Page 27 of Tangled Up With You

“I don’t know!” I cried, throwing my arms up at my sides. “I’m freaking out right now!”

Lennix’s hands came up in a placating gesture. “Okay. It’s okay,” she soothed. “Everything is going to be fine.” She took a sweeping look at me for the first time since barging into my office. “Well, I mean except for the fact you look like death warmed over. Good lord, babe. Are you okay?”

My expression fell flat as I gritted through my clenched teeth, “Not. Helping.”

“Sorry. Sorry. Okay, where was I?” She snapped her fingers. “Right. You’re fine. It’s all gonna be fine. We’re going to go downstairs to make sure my brother hasn’t committed murder and find out what’s going on. I’ll be there the whole time, alright? You can do this.”

“I can do this,” I repeated, hoping if I said it enough times I’d start to believe it. “I can totally do this.”

“Yeah, for sure! Now, you ready?”

Hell no, but it looked like I didn’t really have much of a choice.

We started out of my office and barely made it to the top of the staircase when we heard raised voices.

Lennix turned to me with big, panicked eyes. “Shit.”

I put on a burst of speed, trying to keep up with her, but my body didn’t want to cooperate. I barely made it to the first landing when my vision started to get wonky, blurring along the edges.

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” I heard Zach shout as I rounded the banister.

Rae stepped into her husband. “Okay, I think everyone should just take a breath and try to calm down.” She put herself between the two men. Zach looked ready to rip someone’s head off while Connor looked resigned to receive a fist to the face.

“Look who I found,” Lennix chirped overly brightly as she reached the base of the staircase.

Five sets of eyes swung up my way once I was halfway down the stairs. “Hey,” I greeted lamely, lifting my hand in a limp wave as my head began to swim.

“Whoa,” Rae breathed out. “Honey, you don’t look so good.”

Connor rushed my way, climbing up two steps. “Are you okay?”

No, I didn’t think I was. “Um...” I licked my lips as I reach up to wipe at the sweat suddenly dotting my brow. “Does it seem wobbly in here to anyone else?”

That was the last thing I remembered before my vision went completely black and I fainted in the middle of the staircase.

Chapter Fifteen

Connor

“This is ridiculous,” Ivy grumbled, her mouth pulled down into a pout, her arms folded over her chest insolently. “I told you guys I was fine. There was no need for you to take me to the hospital.”

Rae bugged her eyes out at her friend from across the curtained off section of the emergency room we were currently tucked in. “Are you kidding me right now? Ivy, you fainted while standing at the middle of a hard-ass wooden staircase. It’s a wonder you didn’t kill yourself!”

I hadn’t said a word in the past ten minutes as I paced the little room. My emotions were all over the place, tangled around my vocal cords and rendering them useless. I was angry and terrified, and I worried which of those would rush to the surface if I said anything before giving myself enough time to cool down.

I wasn’t sure there had ever been a time in my life I’d been more scared than when Ivy’s eyes rolled back in her head just a second before she passed the fuck out. If I hadn’t already beenstarting toward her, she would have fallen down those stairs, and Christ only knew how much worse off she would have been.

As it was, I barely caught her in time. But it wasn’t just the fact that she nearly took a tumble down a flight of stairs that scared me. It was that once I caught her and got her safely to the bottom, laying her out on the floor, I couldn’t get her to wake up.

I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with her, and it scared the shit out of me. She was paler than the last time I’d seen her, thinner too. She looked like she’d been sick for a while, and I fucking hated that I hadn’t been here to help take care of her.

The reality was that it had only taken a minute for her eyelids to flutter back open, but to me, it felt like a goddamn eternity. Those eight seconds I spent on the back of a bull were nothing compared to the sixty it took for my butterfly to wake up. I didn’t breathe for that full minute, my heart on the floor beside her and my throat locked up tight.

Even after she’d regained consciousness, she’d been sluggish and her words were slurred for a few seconds before she became clearheaded once more. When I announced I was calling an ambulance she’d freaked, argued that she was fine, it was just a little dizzy spell, but I didn’t listen. I pulled out my phone, fully prepared to call 911 when she finally relented. She agreed to go to the hospital, but refused to do so in the back of an ambulance.

She started complaining the instant I picked her up and carried her out of the lodge to my truck. My knee screamed with pain at the added weight, but with Ivy’s well-being in question, I was able to push it to the back of my mind. The complaining continued the entire drive to the hospital and hadn’t stopped since.

“This had gotten ridiculous,” Lennix scolded. When I made it clear I was the one who would be taking Ivy to the hospital, Lennix and Rae hadn’t hesitated to jump in on the passenger side. I might have argued if I wasn’t so focused on getting Ivytaken care of, but now I was glad for the extra company. The three of them could bicker while I tried to loosen the pressure that was currently crushing my chest. “You’ve been sick forweeksnow. It never should have come to this. You should have seen a doctor as soon as this started.”

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