Page 84 of Back On Ice

My dad shot me.

Shit. Even I didn’t realize he had it in him to try to kill his own son. I stare at my hand in shock as the sound of a siren approaches, red and white lights going off in my peripheral. Paramedics pop out of the ambulances that park outside the gate, rushing a gurney to my dad.

“You good?” Detective Peterson comes up next to me, his eyes on my dad as the EMTs load him onto the gurney.

I grimace, showing my bloodied hand to the detective. He quickly inspects my arm. “It’s just a graze, but there’s a second ambulance coming to check you out.”

Swallowing, I nod. “I need to see him taken away first.”

The paramedics wheel the gurney past us, and I look coldly at the man who doesn’t deserve to call himself a father. Cuffed to the handrail and still bleeding from the bullet in his leg that took him down, he looks like nothing more than the scum at the bottom of my shoe. A miserable waste of space. Looking him dead in the eyes, I feel nothing but relief. “If you believed that I would really try to be a part of your pathetic scheme,” I tell him, “you obviously don’t know me at all.”

“You fucking piece of shit!” Dad screams, spit flying out of his mouth and his arms thrashing in rage. “I’ll fucking kill you! And that bitch you call a mother! I’ll end her and make you watch, you pathetic, useless?—”

His ranting is cut off by the paramedics closing the doors after loading him in.

Detective Peterson sighs. “Don’t worry. With the information we got and threats like that recorded, plus the additional evidence you found for shady dealings at the car dealership, not to mention the attempted murder we all just witnessed, he should have enough years racked up in his sentence to be behind the bars for the rest of his life.”

Attempted murder charge. Shit. A part of me is still shocked that Dad tried to fucking kill me. But I can’t find myself to be hurt by his actions. Emotionally at least. Physically, the graze from the bullet fucking hurts. Otherwise, I’m just so fucking grateful it’s all finally over and because of that, I can’t be sorry about how this all happened. I would do it all over again if it meant keeping Sophie, the baby, and my mom safe.

Despite the pain in my arm, and the pounding in my heart as I watch the man who raised me being taken away in an ambulance, I feel like I can finally breathe.

It’s over.

He’s never going to hurt us again.

Chapter Thirty Five

SOPHIE

I’m goingto wear a hole in Abbie’s dad’s carpet if I’m not careful.

When we learned everything Detective Peterson had to tell us about Carter’s dad, I had been nervous. I reached out to Abbie’s dad, Michael, since he was the one who had been working with the detective since Julian Davis died.

He assured me that Detective Peterson is a good man, as well as an exceptional detective, and if anyone could get Carter through this unscathed, it’s him.

“Soph, everything will be fine,” Abbie says gently from her place on the couch, her chocolate brown eyes watching me intently. Her brown, shoulder length hair is pulled back, and she looks as almost as tense as I feel as she picks at a thread in her leggings. “Carter’s a big boy, and the police are there in case anything crazy happens.”

The words do little to comfort me because the reality is Carter, the love of my life and father of my unborn child, is in a potentially dangerous situation, and I’m helpless to do anythingabout it. My elbow clips the large wooden cabinet that holds a million different mugs when I pass by, the sound of the ceramic cups jostling on the glass shelves setting my nerves even more on edge.

“I know.” I sigh, wringing my hands as I continue my path back and forth across the living room, opting to pass between the overstuffed chairs so I don’t bruise my elbow again. “I still don’t like it though.” I wrap my arms around my stomach and take a big breath, trying to calm down by inhaling Carter’s scent. Wearing his T-shirt and hoodie today was a comfort I couldn’t deny myself.

“Detective Peterson will make sure he’s safe,” Michael says, sitting next to his daughter. His hair grew in gray when we were in teens, but it’s a full head of it. He’s in a polo and jeans, looking calm and collected as I internally lose my shit. “This is an opportunity to get him out of all of our lives for good. Carter is the only one he might confess to.”

They aren’t telling me things I don’t already know. It doesn’t make it any easier. “I’ll just feel better when I hear from him.” The thought of anything happening to Carter makes my insides feel like they’re going to fall out of my chest.

I wish I had told my parents what was going on, but they don’t return from their cruise until tomorrow morning and nobody else knows about tonight except Jake and Tom, who’s at home with Jordan.

“The detective said he’d call me with an update as soon as everything gets wrapped up.” Michael’s voice is calming, his experience raising Abbie as a single dad evident in the way he speaks evenly, never insinuating that I’m overreacting. Only a man who raised a teenage girl single handedly could achieve that, especially considering the level of hormonal mess I’m at right now.

My phone ringing jolts me out of my thoughts. “Hello?” I don’t recognize the number, but put it on speaker in case it’s the detective calling.

“Yes, hello, is this Sophie Hartwell?” The voice is chipper, like the customer service voice I use when I answer the phone at the flower shop.

“It is…” I answer cautiously. I swear, if this is someone trying to sell me something when I’m waiting to hear from Carter?—

“My name is Jackie, I’m a nurse here at Ivy Glen General Hospital. I’m calling on behalf of Carter Williams. He was just brought in?—”

Suddenly, my heart is pounding so hard in my chest, the nurse’s voice is drowned out by the sound of my blood rushing in my ears.

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