Page 8 of Whenever You Call

“Easy. Just… give yourself a minute to come around.”

“I don’t have a minute. I need to get my daughter home where she’s safe, not sitting in a car in a parking lot with a man she doesn’t even know,” I said, immediately regretting my tone, until Logan’s lips pressed together in sympathy, of all things, instead of annoyance.

I’d rather have seen his anger. I could have dealt with that. But pity?

I wanted to smack the look off his face. I was sick of seeing it on everyone who made eye contact with me lately. It made me feel like I had a plastic bag over my head and couldn’t breathe. Nobody knew how it felt to grieve a man you’d taught yourself to hate so that it would be easier to walk away from him—to break a family apart because you couldn’t survive another day of the mental torture, even though the daughter you shared together idolized her father endlessly.

And people could never understand how I could be so confused about needing him back now when all I’d ever wanted to do was to run away and never see his face again before he died.

“Sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I know you’re trying to help—"

“Do me a favor. Try to move your toes,” he said, cutting me off.

“Excuse me?”

“Your toes. Can you move them?”

“I… yes, I can feel my toes.” I tried to wiggle them in my sneakers, quickly recognizing that while I could in fact move them, they felt strangely tingly, as did my legs, arms, and fingertips.

“Yeah, you’re not driving anywhere,” Logan said. Shifting in his seat, he started the engine, pulling his seatbelt over his chest.

“Hey,” I cried, reaching over to touch his forearm, unable to miss the warmth that radiated from his skin as my palm pressed against it. It was only then that I registered that he wore full uniform, the navy blue, short-sleeved shirt hugging his biceps in a way I used to admire on Cole when his T-shirt cut into his muscles. A gold-trimmed, American flag badge had been sewn into the right sleeve of his shirt, and it made my gaze drift over all his uniform, noting an LAFD badge on the opposite side, proving that he was who he said he was, and he hadn’t been lying.

I swallowed again, catching Logan’s concerned gaze as I looked back up at him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I eventually asked with a broken voice.

“Driving you home.”

“The hell you are.”

“It’s either that, or we’re calling an ambulance. I’m happy to do either. Your call.”

An ambulance…

More people, more scandal, more unwanted attention.

He waited for me to get my thoughts in order, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him as my mind raced at a thousand miles an hour, unable to find the words to say that this felt too weird.

“You have no right to believe me when I say this, but youcantrust me,” he said, as though reading my thoughts. “It’s my job to take care of people. I’d never do anything to purposely hurt anyone.”

I wouldn’t admitit out loud but as soon as we hit the road again, I knew Logan was right. I’d been in no fit state to drive myself, let alone Bella, anywhere. My entire body was wrung out from the panic attack that had left me feeling like a limp noodle. All I wanted to do was collapse into my bed and recover. I’d given Logan my address, wondering if he would put two and two together to figure out who my husband had been, but all he’d done was put the car in motion, making sure Bella had her seatbelt in place and her doll on her lap again before we set off.

Whoever sent him to me, thank you.

When I thought how different the consequences could have been, it only made my stomach twist harder. What if someone had been hurt? What if I’d blacked out and Bella had panicked? What if the authorities had gotten involved and decided to take Bella from me in that state? Who would she have gone to stay with?

I had no family, and Cole’s biological parents were across the country—not that I’d have let them anywhere near her. They’d abandoned Cole much the same way my parents had abandoned me at an early age. It had been one of the things that pulled us together: the shit we’d been through as kids. The shit no child should ever have to go through alone.

I wouldn’t allow that for my daughter. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

It didn’t take long for Logan to turn us into the driveway of my home, sliding us through the big, black electric gates that I’d opened in advance, into the safety and privacy of our land.

Turning the engine off, Logan sat back in the driver’s seat, looking up at the home my husband bought without even showing it to me beforehand. Typical Cole. Always asking for my forgiveness rather than my permission.

“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” I said as I turned to my six-bedroom, six-bathroom home, knowing in my heart that it was far too big for just the two of us now.

We didn’t need so much space. We didn’t need an indoor cinema, the oversized pool, or the gym neither one of us would ever use, let alone the music room filled with Cole’s accolades that I’d locked the door to ever since that night, unable to be in it again, knowing it was the last place we were together in any capacity. The last place we’d shared so much hate.

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