Page 18 of Damaged King

I wanted to believe my emotions had gotten away from me due to fear for my grandmother. But that wasn’t it, was it? Damn Cal. I’d been smug thinking I’d bagged the untouchable bad boy, yet I was the one left with egg on my face.

“Hello.” The voice was familiar and unfamiliar.

For a fraction of a second, I almost said the D word. Instead, I said, “Christian.”

I wasn’t sure if he heard me or if I’d lost the connection because it took him a beat longer to answer.

“Jo.”

“Yes, it’s me,” I answered.

“Thank God. I—You’re okay?”

Was he about to say he was worried?

“Yes. I’m stuck in…” I glanced around and almost went to go ask when I remembered the conversation I’d overhead. “I’m in Clinestown, Maryland. There’s a storm. We can’t fly out. How’s Grandmother?”

It almost felt weird saying Grandmother and not Gran. But at the same time, it suited her. She was a regal woman with glossy silver hair and the sharp mind of a CEO.

“She has pneumonia and everything they’re doing isn’t working. I don’t mean to scare you.”

I’d unconsciously covered my mouth as a burst of pain filled my chest. I had to remove it to speak.

“No. I’d rather know the truth,” I admitted.

“The truth is, the doctors aren’t sure she’s going to make it.”

A pained gasp escaped me.

“Can I speak to her?” I asked before I realized my mistake.

“I’m sorry, Jo. She can barely speak.”

“Can I see her?”

“Fine. I’ll call you right back.”

I agreed to dead air and waited a beat. And another to the point I lifted the phone high in the air as I walked to the picture windows, hoping I hadn’t lost the signal.

Then it rang. I accepted the video call and my father filled the screen. My friends had called him hot more than once, and as one of the richest men in the United States, he had his fair share of press. But to me he was Christian.

“Here she is,” he said, moving toward my poor grandmother who looked as white as the bleached sheets she lay helplessly on in a hospital bed.

“Jo,” she whispered.

I tried to hide the despair I felt with a wooden smile that was brittle at best from the thumb view of myself in the corner of the screen.

“Don’t talk. I love you and I’m going to get there somehow.”

“I love you,” she croaked before gasping in a coughing fit that set off alarms.

Suddenly, the screen yanked away, and my father moved further back into the room until it got quieter.

“What’s happening?” I cried.

“Have you been watching the news?”

“No, why?”

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