Yours: A Standalone Contemporary Romance Read online

  Contents

  Yours

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Special Thanks

  Just lost in the sky wondering why

  I was a boat stuck in a bottle

  Head looking down

  Just live for the spin and hope for the win

  Going nowhere with no one but me

  Wandering the city streets

  I was one in a hundred billion

  Go all in just to lose again

  I came to life when I first kissed you

  You make me better than I was before

  The worst me is just a long gone memory

  Go all in just to lose again

  You put a new heart beat inside of me

  I came to life when I first kissed you

  The worst me is just a long gone memory

  A burned out star in a galaxy

  Just lost in the sky wondering why

  Everyone else shines out but me

  Always landing on a lost bet

  You make me better than I was before

  The best me has his arms around you

  Thank God I’m yours

  Thank God I’m yours

  playlist

  YOURS lyrics

  Also By

  Yours

  By

  Jasinda Wilder

  Copyright © 2016 by Jasinda Wilder

  YOURS

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover art by Sarah Hansen of Okay Creations. Cover art copyright © 2016 Sarah Hansen.

  “Yours” copyright © 2015 by Russell Dickerson (BMG Platinum Songs), Parker Welling (Hillbilly Science and Research Publishing, Trailerlily Music), and Casey Brown (Provident Music Group). Lyrics reprinted by permission.

  This book is dedicated to nurses the world over: you are the unsung heroes of the medical profession.

  Thank you, each of you, for all you do.

  Special thanks as well to Russel, Parker, and Casey for writing “Yours”:

  I heard a single line in a song— “You put a new heartbeat inside of me” —and felt this story unfold in my mind, cut from whole cloth. Just goes to show the power of good music.

  Just lost in the sky wondering why

  Pacific Coast Highway, just north of Los Angeles, California

  “No—” It comes out as a sob.

  “NO.” A denial.

  “NO!” A plea.

  The sun beats down on me, pounding on the back of my head, burning the back of my neck. Heat radiates in visible, palpable waves from the blacktop and it burns under my shins as I kneel on the side of the highway. Sweat trickles down my temples, slides like a warm, tickling finger between my breasts.

  I shake my head. Damp, tangled ringlets of brown hair stick to my cheek and against my lips. I lean forward and shake his inert body.

  I pull my hands away. Sticky. Red.

  “Ollie. Talk to me. Please. You’re going to be fine. Please.”

  I know it’s futile, but still I plead. “Come back to me, Ollie. Don’t leave me.” I beg, but I know only a ghost will hear me.

  I look around and see a slow procession of cars inching past us in a slowly moving river of steel and glass, morbid curiosity slowing them. I hear snippets of conversation.

  “Mommy, why is that woman crying?”

  “Because the man is hurt, sweetie.”

  No one stops. No one pulls over. Then I hear sirens, somewhere far away. I collapse onto Ollie, and feel something wet and warm and sticky against my cheek. Oliver’s blood. I taste it in my mouth.

  “Ma’am?” A woman’s voice. Small hands on my shoulder, pulling me away. Calm and professional. “Can you sit up, please, ma’am?”

  I shake my head and clutch Ollie’s cooling arms.

  “I need to take a look at him, ma’am. I need you to come with me, okay?”

  “He’s dead. You don’t need to look at him, because he’s dead.” I don’t bother opening my eyes; I just lie on top of Oliver and cling to futility and misery.

  Insistent hands, now. Two pairs. Three. Pulling me away forcefully. Something drips from my chin.

  “You’re hurt, ma’am. We need to look at your arm.” The same voice, the same woman.

  I twist, and look at her. She’s young, blonde, beautiful. Dressed in dark blue paramedic gear, hair in a fishtail braid over her left shoulder. She gently takes hold of my left arm near my elbow and near my wrist. I look down and see that my arm is broken. Very badly, and in more than one place. White bone protrudes from the skin near the middle of my forearm. Her touch reminds me that I am in excruciating agony. I scream.

  I scream more for Oliver than because of my own physical pain.

  I glance up and see two paramedics placing Oliver in a body bag, closing the zipper, and then lifting him onto the gurney.

  “No, no…” I pull away, lurching toward Oliver. “Let me say goodbye, let me—let me say goodbye, please.”

  The female paramedic moves with me, somehow anticipating my movements and managing to keep hold of my injured arm with both hands. I use my one good hand to shove her away. I bang my injured arm on the stretcher, but the pain is nothing compared to the ocean of grief, the sea of shock boiling just beneath the surface of my psyche, waiting to yank me under like a riptide.

  I know this feeling all too well.

  The paramedic lowers the zipper so I can see Ollie’s face. It’s battered, bruised, cut. Part of his face is missing. He was so beautiful, but now…death has made him ugly. But I don’t care. I kiss his forehead, the only part that is strangely untouched.

  “I love you, Ollie. I love you. God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” My legs shake and give out, and then I’m on the ground. “I’m so sorry.”

  Hands are there to help me up. I breathe deeply, because now my own training kicks in, and I force myself to my feet, force myself to remain upright. I shudder, brushing away a lock of Oliver’s hair, black with strands of premature gray. I used to call him Pep, short for Pepper, joking that when the gray took over completely, I’d start calling him Salty.

  So much skill, so much bravery. All of it gone. Snatched in an instant. His life over in milliseconds.

  I bend over once more, kissing his forehead. “Goodbye, Oliver.”

  The men glance at me, and I nod. Then I watch as they close the body bag once more.

  Orange cones, strobing lights, sirens, flares. Police officers direct traffic, a fire truck and an EMS rig park at angles around the accident scene to block it off from rubber-neckers and gawkers. A few feet away is what remains of our car, overturned, smoking, totalled. Further down the freeway is the tipped-over semi that slammed into us. I see other cars, more ambulances and police cruisers, more flares and cones, another team of medics is tending to someone else.

  The scene is a mess, a fucking mess.

  I’m led to the back of an ambulance, helped up and in, and I sit on the bench. The blonde EMS woman is examining my arm. “Can you tell me your name?”

  “Niall Emory James.” Here comes the shock. I feel it rolling through me, but I don’t fight it.

  “How old are you, Niall?”

  “Thirty-two. My husband’s name is Oliver Michael James—was…was Oliver Michael James.
He is—he was a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders. And I’m in shock, I believe.”

  “That’s understandable. Does anything else hurt besides your arm?” She’s very good, this medic. Keeping me talking while she works on my arm. Immobilizing it until we get to the hospital. It’s too badly broken to be set here.

  “No. Just my arm.” I speak, but it feels like my lips are thick and frozen, as if the words are tumbling out of my mouth unbidden.

  Her voice is distant. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “A semi. Somebody cut us off, clipped our front end, and I overcorrected. I was driving. I wasn’t paying attention. We were arguing. Something stupid. Not a real argument, just…one of those tiffs you get into when you’re both stressed, you know? He wanted the radio on The Highway, I wanted it on Hits One. So stupid. I wasn’t paying attention. The semi smashed into us, and we just went—flying. Hit another car. That one up there.” I point, and my finger shakes. “I don’t know. We rolled. When we stopped, we were both conscious. I tried to get him out. I knew I shouldn’t move him, but he was bleeding and I had to save him, I had to—I tried to—I had to save him, and I couldn’t. His femoral artery was nicked, and he had severe cranial trauma, and—and internal bleeding too, I think. I tried. I tried…But I couldn’t save him.”

  I look down at my hands. They’re red. Coated in crimson. There is a layer of thick dark red under my fingernails. Crusted blood has dried red around my cuticles. The wrinkles on my wrist are white creases in the layer of effluvia. I touch my face, tracing the tacky gore on my cheek, and in the strands of my hair.

  “You couldn’t have saved him, Niall. I saw him. Okay? There was nothing you could have done. There’s nothing anyone could have done. Even if you’d had him in a hospital, I don’t think he would have made it.” She’s done with my arm for the moment, and now she has a towel and she’s wiping my face. Cleaning away the worst of Oliver’s blood.

  “Emily—you guys ready?” The gruff male voice of the paramedic looking in through the open back doors of the rig.

  “Yeah, take us out.”

  I know I’ll cry rivers of tears. But right now, I can’t. I can only sit and feel the sting of tears behind my eyes waiting to be released, and feel the raging inferno of pain that’s still distant somehow.

  It’s not real. It’s still not real. I know it will become real eventually, but right now Oliver is just somewhere else. I’ll be waiting for him to come home, but he won’t. He’s not dead, yet. Not in my head.

  “Oliver, he’s…he’s a donor. An organ donor.”

  “Saving lives even when he’s gone,” she says.

  She understands.

  “He had the most beautiful soul. His heart…he lived to help other people. Every beat of his heart was…for someone else. I hope his heart goes to someone good.”

  I was a boat stuck in a bottle

  The British Virgin Islands

  I shouldn’t do this. I really should not be doing this. My doctors, an army of lawyers, shit, even Leanne would tell me not to fucking do this.

  Which, of course, is why I’m going to do it anyway.

  I’ve been standing on this rock cliff for the past ten minutes, timing the swell, watching the angry, roiling, spraying surf gush and rise and fill the tidal pool below, watch it drain back out, revealing a keyhole archway leading out of the pool and into the open ocean beyond. It’s goddamned suicide, this jump. The surf is going to be mad, the undertow murder. The open archway is maybe six or seven feet across, with unscalable walls of vicious rock on every side. If I mistime the jump, I’ll get churned into toothpaste. If I can’t hold my breath long enough, I’ll get churned into toothpaste. If I can’t swim hard enough to get through the keyhole, I’ll get sucked under and churned into toothpaste. It’s no fucking wonder I shouldn’t be doing this.

  My nerves are jangling.

  My heart is thumping dangerously hard.

  I watch the swell rise and fall twice more. Then I take three deep breaths, hold the fourth, and jump as the swell reaches its apex. I kick as hard as I can, straining my arms with everything I’ve got, diving deeper so I don’t crack my skull on the arch. I feel the undertow pulling me forward, through the opening. I feel the water churning all around; I hear the muffled echoing thunder of the surf crashing above me. The water is white, nearly opaque, and I can’t see more than a few feet in any direction.

  I’m swimming for all I’m worth, feeling my heartbeat ratcheting to dangerously high levels. I have to surface. I have to breathe. The longer I go without oxygen, the harder my heart has to work, and making my heart work any harder than necessary is complete foolishness.

  Or, at least, that’s what the lab coats tell me.

  But fuck ’em.

  I keep swimming until the churning fades, until the crashing thunder of the surf quietens, until the undertow is lessened. I let myself drift upward, let my head break the surface and then blink the brine out of my eyes. I twist, tread water, and look back.

  I howl my victory; pump my fist in the air as my companions jump and cheer on the cliff top.

  Yay! I did it! And I didn’t fucking die!

  Again.

  Go me.

  I swim lazily around the opposite side of the rock formation that creates the pool and archway to where the Vagabond is anchored. I watch the other tourists I’ve been partying with the last few days, my “friends of the day”—my term for the temporary, single-serving friends I make wherever I go—run across the rocks on bare feet, making for my boat.

  I swim up to the boat and climb up the ladder onto the deck, flopping over onto my back, still trying to get my heartbeat under control.

  “You jumped?” Leanne says, pissed.

  “Shit, yeah!” I hop to my feet, jubilant, flush with adrenaline. “I jumped, and I made it. I told you I’d be fine.”

  She crosses her arms over her breasts, snarling at me. “But what if you hadn’t made it, Lock?”

  I grab her by the arms, and jerk her up against me. “Then I’d be dead, and it wouldn’t fucking matter.”

  “Yeah, it kind of would.” She’s sniffling now, trying to play my emotions.

  Good luck with that, sweetheart.

  I shut her up with a short, hard kiss. “Lee, seriously. You gotta quit worrying about me, babe. I’ll be fine. I’m always fine.”

  “One of these days you won’t be fine.” She turns away, no trace of the sniffles remaining as we both watch the FODs scramble down the rock, jump into the water, swim for the boat, and then hop onto the deck, chattering to each other, and to me, and to Leanne.

  There are six of them today. Hell if I can keep them all straight, but I know the big burly one is Carlos, the tall, stacked, black chick with the dreadlocks is Mel, and the short, smarmy dude is Victor. The other three are newer—they just showed up yesterday when they saw the party raging on deck, and invited themselves over. Fine by me because, hell, the more the merrier. Carlos, Mel, and Vic are all tourists, down in the BVIs for a week of fun in the sun that includes lots of booze and sex. I think Carlos is from Spain, Mel is from the UK somewhere, and Vic is Italian. That’s all I know, that’s all I care to know.

  Once everyone’s aboard, I pull anchor and catch the wind. Carlos knows his way around the sails, so he’s immediately on the lines, helping me get us underway. The beauty of the Vagabond’s design is that I’m completely capable of running her all by myself, but obviously it’s easier with more hands to help.

  Once the sails are set and the lines are cleated where I want them, I break out the good stuff: Lagavulin 16. After making that jump I feel I deserve a reward. We’re headed for Tortola—Road Town, to be specific—and it won’t take but an hour or so to get there, which means we’ve got plenty of time to party. I pour healthy measures of the fine-ass sixteen-year-old single malt over ice for the guys, and hand Leanne and Mel each a beer. Lee will drink whisky when it’s just the two of us, but in company she sticks to beer.

  Ther
e’s a lively debate going on between Carlos and Vic about soccer, of course. Football, I should say. Those two will argue football from dawn till dusk, and if you add in some booze, it’ll get heated. All in good fun, though. Leanne and Mel are off by themselves, talking…about what I don’t know. My other FOD guests are a couple from Connecticut, John and Lacey, down here on their honeymoon, and the last person is a single girl. A sexy as hell single girl, too. Platinum hair, perfect skin, a bangin’ body, and a cute little Scandinavian accent. Astrid, her name is.

  I offer her a beer, but she simply cocks an eyebrow at me. “Can I not have the whisky? Or is that only for the men?”

  “You want whisky?”

  “Beer is for pussies and those already drunk.”

  I laugh. “Well, all right then. Neat or on the rocks?”

  “On the rocks, please.”

  “Coming right up.” I pour a glass over ice and hand it to her.

  “So, Astrid. What brings you down this way?”

  A laconic shrug. “I have just finish my degree at university. I am on holiday before I start doctorate work.”

  “Doctorate, huh? In what?”

  She sips the Lagavulin, swallows it without so much as a wince. “Medical research. Cancer research, more specifically.”

  “Damn. That’s impressive.”

  A smile, not quite shy, not quite proud, somewhere in between. “I suppose. What is it you do, Lachlan?”

  “Call me Lock—only my mom calls me Lachlan.” I gesture at the boat with my tumbler of whisky. “This. Sail wherever I want to go, drink with friends. The occasional adventure, when the mood strikes me.”

  A speculative glance, then. “So you do nothing?”

  “Not all of us can be cancer researchers, Astrid.” I shake my glass to stir the ice.