Page 80 of Under Control

“Keep talking,” she whispered, seemingly trying to keep him awake.

Danica ran a hand through his hair, bringing him back to the present. The evening sun of LA shone on them, warming his cold skin. He was losing consciousness and a lot of blood. The shrapnel inside him was hurtling to his core. Of all the battles he’d been in and the war he’d tasted, he hadn’t expected that he would die on a bench in downtown LA.

“I have to tell you something.” He reached up to touch her cheek with his shaking hand.

Biting her lip, she held his fingers, blinking out tears.

“Her name was Lauren.” He coughed, feeling unmanageable pain. “She was the one. We were engaged…”

She remained stoic on the edge of her seat as she caressed his face.

“But, two years ago—Valentine’s Day—she collapsed,” Carrick continued through haggard breaths. “I took her to the hospital. She’d had a stroke. They told us she had leukemia. She died weeks later—” He panted, clenching his teeth.

“I’m so sorry.” Danica wept, holding him closer to her, the sounds of emergency sirens approaching.

“I never talked about it,” he said then exhaled, looking up at her through blurred vision, “because I couldn’t.”

“I understand.”

“She was two months pregnant when she died and—” But then he winced harder, feeling a shooting pain up his spine that he’d never felt before. “I never got to tell her—” he slurred incoherently.

Danica never let him go, breathing down on him as she kissed his hair. Carrick felt himself losing consciousness, in that weird place where he was slipping in and out. All he could hear was Delta shouting and sirens pulling up on the street.

Only semi-lucid, Carrick persisted, “I saw a picture of her today for the first time in a long time. But I’m a different man now. I should have told you…” He fluttered his eyes shut, unable to keep them open.

As Danica whispered distant, reassuring words down to him, Carrick saw a light in his mind. A bright light. It was probably all the natural painkillers his body was releasing. He was bleeding out.

His mind went back to when he had stood in his kitchen earlier. He’d held the photo in his hands, the photo of him and Lauren. Running his finger over her face, he realized that something had finally changed.

“You would have liked Dani,”he’d mumbled. “I wish you could have met her.”

With hurried voices surrounding him, Carrick’s mind wandered to a place of serenity. He was sitting alone on Sunset Beach, watching the waves. For the first time in a long time, he thought about Lauren. Surprising the hell out of him, a grin tugged at his lips, like he was saying hello to an old friend. He felt something lifting away. Lauren was leaving him.

Carrick only could feel Danica around him, holding his hand, pleading for him as his body was raised.This is what it feels like to die.

“I should have told you that I love you,” Carrick mouthed, but he had no idea if any sound had come out.

Chapter Thirty

Danica

Danica ran behind the team of paramedics as they rushed Carrick down the emergency halls of the LA General Hospital on a stretcher. In shock, crying and running to keep up, she watched them move his unconscious and bloody body toward the surgical unit.

It was just like a painful memory playing on repeat in her head.

“We’re losing him!” a paramedic yelled at the ER nurse, who was running toward them with an IV.

“Shit.” The nurse’s urgent voice carried through the hall as she took the stretcher behind closed doors.

Danica burst out into sobs as she tried to sprint toward him, wishing she could be there to help, that she could be his nurse.

But she was stopped in her tracks. A heavy hand fell on her shoulder, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Whipping around and afraid for her life, she flashed back on memories of her childhood, memories of being thrown into a room to await news that the people she loved had died. Relieved, she realized it was only Delta holding her back, a deeply empathic look on his face.

“All we can do now is wait,” he said calmly. “Let’s get you a coffee.”

Danica couldn’t stop hyperventilating, her face a mess of heat and tears. Holding her shoulders, Carrick’s best friend ushered her toward the quiet corner of the waiting room. She was trembling as he sat her down on a creaky chair. He moved over to the coffee dispenser, inserting a bill and pouring out two coffees.

“It’s not going to be like Carrick’s brew,” Delta uttered as he handed the steaming cardboard cup to her. He sat down across from her, sipping on his own cup as he studied her.

---