Page 5 of Heartbreak Hill

Was this mother’s intuition, or did Sydney know because of Reid’s incoherence? She swallowed hard. “Grayson possibly had a heart attack. That’s what the medic said in the ambulance. We’re at ...” Reid had no idea where they were. She looked around for a sign, anything that would tell her. She walked frantically down the hall until she could see one. “MedStar,” she told Sydney. “They took him back and won’t let me see him.”

“We’re on our way,” Sydney said and hung up.

It took Reid a solid minute to shake the fog from her mind and return to the waiting area. Only she couldn’t sit. So she paced. Only there wasn’t a place to pace without causing a disturbance to the others waiting, or to the staff.

She sat and her leg shook, annoying the person sitting three seats away from her. “Sorry,” she muttered when the man huffed out a sigh.

Reid tapped the screen on her phone and contemplated texting Pearce. He’d want to know, and she believed Grayson would want his best friend there if ... no, there wasn’t anything wrong. She repeated her earlier thoughts: Grayson was a young, strong, and healthy man. People like him didn’t have heart attacks. She texted Pearce to let himknow what had happened, where they were, and that she would keep him updated when she knew more.

When her leg started bouncing again, she stood and tried pacing again. She didn’t have a choice, and neither did the people in the waiting room. Shehadto do something because sitting there made her mind wander to places it shouldn’t.

Every time the doors opened, Reid waited to hear “Grayson Caballero’s family,” but those words didn’t come. The staff looked for others, with mixed news. Families either went back with the doctor or they broke down.

“Reid.”

She scanned the room for whoever had called her name and felt an insurmountable wave of comfort, like a blanket of relief, when she saw Sydney coming toward her. Reid fell into Sydney’s outstretched arms and cried. She should be comforting Grayson’s mother, not the other way around.

Sydney Haney was the type of woman who took life by the horns and led it down the path she created. When she found out she was pregnant at seventeen, she’d chosen to become a mom. The first time Reid met her, she was awestruck by her beauty and jealous of her long, luscious, dark curly hair and captivating brown eyes. Sydney had been given up for adoption and raised outside Annapolis and had never bothered to look for her birth parents. Grayson favored her, with the same dark hair and olive skin tone, except he towered over his mother. His father was out of the picture and had been long before Grayson was born. As far as Reid knew, Grayson had never met his father.

Strong hands guided the women back to the chairs. The smell of Polo cologne filtered through her senses, relaxing her. There were only two smells that could do that—Polo and Old Spice—which was what her father wore.

Reid wiped her eyes and tried to smile at Gilbert, Grayson’s stepfather. He gripped her hand tightly and offered a kind but sad grin. “Did you call your dad?”

Gilbert Haney was as handsome as they came. He exuded charm and charisma and could turn a dreary situation into a lighthearted moment. He’d met Sydney when Grayson was ten and took the role of stepfather to a whole new level. Grayson loved Gilbert and never introduced him as his stepdad. With his salt-and-pepper hair and brown eyes that matched Grayson’s, Gilbert was almost as tall as his son.

She shook her head. Why hadn’t she thought to call him?

“I’ll take care of it. Stay with Sydney.” He leaned down and whispered through Sydney’s hair before he left them to talk.

“Tell me what happened.”

“I don’t even know,” she started. “On Sundays, Grayson has his basketball league. We’re at the rec center and everything is fine. After the game, we got into an argument. He didn’t like these guys chatting with me, and I became defensive. I told him there are things in life that I want and I’m no longer going to sit by and wait, that I’m going to start dating.” Reid swallowed hard. “He placed his hand over his chest, and I thought he was joking, acting like I was breaking his heart or something, and I told him to knock it off. Only it wasn’t a joke, and he couldn’t speak. I yelled for help. There was a janitor there, and he called for an ambulance. On the way here, the medic guy said he showed signs of having a heart attack, which doesn’t make any sense because he’s only thirty-five, and people his age who are fit and healthy don’t have heart attacks.”

“Breathe,” Sydney said as she wiped Reid’s tears away, despite her own wetting her cheeks. “Breathe, honey.”

Reid hiccuped and shuddered. “I’m so sorry, I should be consoling you, and here you are, telling me to breathe.”

“It’s a mom thing,” Sydney told her. She sat back in the chair and put her arm around Reid. “Gilbert went to see what he can find out, and he’s going to call your dad. He should be here.”

“Yes and no. I mean, he’s pretty upset with Grayson because he thinks he’s leading me on.”

Sydney nodded. “I understand, but you’ll want him here.”

It took a moment for those words to sink in. She raised her head and looked at Sydney. “Why?”

Sydney only shook her head and brought Reid back to her shoulder.

When Gilbert returned, he told them that Grayson was in surgery and that it could be a while. He sat next to his wife and held her hand, while she held Reid.

The television aired the news, but the sound had been muted. People had come and gone. There were more tears and some elation. The sounds of the doors whooshing, the sirens wailing, and the constant beeping began to grate on Reid’s nerves.

She’d stood and had begun to pace again when her father came in, straight from work. He rushed over to her and wrapped his big, beefy arms around her. She nuzzled into his work jacket. The smell of Old Spice, oil, and nature soothed her.

Luther Sullivan was a hardworking man and had done everything he could to provide Reid with the best life he could. He was six feet, with a head of dark-auburn hair, matching Reid’s. He was what she called a rugged man and preferred to be outdoors unless it was football season and his beloved Ravens were on, and then you’d find him in front of the tube. He didn’t care for many other sports, unless it was something Reid wanted to watch. When her mother died, he’d taken the role of sole provider to heart and vowed to never let her down.

“I’m so glad you’re here.”

“I’m here for you.” Reid didn’t miss the undertone. She also didn’t blame him.

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