Page 15 of Dreaming of Us

In what seemed like only a few minutes, there was a commotion coming from the hallway outside my apartment, and then paramedics were there, taking me away from Colton’s arms and laying me on a stretcher. I was wheeled out of my apartment and out into a waiting ambulance while I kept my eyes closed, and my face turned away from the prying eyes of anyone who might be watching.

Before the ambulance made it to the hospital, I drifted off to sleep. I woke up as I was being wheeled down the hospital corridors, the bright lights making my head hurt. I could hear the voices around me of the paramedics and nurses as they relayed what they knew of the situation.

I stayed numb as my dress was removed, and my body was examined for injuries. After I had been assessed and necessary tests had been completed to check for injuries, I was returned to a patient room similar to the one I had been in after the bank robbery. It wasn’t until then that my memory kicked in, and I was finally able to make sense of what had happened. That voice, the voice of the man who had attacked me, was the same voice of the man from the bank. He had come back to exact his revenge for spoiling his robbery attempt.

My mind drifted as the nurse moved around the room, checking machines and updating information into the computer. When my parents entered the room, and my mom burst into tears at the sight of me, I finally fell back to sleep, all while trying not to notice that Colton hadn’t come.

Chapter Thirteen

COLTON

Killing a man meant that I had a lot of questions to answer. It didn’t matter that my girl was across town being taken care of at the hospital. I needed to justify my actions as other officers took in the scene.

It had been too long away from Braylin by the time my Captain let me go. The first thing I did was head straight to the hospital to find my girl, but it was past visiting hours. I wasn’t able to get past the front desk to see her, no matter how much I begged.

I went back to my house in a daze. When I walked into our bedroom and saw her clothes lying on the chair in the corner of the room, I walked over on numb legs until I could reach down and pick up the shirt she had worn the day before. I brought it up to my face to inhale her sweet scent. Breathing her in, I collapsed to my knees and hung my head.

It was all my fault. I didn’t know how I hadn’t noticed Braylin had slipped away. Seeing Katy standing there had brought back all the pain and anger from her betrayal. My mind had begun to spin with the memory of finding out she had been using mefor years as a shield. I had been nothing but a cover for her true relationship.

Her step-brother had been the man she truly loved the entire time we had been in a relationship. Even though I had never really loved her, I had respected her and cared for her deeply. I never suspected that she had been using me as a decoy so she and her step-brother could be in a relationship behind her parents’ backs.

It wasn’t until she became pregnant that she finally came clean to me about what had been happening for years. Since she and I had never had sex, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Especially since she and David had always been close, he had even moved, following us to college.

That kind of betrayal was difficult to forget, so seeing her standing there with the little girl she’d had with another man while pretending to love me had distracted me. I couldn’t imagine what Braylin had thought when she saw that little girl. Though it was easy to guess. If I had told her the whole story of what had happened between Katy and me, she never would have run off and right into the path of a man who nearly killed her.

I slowly rose from the floor, not knowing how long I had been kneeling there. I carried her shirt with me to the bed and dropped down on it. I glanced at the clock and saw I still had several hours before the hospital would allow me to see her. I lay down and stared at the ceiling, thinking of all the ways I could fix things.

After a sleepless night, I strode down the long corridor until I found the room number I had been given. I took a deep breathand quietly opened the door, hoping not to disturb the woman who had been through so much the night before.

I walked to her bedside and stared down at the woman I loved. As I took in her bruised jaw, I wished I could bring the dead back to life and shoot him all over again. I reached into my pocket and pulled the ring out that I had bought a few days after we had started seeing each other and carefully slipped it onto her finger. Seeing the diamond glimmer there under the dim light of the room eased a bit of the tension that had been coiled in my chest.

I sat down in the chair beside her bed and waited.

“Colton?”

Her quiet, confused voice broke through the sleepy haze I had fallen into. I lifted my head, holding back the wince that the movement caused in my stiff neck. I sat up fully in the uncomfortable chair that I had slouched down into and took her small, delicate hand in mine.

“Sweetheart,” I breathed out as I leaned down to kiss her finger where my ring sat. “I am so fucking sorry.”

She let out a sharp inhale and tugged on her hand. I let her go so she wouldn’t cause herself any more pain than she was probably already in.

“What are you doing here, Colton?”

I had never heard her tone so detached before, and it broke my heart. I clenched my jaw at the hint of emotional pain she was trying to disguise under her indifference.

“Shouldn’t you be with your daughter right now?”

I closed my eyes and shook my head slowly.

“That’s Katy’s step-brother’s daughter. Katy had been with him the whole time we had been together. That little girl could never be mine, sweetheart. I never had sex with Katy.”

Braylin blinked at me in shock, followed swiftly by confusion. “What?”

I sighed and reached for her hand again, unable to stop myself from touching her and making sure that she was alive and breathing. “After Katy ended up pregnant, they had to come clean. She confessed that they had been in love since their early teens, right around the time she convinced me that we should start dating. For years, she used me to keep the suspicion off of her and David.”

I looked at Braylin, making sure I stared right into her eyes so she could see the truth I was telling her. “We had never been in love. I wasn’t hurt by her betrayal, sweetheart. I was pissed the fuck off that I was played that way. When I saw her standing there, all I could do was remember that feeling of betrayal. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’m sorry that it hurt you and caused you to leave. I’m sorry it made you go to your apartment and right into danger.”

I watched as she bit her lip while taking in all I’d told her. “What was she doing there?”

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