Fatal Attraction (Dark Desires 4)

“Oh right, yeah.” I’m too distracted to talk to him properly. I can barely think of anything aside from what’s about to happen next. “Thank you for helping me.”

“Are you okay, miss? You look like you’re shaking?” He grabs onto my arm and squeezes. “Are you sick? Do you need help?”

If I was going to be honest, I would tell him that yes, I feel dizzy and freaked out, but I don’t want to get stuck here talking to this doctor. I need to get to Liam, I need to see Evan, I need to help. I can’t get lost in fear and a slightly freaked out brain, I just need to be brave, that’s all.

“I’m fine.” I pull away from him. “Thank you. I have somewhere to be, but thank you for all your help.” I try to clutch the papers to my chest so I don’t make the same mistake again. “Bye.”

With that I turn on my heels and I continue running towards the room. As soon as I reach the door I don’t pause for even a second. I hammer my elbow against it and I push my way inside. There I see Evan slumped over a tiny little Liam stretched across a hospital bed, with his back shaking because of tears. He looks like a broken man which just tears my heart to shreds.

“Evan, I’m here,” I say quietly to him as I put all the paper work on the side. “I’m here to help, let’s get the doctor in so we can do this.”

He turns slowly, and with his red rimmed eyes he looks at me with sheer terror in his eyes. “Oh my God, Katy. Thank God you’re here.” He pushes himself up from his chair and he grabs hold of me to pull me in for a deep, unexpected hug. “Thank God you’re here, Katy. I can’t do it alone. I can’t do this without you.”

A

s he presses my head into his chest I can hear his terrified heart beat. He’s in an even worse state of panic than me. It makes me wrap my arms tightly around him, to comfort him in any way that I can. I cling to him, I hold him, and as I do I try to keep my tears inside.

“Go and get the doctor,” I hiss to him, needing to get this started now. “I’m here, I’m ready. Let’s get this started. Let’s save Liam.”

I can tell Evan is struggling as he hears my words, but thankfully he doesn’t try to fight me on it. He knows as well as I do that this is Liam’s best shot. Sure, it might leave me shaky for a while, but that’s hardly the worst thing that could happen, is it? The much worse option would happen if I decided not to do this and the hospital couldn’t get any blood sorted.

“You are everything,” he whispers softly to me. “I am so grateful to you.”

With that I push him off me and I point towards the door so he’ll go out to get the doctor. My nerves won’t hold forever and the last thing I want to do is back down now. How awful would that make me? No, I can’t do that.

Once Evan is gone, I move over to Liam’s bed and I stroke his hand sadly.

“Sorry this happened to you, buddy,” I mutter sadly. “This really sucks, Liam. But you need to be a superhero now, and guess what? So, do I.” I wipe a stray tear from my eye. “It’s just a good job that you showed me how the other day when we were playing. I think I can just about do it.” I gasp a couple of times trying to get some air into my lungs. “I can do it for you, buddy. We just need to get through this together.”

Chapter Twenty Three – Evan

I’m all over the place as me and Katy wait for the doctor to finally join us in Liam’s room again. She’s had a blood test and now we’re just waiting for the results to come back from the lab with the go ahead that we can finally do this. I just keep shooting her loving looks, wondering what I did to get so lucky. How did I deserve for someone so amazing to come into my life? I can’t help but wonder if Katy is the answer to all the please I sent to Victoria and God being answered.

“So, tell me more about this meeting,” I ask her quietly. “Since there’s nothing else we can do at the moment until the results come back, you might as well tell me what happened.” I don’t know how much I care at the moment, but I do need something else to talk about. I need something to occupy my brain before I go utterly mad. “Were they horrified that I wasn’t there?”

“I don’t think that they were happy,” Katy admits with a weak smile. “But once I explained the circumstances they came back around and let me represent you alone.”

“You told them?” I gulp back the thick ball of emotion that lodges in my throat at the idea of a load of stiffs in suits knowing my business, but Katy didn’t have any choice, did she? She had to tell them the truth just to get them to hear her out. “How did they take it? What did they say?”

“They understood.” She shrugs at me. “What were you supposed to do? I think even the heartless bankers have family so there must be a little bit of them that gets that we all have a life outside of work, and that sometimes we don’t have any choice. That has to come first.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I murmur, not entirely convinced that they understood. I’m sure they probably would have just left their children in the hands of the doctors, but that hardly matters. I don’t exactly regret my choice. I’m right where I need to be. “So, how did it go?”

“Well they love the plans.” Her eyes flash with excitement. “They were really keen once I made them fully get how the restructure will turn you into a profitable organization. Once I showed them all the monetary projections they agreed. Well, I mean they made some firm suggestions of their own as I’m sure you’d expect, but yes we sorted it out. It’s all good. You have some time anyway, and that’s the main thing you needed, isn’t it? Time to get yourself organized.”

My heart swells with pride and also something that feels suspiciously like love. Katy has saved my business, she’s brought it back from the brink of despair. Of course, there’s still a lot of hard work to be done, I’m not turning my back on that, but I have hope now. I have a chance.

And not only that. Now Katy is about to save my son as well. She truly is perfect.

“Thank you for that,” I tell her sincerely. “It means so much to me that you would step up and do that for me. I know you didn’t have to, you could have rescheduled…”

“Oh well I didn’t think that you’d be in the right frame of mind for it any time soon so I assumed that I was better just getting in there and doing what I can… I hope I’ve done well for you.”

As she peers up at me under her eyelashes all I want to do is cup my hands around her cheeks. I want to kiss her hard and never stop. I can even feel my body leaning in to make that move for me, despite the fact that it’s probably a little crazy to kiss her in the middle of the hospital in this very tense situation, but before I get the chance to actually connect with her, the door swings open and the doctor reenters the room. Relief floods me as she breaks the magic of the moment. It’s probably a good thing that we didn’t kiss just then, it could have really complicated all of this.

“The blood tests have come back okay,” the doctor tells us both gravely. “I rushed them through so we can get the results quickly, so now we need to get things moving if that’s fine with you, Miss Atwater?” I hold my breath, but I don’t really need to because Katy nods without hesitation. “Perfect. Okay, I shall take you down to the surgery room now and get you prepped, then someone will be up to wheel Liam down. The faster we get moving, the better right now.”

Just before Katy goes along with the doctor, I take her hand in mine and I squeeze it tight. A million thoughts race through my brain as our skin connects and I hope at least some of it goes through to Katy. I want her to know how much she means to me, I want her to know how grateful I am to her, I want her to know that right now I could easily fall head over heels for her…