Dare to Submit (NY Dares 2)

To his shock, Decklan burst out laughing. “You did not just use your dom voice on me.”

“Thank God you’re back.”

Decklan pulled up Amanda from his favorites and hit send on his phone, but it went straight to voice mail. His insides felt like ice, but he pushed forward. He already knew what it was like to live without Amanda in his life for a short period of time. Being separated by death just wasn’t an option. So as the taxi headed for the hospital, Decklan prayed fate wasn’t going to shit on him a second time and rip someone he loved away from him.

The cab dropped them off at the Emergency Room entrance. Decklan left Max to pay. The media had already begun to set up camp outside the hospital, but in the chaos, Decklan was able to slip through the main doors and into the waiting room.

Heart pounding a mile a minute, he found the desk and braced both hands on the counter. “I need to know if Amanda Collins was the shooting victim.”

“Are you family?” the older woman in charge asked. “Because we can only reveal patient information to family.

Decklan clenched his hands into fists in frustration. “Look—” He reached for his badge, determined to use any means necessary to get inside.

“Cardiac emergency!” paramedics called out as they rushed in, carrying a man on a stretcher and heading through a set of double doors.

The woman behind the desk jumped up, forgetting all about Decklan, obviously rushing to help organize things inside.

Max glanced at him. “What’s up?”

Decklan shrugged. “They won’t tell me anything.” But the Nazi behind the desk was gone for now. “I’m going in.”

He walked straight through the same double doors the paramedics had used seconds before. He was immediately engulfed in chaos, no doubt thanks to the current emergency and the fact that someone in the senator’s family had been shot.

He scanned the room and saw the senator. So he was okay. Decklan kept going, his gaze hitting on the senator’s wife, who had blood all over her clothes and was crying and being comforted by her husband. No sign of Brad. Or Amanda.

His hands were sweating badly, and panic threatened to engulf him.

“It’s not her,” Max said, putting a solid hand on Decklan’s shoulder.

He hadn’t realized his friend had followed him inside. “How do you know?” he asked, hope building inside him.

Max shrugged. “I charmed a nurse, how do you think? It’s the senator’s son, Brad. He was hit.”

Decklan’s knees nearly buckled. He wasn’t relieved Brad had taken a bullet, just that it wasn’t Amanda. “How bad?”

“No news yet. He’s in surgery to have it removed.”

Decklan glanced around. “Then where’s Amanda?”

“In a cubicle. She was hysterical, and they had to sedate her. Apparently she was there. Had her hands on his fucking chest, Deck. She’s in three.” He pointed to an area cordoned off by a blue curtain.

Decklan brushed past Max and made his way to the cubicle, ignoring a nurse who tried to stop him with her nagging voice.

He pushed open the curtain and stepped inside. Amanda lay still in a propped-up hospital bed. Blood covered her black-and-white dress, an eerie scarlet spattered all over. Her arms held blood traces as well. He knew she’d want that gone as soon as possible.

He stepped over to the bed. She didn’t stir.

“Sir, you’re going to have to leave.” A nurse walked up behind him.

“The hell I am. She needs someone here when she wakes up. Would you want to come to alone in a cold hospital covered in your best friend’s blood?” he asked the woman.

She opened her mouth.

“I thought not,” he said, not letting her speak. “I’ll call you when she wakes up.” He turned away from her, ending the discussion, as far as he was concerned.

“I’ll be right outside,” she told him.

He refocused on the woman lying so quietly and said a prayer of thanks. He hadn’t prayed since he was a kid, but he did so now, knowing he was lucky. That he’d let his own fear and maybe even his ego get the better of him. If he’d lost her without ever telling her he loved her, he never would’ve forgiven himself.