thirty-one
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“A man has been shot.”
It was a blur of sound in the room, but for some reason, the voice coming through someone’s speakerphone stuck out to me as I stared down at my dad in horror.
I collapsed to the floor beside him.
His eyes were closed, clenched tightly shut, but he was breathing.
“Dad, what can I do?” I yelled. I lowered my voice. “Dad, stay with me. It’s okay, Daddy. It’s your CC. I’m here, Daddy.” I tried to keep my voice soothing, but it sounded like a shrill mixture of panic and fear.
I brushed his hair away from his forehead. I laid my hand over his where he was clutching his arm. I couldn’t tell where the bullet had hit him. It was either his chest, his arm, or his shoulder. All I knew was that he’d saved my life. He dove in front of Randy’s bullet to save me.
And he was bleeding everywhere.
He was so handsome in his tux.
My last words to him crashed over me. I’d thanked him for being the best dad a girl could ask for.
I couldn’t lose him.
My dream…
My dream flashed back through my mind.
I knew Katie and Damien had been in the room with me. I’d wrongly assumed it was for me.
But they were here to take my dad.
They couldn’t have him. It wasn’t his time. It couldn’t be.
“Dad, stay with me,” I said again, my voice desperate as I tried to hold onto him.
I couldn’t lose him.
He wasn’t responding. I couldn’t tell if he was awake. I just watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, a reminder he was still breathing. He was still alive.
A flurry of activity in the doorway pulled my attention away from my dad, and I saw Jadyn rush in with Parker right behind her.
“Where is that son of a bitch? I’ll fucking kill him myself!” Jadyn screamed.
I looked at her in horror.
Who was she talking about?
She looked over at me, and I saw the anger in her eyes turn to pure love when her eyes met mine. She saw me holding my dad’s hand, brushing his hair back, and she came and knelt on the other side of him. She looked beautiful in a dignified lavender gown.
“Gideon, you’re not leaving me, baby. I love you.” She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his forehead, the same forehead I’d just brushed his hair back from.
I felt Parker kneel beside me. He gently touched my shoulder.
“An ambulance is on its way,” he murmured next to me. “Are you okay, Jimi?”
I lost all control of my emotions at the raw and genuine affection in his voice.
Sobs racked my body as I fell into Parker. His strong arms encircled me as I cried into his chest. I heard Jadyn crying quietly across my dad from me.
She reached one hand across my dad, and I took her hand in mine.
We held hands over my dad, a silent prayer and a silent truce that had been a long time coming.
Stolen journals and material items and money no longer mattered.
All that mattered was that my dad made it through this.
George’s voice broke into our private moment. “I need some space.” He held a cloth in his hand, and Parker pulled me up from the floor and into his arms. I watched as George applied pressure to the top left side of my dad’s body. I still didn’t know if he’d been shot by his heart or his shoulder. Either way, I knew that the damage could be fatal.
I glanced beside Jadyn, where Randy had been standing moments before. He was gone. The knowledge hit me, and I feared that he got away.
I started trembling.
“Baby, they got him. Randy’s going to prison for a long time,” Parker whispered quietly into my hair.
I nodded, but I couldn’t stop shaking.
“You’re dad is going to be okay. He’s a fighter.”
I knew he was a fighter, but I wanted to scream that Parker wasn’t a doctor and there was no way he could possibly know if my dad was going to be okay.
But my dad was still on the floor. I needed to stay positive, to send out positive vibes while he was in the room, because I couldn’t risk my dream coming true.
It wasn’t time for Damien and Katie to take him.
“Parker, toss me a pillow,” George said, and Parker let go of me for only a second to grab one from the couch.
George was talking quietly to my dad, but I couldn’t hear him over the loud rushing in my ears. I thought I saw my dad nod at something George asked. Relief coursed through me. It didn’t mean he was out of the woods, but a response was better than nothing.
Guilt washed over me. This was my fault.
It was always my fault. I somehow always managed to hurt the people I loved most without even trying.
If he’d have just stayed where he was, it would be me on the floor. And I’d take that bullet so that he didn’t have to. I’d take it for him any day of the week.
I looked down at my dress for the first time. Blood was splattered all over the white fabric. My dad’s blood.
I didn’t see Parker hand the pillow to George. I just knew that Parker’s arms were around me and I was staring down at my dress.
When I’d envisioned this day, it had a much different ending than reality.
I heard sirens in the distance, and paramedics were rushing through the door to my dad what seemed like seconds later.
They made quick work of asking him questions. He was awake enough to whisper through gritted teeth what had happened. They secured an oxygen mask over his face and strapped him onto a gurney. They wheeled him out to the ambulance. Jadyn rode with him. George drove Parker and me. I wasn’t sure what happened to the rest of our guests, but I had much bigger things to worry about.
Parker was quiet beside me in the back of the Tahoe. He knew everything I needed. Always. And he knew that I just needed quiet time to process everything that had just happened.
“You look beautiful,” he said as we got closer to the hospital. His voice was low. “Even better than I ever could have imagined.”
“I love you.” My voice came out in a whisper.
He squeezed my hand. “I know, baby. And I love you.”
thirty-two
Checking Gideon Price’s status was harder than it sounded. He was in the ER, and they were pretty strict about allowing visitors back there in a normal situation. But considering his celebrity status, hospital staff was vigilant not to bend any rules.
Jadyn was in the ER room with him. When Parker and I had rushed through the front doors of the ER, people kept looking at us with sympathetic eyes. The poor girl in the wedding dress with blood all over it. I couldn’t take it.
We were ushered to a private waiting room. George was out front making calls, presumably to my dad’s publicist.
I wondered briefly about the wedding guests back at my dad’s house for only the second time. Did they know he’d been shot? Most of them were there for him, not for me. Were they as scared as I was?
I thought back not for the first time to those days of apathetic indifference. If only I was still floating numbly through life, I wouldn’t feel the heavy burden of guilt and fear that weighed on my chest. It was crushing me. It hurt to take deep breaths.
I paced back and forth. The room was a tiny box, but at least it was private. It was ten steps in one direction and then ten steps back in the other. I walked from wall to wall. I felt Parker’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop.
I wanted to do something. Anything. I wanted to see what was going on. I wanted to make sure my dad was going to be okay. I wanted to make sure my dad would still be able to play the guitar and hug me close and walk me down the aisle.
Down the aisle.
The place where we should have walked just moments after Randy appeared in my dad’s office.
Instead we were at this place, and I wasn’t sure if my dad was going to live or die.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how fragile life was. One minute I was telling my dad he was the world’s greatest dad as we toasted to my wedding, and the next minute my dad was lying on the floor as blood oozed from a bullet wound.