Being this far from home wasn’t ideal either. Having to keep everyone back there up to date with her progress had become more annoying than anything else. Somewhere around day seven, I finally passed the phone to Maddox around day seven and told him to keep them fucking happy. To be honest, I didn’t really give a shit about keeping anyone up to date.
I only have eyes for Dee, and all my focus is on keeping her comfortable and making sure that she feels safe. I look over at her sleeping face and I physically hurt when I see how swollen it still is.
When she finally opened her left eye two nights ago, just a crack, she announced that she could see. We all released the collective breath that we had been holding since the doctor had warned us there was a chance her vision could have been impaired from the injury.
Her eye really was the least severe of her wounds. There wasn’t much of her body that wasn’t covered in nasty black and purple bruises, right down to a few of her fingers.
I lean back in the chair that I’ve pulled up next to her bed, and let my mind think about the call that we got Monday morning that all but stopped my heart.
When Maddox came bursting through my office door with enough force to literally rip it off the hinges, I knew something was wrong. All it took was one word—Dee—and I was out of my chair and following him out the door. Coop had already brought the truck around, and we hit the road from there.
He filled me in during the drive. Her assistant called his phone in a panic. She had come to work to find the whole office trashed. She would have missed Dee, but in her panic, she tripped over some overturned boxes. When she fell, she had a direct line of sight into the break room. By the time she had gotten to Dee’s side and called 911, she said she could barely find her pulse. That was the last update we got. I spent the rest of the car ride thinking that when I finally made it to her, she would already be gone. The unknown was bad enough, but when I couldn’t stop thinking about what I would do if she were taken from me, the crushing agony was almost too much to bear.
Now, here we are almost two weeks after her attack, and still no answers. Those first five days when she wouldn’t wake up were the worst. There was enough time for Maddox to fill us in on what he had been investigating for her. I was livid at first, but then I tried to put myself in her shoes, and slightly understood why she would go to Maddox. When she finally woke up enough to tell us what happened during the attack it still felt like we were playing with a deck that was missing half the cards. She didn’t know who the man was, and even if she knew how to find the employee he wanted, she didn’t even know how to get in contact with him.
The police came and got her statements, documented her injuries, and left with the promise that they would be investigating things. There wasn’t anything left behind to give us a single clue as to who did this.
The last call Maddox had with Greg, he filled him in on everything we knew. Our best hope was finding this Adam character, and hopefully, he would shed some light on this mess. I didn’t ask Maddox how that call went, and wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I logically knew that Greg couldn’t help when he didn’t know what was happening, but the other part of me, the one that wanted someone to blame, couldn’t stop the what ifs from hitting me hard. Knowing that he was probably just as upset as the rest of us was the only thing that kept me from lashing out.
“Beck, you really need to head back to the hotel for a few hours and get some sleep. You aren’t doing her any favors by running yourself into the ground.” Coop smiles sadly. “I’ll stay with her, but please, Man . . . you look like shit.”
“I’ll walk out that door the second she’s ready to go with me. Not a second before, so shut the fuck up about it.”
He opens his mouth to argue some more, but snaps it shut tightly when he sees how pissed I’m getting. He’s lost his damn mind if he thinks I’m leaving her again.
“Leave him alone.” Maddox hasn’t said much since we’ve been here, but when he spits those words out, Coop wisely shakes his head a few times before walking out the door. Maddox is silent for a beat longer then laughs with no humor. “That douchebag. I got back to the hotel last night and walked in on him banging Dee’s assistant. Shouldn’t be shocked, but fuck, you would think he knows when he should keep that shit locked up.” He shakes his head a few times, clearly still not believing just how bad Coop has gotten when it comes to sleeping around.
Well, to be honest, I didn’t even see that one coming. Chelcie is always a real quiet girl, but I know she loves Dee, so this whole situation is really messing her up. I should have been paying more attention to Coop’s level of comforting.
“Did he say anything about it?” I ask, not taking my eyes off Dee.