I straightened in my seat and put my seatbelt on because in all honesty his driving scared the shit out of me. He weaved in and out of cars. The siren above the roofing blaring loudly as he honked his horn, cursing.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. “Tell me right now.”
“It’ll take too long to explain,” he said, cursing again as we almost hit another car.
He took a hard right, squishing me against the door and banging my head in the process. “Ouch. Fuck. Slow down.”
He didn’t listen and drove like a mad man as I held onto the holy shit handle above the window and prayed to God that I wasn’t about to become a ghost.
At some point I must have closed my eyes, because when he hit the brakes I soared toward the dashboard where my forehead smacked it before the seatbelt locked, and I realized I couldn’t see anything. “Ouch.” I glared at him. “Again.”
“We’re here.” He slammed the car into park, and didn’t bother to cut the ignition.
I rubbed my forehead and noticed that we were at a hospital. Before I had the chance to figure out why, Eddie had opened my door and attempted to haul me out. “Ow.” I groaned. “Would you stop pulling on me and tell me what the hell is going on?”
He never stopped treating me like a rag doll and continued to wrench on me even though I still had my seat belt on. “I’m attached! Hold on, would you?” The seatbelt dug into my neck, but I managed to reach down and unlock it.
The second I was free, he yanked me from the car and wrapped an arm around my waist, again. Half allowing me to run beside him. The other half carrying me most of the way. He soared through the doors of the hospital, while I cursed at him, and he ran past the nurses’ station and down the hall.
“Tell him.” At the third door, he all but threw me in, panting. “Tell Brandon about Kipp.”
“Tell who what?” I stumbled forward, drew in a deep breath to regain my composure, still wondering how in the hell I got here and what happened in the last few minutes.
But then, I caught sight of the man standing by the window. He turned to face me, and my blood ran cold. I might not have met him before, but I recognized his features immediately—the almond eye shape, the soft shade of brown hair, the chiseled jaw…and his name.
Kipp’s brother.
His chocolate brown colored eyes flicked from Eddie, then to me. “Tell me what?”
Eddie pushed me forward, causing me to stumble—again—and as I righted myself, I happened to notice the bed in the room. But the bed didn’t hold my focus for long. The who in it did.
My heart leapt into my throat and I’d bet money that it stopped beating for all of one second.
I managed to make my feet move and approached the bed, but even behind the ventilator and too many cords to count the face was recognizable. I blinked, forced my vision to clear.
Was I seeing this right? Was I in shock from all I’d been through and so exhausted that my eyes simple didn’t work properly?
But even after several more blinks, the man in the bed remained.
“Kipp,” I managed.
The world around me froze as I closed in on the bed. The beeps of the heart rate monitor surrounded me and it eased me somehow to hear that sound. It meant all that I thought about Kipp McGowen was wrong.
At the bedside, I touched his hand as it rested outside of the blanket. When I met warm flesh, I gasped and snapped my hand away. “How can this be?”
“Who are you?” Brandon asked.
I paid no attention to him, wrapped my hand in Kipp’s, and ignored the odd feeling of warmth. He’d always been so cold—his touches an icy embrace. My eyes fluttered closed as for the first time I experienced his touch.
Strong.
Soft.
Warm.
“How can this be?” I asked, again.
I opened my eyes and stared down at the man I thought I’d never see in the flesh. He looked exactly the same since ghosts always appeared alive. But his hand in mine was solid and the heat of it burned through me causing more tears to rush down my cheeks.