Page 119 of Already At Risk
I’d been counting down the hours, the minutes, thesecondsuntil I saw her again. She was nothing short of incredible, brilliant, beautiful, and I couldn’t get enough. The night I’d brought her back to my place? Nothing short of mind-blowing. EvenIhadn’t known sex could be like that.
And the baseball game? Taking Natalie and Chloe to Fenway left me feeling things that I was still processing. Walking out their front door at the end of the night after kissing Natalie had broken a small piece of me…and I think I left it there.
Today, my favorite single mom was supposed to come into the office to keep preparing for the trial, so this phone call was either her telling me that she was running late or early or?—
“Cam, hi,” she said, her voice frantic from the moment I picked up the phone.
I sat forward in my chair, elbows on my desk.
“Natalie, what’s wrong?”
Her voice was half-muffled when she responded, like maybe she was trying to hold the phone to her ear with no hands. “I’m sosorry—fuck, goddamnit.” A clattering noise sounded in the background. “Sorry, I?—”
“Don’t apologize,” I interrupted, feeling all my nerve endings tighten.Somethingwas wrong. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
“I can’t come in today, I’m so sor?—”
“Natalie.”
If she apologized one more time, I was going to lose it. If she thought I cared more about her keeping her appointment thanwhyshe couldn’t keep her appointment, I clearly had some things left to prove to her.
“There was an accident on I-93,” she said, and for some reason, I stood. As though I could do something about it while in the middle of Boston’s financial district. “A massive one. It’s all hands on deck at the hospital. I have to go in and—shit.”
Dread filled my entire being, taking me back to a moment when I was just a kid, hearing similar words.
“There was an accident. A bad accident, Cam.”
I swallowed hard, determined not to let my memories flood my present. Right now, Natalie needed someone who was clearheaded because I could tell she wasn’t. She sounded like she was trying to do twelve things at once, and while Natalie was the kind of woman who likely could figure out how to do twelve things at once, it wasn’t going too well for her at the moment, making me wish I were there to help.
“But you’re okay?” I clarified, my feet taking me back and forth across the length of my office.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
Relief trickled down my spine, nonsensical and silly.
Natalie was at home.
She wasn’t the one driving. Not the one in the accident.
“I just have to figure out about Chloe.” There was a jingle of keys and a slam of a door, and I tightened again, realizing that although she hadn’t been driving before, she was about to be. “An incident like this might have a ripple effect across hospital networks, so I don’tthink I should ask Blake and Delaney. And Noah has mini camps this week, and Gemma’s already picking Chloe up from day camp and bringing her to skating afterward, but then Gemma has lessons after Chloe’s is done. And she’s only just dipping her toes in after maternity leave, so I don’t want to put too much on her, but I guess?—”
“Natalie, slow down.” I didn’t like the idea of her getting behind the wheel when her brain was running a mile a minute like this.
“I really don’t want to call Korey, but?—”
“Donotcall that man,” I interjected, firm. The last thing we needed to do was give Natalie’s ex any sort of fuel for his fire before the trial. I took a deep breath and softened my tone before going on. “Skating ends at six, right?”
A shuddering sigh left Natalie’s mouth, and,God, I wished I were there with her. “Right.”
“I’ll get Chloe from skating. I’ll bring her home, get her dinner, and stay with her as long as needed. Have you changed the code on the back door since I installed it?”
“No.”
Something burned in my chest.
“Good.”
“Cameron, I really appreciate this,” she started and then paused. A car door slammed, more light jingles, and then the dinging of a car with the key in the ignition. “But…”
