm at the house keeps going off. Mira’s brother is in town and I have to—” I look from my phone to Mira’s hospital room down the hall. I can’t be in two places at once, but fuck, do I want to be.

“You want it checked out?” Owen asks. Before I can nod, he grabs his keys from his pocket. “I’ll go take a look.”

“Owen, no. It should be me.”

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