Knox. I found him through the crowd behind the bar, half smiling at something a customer said. He looked up and locked eyes with me.
My face must have telegraphed something because Knox vaulted over the bar and started pushing his way toward me through the crowd.
“I’m sorry, babe,” Stef said. “I’ve got Way here at Liza’s with all the dogs. We’re fine. You do whatever you need to do.”
Knox reached me and grabbed my arms. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“I have to go,” I said into the phone and disconnected.
The front door opened, and I saw two officers in uniform looking grim. My breath hitched. “Knox,” I whispered.
“Right here, baby. What happened?”
His eyes were bluer in this light, searingly blue and serious as he held on to me.
I shook my head. “It’s not me. It’s you.”
“What’s me?”
With a shaking finger, I pointed at the officers making their way to us.
“Knox, we need to talk,” the taller one said.
I backed up the truck for the third time and pulled forward before finally being satisfied with my park job. The hospital rose in front of me like a glowing beacon. An ambulance unloaded a patient on a gurney at the emergency department entrance. Its light painted the parking lot in red and white.
I puffed out a breath, hoping it would settle the anxiety that was burbling in my stomach like a bad chowder.
I could have gone home.
I should have. But when I’d finished my shift, I drove towards the man who had tossed me his keys and told me to drive myself home. He’d made me promise before he’d followed the deputies out the door into the night.
Yet here I was at two a.m., disobeying direct orders and sticking my nose where it didn’t belong.
I should definitely go home. Yep. For sure, I decided, getting out of the truck and walking right on in through the front door.
Given the hour, there was no one sitting at the information desk. I followed the signs to the elevators and the Surgical Intensive Care Unit on the third floor.
It was eerily quiet on the floor. All signs of life were limited to the nurses’ station.
I started toward it when I spotted Knox through the glass in the waiting room, the wide shoulders and impatient stance immediately recognizable. He paced the dimly lit room like a captive tiger.
He must have sensed me in the doorway because he turned swiftly as if to face an enemy.
His jaw clenched, and it was only then that I saw the turmoil. Anger. Frustration. Fear.
“I brought you coffee,” I said, lamely holding up the travel mug I’d prepared for him in Honky Tonk’s kitchen.
“Thought I told you to go home,” he growled.
“And I didn’t listen. Let’s just move past the part where either one of us pretends to be surprised.”
“I don’t want you here.”
I flinched. Not at his words but at the pain behind them.
I put the coffee down on an end table stacked with magazines that pretended they could distract visitors from the endless loop of fear. “Knox,” I began, taking a step toward him.
“Stop,” he said.
I didn’t listen and slowly closed the distance between us. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
“Just get the fuck out of here, Naomi. Just go. You can’t be here,” his voice was ragged, frustrated.
“I’ll go,” I promised. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine.” The words came out bitterly.
I raised my hand to lay on his arm.
He flinched away from me. “Don’t,” he said harshly.
I said nothing but stood my ground. I felt like I could breathe in his anger like it was oxygen.
“Don’t,” he said again.
“I won’t.”
“If you touch me right now…” He shook his head. “I’m not in control, Naomi.”
“Just tell me what you need.”
His laugh was dry and bitter. “What I need is to find the motherfucking bastard who did this to my brother. What I need is to rewind the clock so I didn’t waste the last however many years over some stupid fucking fight. What I need is for my brother to wake the fuck up.”
His breath hitched, and I had no control over my own body. Because one second I was standing in front of him and the next I was wrapping my arms around his waist, holding on and trying to absorb his pain.
His body was tight and vibrating as if he was seconds away from coming apart.
“Stop,” he said on a broken whisper. “Please.”