Page 14 of Second Chance Serenity

“Reyna, can you hear me?” Doc asks.

She nods. “What is—” And then it must all come rushing back because she tries to shoot up off the couch. She groans, then presses a hand to her stomach as she lays back down. “My head. Why does my head hurt?”

“Easy,” he tells her. “Michael is going to help you to his truck and we’re going to take you to the hospital, okay?”

“I—no.” She looks at me, and the pain I caused her all those years ago slides over her expression, a protective mask she wears whenever I’m around. It guts me. “I need the police. I need to report what happened.”

Eliza smiles at her. “Sheriff Vick is aware. He’s over at the school now and can come by the hospital to get your statement.”

Reyna relaxes slightly.

“Let’s get you to the hospital, okay?” Doc asks again. “You need some tests run to make sure there’s no other damage.”

She takes a deep breath and nods. “I want to ride with you and Patricia,” Reyna says. “Please?”

Doc looks back at me, a sympathetic smile on his face. I nod, even as it’s a dagger twisting in my heart. “That’s fine, honey. Let’s get you up.” He tries to help her to her feet, but she falls.

Without waiting for an invitation, I step forward and lift her into my arms.

“I can walk,” she says, but leans against my shoulder anyway.

“I know you can,” I say. “But with me here, you don’t need to.”

“Anything?” I ask as Lance and Elijah cross through the waiting room to where Eliza and I have been sitting for the past few hours.

Doc had a full workup run on Reyna, but so far I haven’t gotten any news. Not that I will. I’m not technically family, and God knows she won’t talk to me. My only hope is her parents, who thankfully don’t seem to hate me. They may not like me much, but that’s a far cry from hate.

Elijah shakes his head. “We got her phone, but her purse is gone.”

“Mugging?” I ask. Though that seems highly unlikely. The man had been trying to take her, not just her purse.

“It’s possible. But based on what you said and what the cameras showed, we’re not convinced.” Lance wraps an arm around his wife’s shoulders as Eliza leans against him.

“Camera footage give you anything?”

“We have the whole attack recorded,” Elijah says. “But his face was covered, and he disappeared from view before getting into whatever vehicle he drove.”

I recall him trying to drag her to her car. “I believe he was on foot. He’d been planning on taking her in her car.”

“But why Reyna?” Elijah asks.

“Hey!” Andie, Elijah’s fiancée, comes rushing off the elevator with a tray full of coffees. She hands them out, starting with Elijah and ending with me. “From Lilly,” she says with a tight smile. “How’s our girl?” Since Andie grew up here, she’s known Reyna for quite some time. Though it wasn’t until they started their monthly women’s night out dinners with the church that they really started getting to know each other.

“I don’t?—”

I’m cut off when the doors open and Reyna’s father walks out. Henry looks beyond exhausted as he steps into the waiting room, baseball cap in hand. His greying hair is disheveled, and I know it’s likely because he’s been running his hands through it.

“How is she?” I ask.

“She’s okay. Concussion, some scrapes and bruises, but—” His bottom lip quivers. “It could have been so much worse. I—” His expression falls and his shoulders shake.

Eliza wraps her arms around him, and he hugs her back, holding on as he cries over the daughter he’d nearly lost tonight. “She’s okay,” she tells him.

“I know. Thank God, I know that.” After a few minutes, he straightens and crosses toward me. He holds out his hand, and I take it. "You saved my baby tonight, Anderson. You saved my little girl. And regardless of what’s happened in the past, you have my endless respect and gratitude.”

I don’t even get the chance to respond before the elevator doors open again. Reyna’s brother, a man who has made his dislike of me no secret, looks beyond stressed—and then he sees me and his expression turns murderous.

“What are you doing here?” he demands, charging toward me. He’s ready to knock my teeth in, has been since the day he tracked me down at an Army base in Georgia three months after I got out of basic training.

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