Page 6 of Whenever You Call

“I can’t do this,” I whispered to myself.

I couldn’t be here ordering ice cream like this was an everyday occurrence. Since the funeral, the entire world had been waiting for that first candid shot of me looking like the grieving widow so they could make money from my agony. I’d unwillingly been on every magazine cover for the last four weeks. There’d been pictures of Cole and I together from the last decade. Images of the scandals we’d faced, the highs we’d reached, and the lows we’d tried to avoid. While the people of Los Angeles would hopefully forget about me within the next year, right now, my daughter and I were fresh in everyone’s minds.

What the hell am I doing putting us both in danger like this?

Without thinking of anything else but my escape, I put the SUV in reverse without looking behind me, only for my bumper to immediately hit the front end of another vehicle. The crack and groan of metal on metal reverberated throughout the car, and I slammed on the brakes, hard.

“Shit!”

“Mommy…”

“Bella!” I cried, unbuckling my seatbelt. I reached behind me to check on my daughter. Her beautiful eyes were wide, her hands holding onto the edges of her car seat. “Oh, God, baby, I’m so sorry. Are you hurt?”

She shook her head and pointed down to the footwell. “But I lost Dolly.”

Glancing down at her Barbie, I closed my eyes and blew out a breath, allowing myself a moment of relief before a tap on the driver’s window made me jump and turn toward the person standing there, trying to get a look at me through the blacked-out windows.

I glanced in the rearview and saw the car I’d bumped into still behind me, which meant I was officially trapped in with nowhere to go unless I curbed it and drew even more attention to myself for running away from the scene of an accident I’d caused.

If this is you getting payback for what I said, Cole, I swear to God…

The man by the window knocked again and leaned closer. “Hey, it’s okay. Don’t panic. I’m not here to yell at you or anything. I’m a paramedic. I just want to check if you’re okay.”

A paramedic?

Memories of the hospital and the number of doctors, nurses, porters, and paramedics there flashed through my mind, and the memory of how mad I’d been at them for being unable to save Cole twisted at my gut. They hadn’t been able to save him, which meant I would never now get the chance to change the last words he heard me say. I would always be the wife who told her husband to go to Hell hours before he died.

A paramedic was the last person I wanted to see, but since I had nowhere to go, I didn’t have a choice but to sit up in my seat and roll down the window.

When our eyes met, he offered me a warm smile.

He had kind brown eyes that held a world within them. His dark hair was pushed back, away from his face like he’d run his hands through it enough times that it had got stuck there.

We seemed to study one another for a second too long before a small scowl creased his brows, and I immediately turned rigid again. Thank God I was wearing my oversized dark sunglasses because it was at that moment that I realized this guy was the first person outside of family and friends I’d seen in the flesh for over a month.

“I’m—”sorry, I was about to say, only to be cut off as he narrowed his eyes and searched my face.

“Everything okay? Are you a little shaken up?”

“I’m fine. I’m… I’m sorry about that. I’ll pay for any damage. Just give me your details, and I’ll sort it. Money isn’t an issue.”

“I’m not worried about the car. I’m worried about you.”

My brows rose in surprise. “It was just a bump.”

“Yeah, well, I see a lot of bumps turn into something a whole lot bigger within minutes, and you already look too pale for my liking. Mind if I see your eyes to check your pupils.”

“My pupils are fine. This car is strong, and I was barely moving when I hit you.”

“You were going faster than you realize. I hit the horn to try to warn you, but...”

“I… didn’t hear you.”

His sympathetic smile drew my eyes down to focus on the small dimples that formed in his cheeks, barely noticeable, but there all the same. Cole had had dimples. Big ones that his female fans obsessed over. Perfectly placed dots in his cheeks that Bella had always loved to stick her index finger into when she’d been a baby.

“I must have been a little spaced out,” I admitted, even though somewhere in the back of my brain, Cole’s voice warned me to shut up talking before I walked us—me—right into a lawsuit I couldn’t get out of.

“Does that happen a lot?” the paramedic asked.

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