Glancing next to me, I saw a man looking over the melons. Our eyes caught.
“I, uh, never know how to tell what’s ripe,” he said.
He seemed to be in his late twenties or early thirties, attractive with blond hair that looked like it had been kissed by the sun. Blue eyes, straight teeth, and a smile that was both shy and sexy—and that had me smiling back.
“Yeah, something about if it sounds hollow when you tap it, I guess,” I replied with a shrug.
“They all sound hollow to me.”
I laughed at his self-deprecating grimace and his smile was wider this time.
“I’m Luke,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Kathleen.”
“Nice to meet you, Kathleen.” He held out his hand and I took it.
“Likewise.”
“I don’t usually do this—” he began.
“Kat, you ready to go?”
I turned to see Blane now standing behind me, his face like granite as he stared at Luke.
Nice.
“Sure,” I said easily as Luke glanced from me to Blane and back. “Luke, this is my… brother. You were saying?”
I didn’t look to see how Blane was taking that.
“Ah, yeah.” Luke focused on me again when Blane didn’t speak. “I was wondering if you might like to go out sometime.”
I could have done a little dance in delight. A cute, sexy guy was asking me out right in front of Blane and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Maybe fate had a twisted sense of humor after all.
“I’d like that,” I said. I grabbed a pen from my purse and scrawled my number on Luke’s palm. “Here’s my number. Call me.”
He beamed at me and his gaze dropped to my chest before jerking back up to my face. “Thanks! I will.”
Blane was a stiff wall of silence behind me as I walked toward the checkout. I probably wouldn’t have given Luke my number if Blane hadn’t been there. I don’t usually get picked up in the grocery store, but it had been too good of an opportunity to resist.
“Your brother?” Blane asked, his voice hard with anger.
I stopped and turned. Blane’s eyes were flashing gray fire. “Telling him you’re my ex probably wouldn’t have gone over real well,” I said.
Blane grabbed my arm and pulled me close. “He was staring at your breasts,” he hissed. “Which are barely covered in that getup.”
“Can you blame him?” I retorted. “If I remember right, you always enjoyed them.” I yanked my arm out of his grasp. “And can we stop pretending that you’re buying all this food for Mona? I know what you’re doing and it’s not going to happen.”
“You can’t live off ramen noodles and lettuce.”
I was furious now, and it wasn’t just about the groceries. My temper seemed to be on a hair trigger. “You can’t shove your way back into my life, Blane, not after everything that’s happened. And you certainly can’t control me the way you used to.” I snatched my purse from the cart. “I’m out of here.”
“I have your keys,” he said to my back.
His high-handedness had me seeing red. “Then I’ll fucking walk,” I ground out.
Tears stung my eyes as I hurried through the automatic doors. The sun was now high in the sky and stepping into the heat and humidity felt like hitting a brick wall. I slid my sunglasses back on and started trekking across the parking lot.
I couldn’t handle this, didn’t know how to act or what to say with Blane. My anger was too close to the surface, forgiveness too far away, for me to even pretend a level of normalcy with him. Our relationship had too much history, too much baggage, for us to carry on with any kind of pretend friendship.
I had to get him out of my life, and there was only one way to do that.
Getting my phone out of my purse, I dialed a number from memory, praying he’d pick up.
To my disappointment, the call went to voice mail.
“Kade, it’s me. Kathleen. Listen, I know we haven’t talked in a while,” which was an understatement, “but I was hoping, if you’re not too busy, that you might come back. Just for a while. I…” My voice faltered. “I could really use some help, and I don’t know who else to ask…” The absurdity of what I was asking suddenly struck me. Was I really going to ask Kade to actively work against his brother? “You know what,” I said, suddenly changing my mind, “forget I called, okay? It’s nothing. I’m fine.…”
Someone yelling my name distracted me and I turned to see Blane running flat out my way.
“Look out!” he yelled.
I turned in confusion and saw a car barreling toward me. I froze in horror, my mind moving in slow motion. Adrenaline turned my insides cold and made my muscles move. I dove to the side but not fast enough. The corner of the car hit me and I screamed as my body glanced off the metal before hitting the burning asphalt. My phone clattered from my hand and I was aware of a burning pain in my side. I heard gunshots, then nothing.
Sirens were screaming when I pried open my eyes. I was lying on my back on the hot asphalt, the sun a blazing glare. My first thought was that I must have dropped my sunglasses. My second was that I’d broken my non-injury streak the moment Blane had set foot back in my life.
That seemed important.
Blane spoke and I realized he was kneeling at my side.
“Don’t move, Kat.”
Yeah, wasn’t planning on it. My side hurt like hell, especially when I took a breath. I could tell I’d gotten scraped up from the concrete on my arm and elbow, though that pain paled in comparison.
“What happened?” I managed to croak.
“There was a car,” Blane said. “It hit you.”
Ah yes. Now I remembered. I’d been angry and left the store. In retrospect, probably not the smartest thing to do given what Blane had told me about Gage. My only defense was that I’d been so upset at Blane that I hadn’t been thinking clearly.
The sirens were coming closer and I assumed they were for me. We’d attracted a small crowd, which had to back up when the EMTs got there. Blane stepped out of my line of sight as the technicians examined me. Once they had asked me a hundred questions (“Ma’am, can you wiggle your toes?”) and realized I hadn’t broken something vital, like my spine, they placed me on a gurney and started to put me in the ambulance.
This was the first time I’d been in an ambulance since I’d had to call one when my mother was so ill in the last stages of cancer. I’d insisted on riding in the back with her, and I still remember the sympathy on the EMT’s face as he watched me hold my mom’s hand. She’d wanted to die at home but had ended up passing in the back of that ambulance before we even reached the hospital.
That memory assaulted me now and irrational fear struck.
“Wait,” I gasped, struggling to sit up against the safety restraints they’d placed across the gurney. “No, wait… let me out!”
“Ma’am, you need to lie still,” one of the EMTs said, gently but firmly pushing me back down.
“No!” My voice was shrill now as they rolled me inside the ambulance. Medical equipment surrounded me, its silence foreboding. I couldn’t see outside. I couldn’t see Blane.
Panic hit and I started struggling in earnest despite the pain in my side, tugging fruitlessly at the belts that kept me prisoner. I couldn’t breathe properly. Each breath was a stabbing pain.
The EMT grabbed my wrists. “You’re going to be all right,” he said. “Just calm down. We’ll get you to the hospital.”
“No, please, let me go,” I begged, unable to twist away from him. My vision blurred. The heat inside the ambulance was suddenly too much like the stifling heat in a shack filled with women held at gunpoint.
The man forced my arms down to my sides. “Restrain her,” he told the other guy. “Then sedate her.”