Broken Dreams (Franklin Blues #2) (19 page)

~**~

We pull up to the hospital, and there’s chaos. Doctors are running around shouting orders, and Amy is whisked away from me. They won’t let me back there while they are working on her to make she she’s okay and it’s driving me crazy.

I’m sitting in the waiting room when I see my brother and Tyler walk in. They sit beside me and ask if I’ve heard anything yet. I shake my head and Aaron walks over to the nurse’s station. I look over when I hear giggling, and I can only assume that he’s flirting with her to get information. I look over at Tyler and he’s shaking his head, laughing.

“So, even though Aaron is very much in love with you, he can still flirt with women and make them think he’s straight?”

Tyler laughs and nods his head, which causes me to laugh too. Aaron walks back over and bends down to kiss Tyler. I look over at the nurse and she’s sitting there with shock written all over her face.

“Lance, the nurse said that Amy is going to be fine, and the doctor should be out here soon to talk to you.”

“Aaron, what did you say to that poor girl. She looked like she was in lust with you when you walked away, then she was clearly shocked to find out you were gay?”

He shakes his head, laughs, and tells me not to worry about his mad skills on how to get information when it’s needed.

I shake my head at him and laugh. I look up when I see a doctor walking towards us.

“The family of Miss Masters?”

We all stand up and walk over to him. I inform him that I’m her fiancé, and that I’m the only family she has. When he tells me the extent of her injuries I feel sick. I feel a hand on my shoulder and look over to see Aaron giving me a look that says it’s not my fault. I nod my head at him but that still doesn’t make me feel any better.

I ask the doctor if I can go see her, and he says that I can. After he directs me which way to go, I follow the long hallway to her room. Even though I saw her a short time ago, nothing could have prepared me for what I faced when I walk through that door.

Amy

I wake up when I hear someone come into my room. I look up to see Lance walk in. He’s got a pained expression on his face, and I can tell he is blaming himself for what happened to me. It’s written all over his face.

“Lance, come here Baby.”

His head snaps up to mine and our eyes lock. I see a hint of a smile cross his handsome face. He walks over to me and sits in the chair next to my bed. He grabs my hand, leaning down to kiss it. It’s not until I feel his tears on my hand that I realize he’s crying.

“Hey, what’s all this about? I’m okay Baby. I’m alive because of you and Aaron. There is no need for the tears Baby.”

He takes a shuttering breath and looks up at me. Tears still swimming in his chocolate brown eyes.

“Amy, when I think of what could’ve happened to you, I can’t even think about it. I almost lost you, and in the worst way possible. If I was a better cop, I would’ve found you faster. I could’ve saved you all this pain. How did I not see what was right in front of me? I love you Amy, more than life itself. I want to marry you and have babies with you. I want to fight and bicker with you. I want to have amazing make up sex with you. I want to have mind blowing sex with you, but most of all I want your heart and soul. I want to own every piece of you. You’ve committed a crime; you’ve stolen my heart. How ‘bout we make it a perfect crime and allow me to steal yours too? I know this is probably too soon, and I don’t have a ring but, Amy Masters will you marry me?”

I look at him the best I can through all the tears. Of course he made me laugh with all the sex comments, but I wouldn’t have his proposal be any other way.

“Lance, when I was holed up in that room, thinking about never seeing you again, I told myself that I wouldn’t let life pass me by anymore. I know that we haven’t been together very long, but we’ve already been through so much together and I honestly can’t imagine my life without you in it. I want all the same things that you want. Don’t you dare think about redoing this proposal because I won’t allow it; this is perfect, like you.”

“So is that a, ‘yes, I’ll marry you Lance’?”

“No, it’s not.”

He looks hurt, like I broke his heart, but I couldn’t not fuck with him a little bit. I take a deep breath and say, “It’s a hell yes!”

He looks at me and gives me his megawatt smile. He leans over me and tells me how much he loves me. I tell him I love him too, and that I can’t wait to become his wife.

There’s a knock on the door and I see Aaron with a man I’ve never seen before. He’s tall like Aaron, but a lot skinnier. He almost reminds me of Leonard from the Big Band Theory. He’s definitely got the nerd look going on. I smile when I see Aaron. He saved my life and I will be forever grateful to him.

“Hey sis, how ya feeling,” he asks as he looks at me like he’s waiting for me to answer, but I’m still stuck on the word ‘sis’.

“Uh, yeah, I’m good. Thanks to you, since you saved my life and all. I’m not sure I would be here if you hadn’t gotten there in time.”

He blushes, the big bad doctor, actually blushes.

“Yeah, well I was doing my job to save people. I’m sure anyone would’ve done the same thing. It was no big deal, I’m glad to see that you’re going to be okay.”

I shake my head at him. He saved my life and is down playing it, though I’m not sure why. I know he’s a doctor and he does this kinda thing a lot, but he should still feel proud of what he did for me.

“Where’s Jeremy? Did you guys arrest him?”

I’m not sure why I’m now thinking about him, but I need to know where he’s at and to make sure he’s not going to be able to come after me again.

“Babe, Jeremy is gone. When he drove the car into the lake, he inhaled too much water I guess. Mason tried to revive him, but it was too late. I’m so sorry Babe, I know you loved him at one time, but now we don’t have to worry about him anymore. He can never hurt you or anyone else again.”

I feel my eyes start to fill with tears, though I’m not sure why. This man tortured me and I don’t even know how many other women. I want to know about the others. I ask Lance, but he says he doesn’t want to tell me. I beg him to tell me because I feel like I need to know. He finally tells me what I’m begging to know.

Kristen was the last. She was 25, and she was on her way home from work when he took her. She lasted a whole 24 hours before she was killed. He did everything imaginable to her. He broke all of her fingers, broke several ribs, beat her so bad she’s unrecognizable, and sodomized her with anything he could get his hands on. The sexual abuse was so bad, her uterus was several scarred. I couldn’t contain the tears anymore, and Lance told me he wasn’t going to tell me anymore. I didn’t realize how okay with that I was. I couldn’t bear to hear any more about the lives that were lost because of me.

“Amy, I want you to know that none of this is your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. This is totally on him. He’s the one who decided to start all this. You can’t blame yourself for any of it.”

Tyler looks at me as he’s talking, and I know I should believe him. However, I can’t. He was trying to find women who looked like me, all because I didn’t want to be with him. I couldn’t get pregnant with his baby, so he tried to substitute someone else in my place, and when he couldn’t make them what he wanted them to be, he killed them.

I shake my head, and turn over in bed to face Lance. He’s my saving grace in this whole mess. “When can I go home? I want to lie in our bed and start planning our future together.”

Lance

She wants to plan our future together and I’m all for that, but she needs to be whole first. It’s been three weeks since we got home, and it’s like when we lost the baby all over again. She’s quiet and reserved, I feel like I’m walking on egg shells in my own house. She needs a reality check, and fast. I want the love of my life back.

I know she’s been through something traumatic, but I’ve tried convincing her to get help. She doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with her. She never talks about what happened. She gave her statement to the police, and that was the last she spoke of it. I know from experience that it’s not healthy to hold that stuff in. It’ll eat away at you until you explode. It’s time to take matters into my own hands.

“Amy, let’s go for a drive. We haven’t really done anything since you’ve been home, and I want to spend some time with you.”

She shakes her head and tells me she doesn’t feel like it. Well that’s too damn bad because I’m tired of seeing her like this.

“Amy, you’ve been stuck in this house for three weeks now, you haven’t gone out and done anything in that time. I want you to come out for a drive with me. I want my fiancé back. You said you wanted to plan our future, but I can’t plan a future with you until I have you whole again. Now get up, take a shower, and be ready in an hour to go out.”

I wasn’t leaving any room for arguments and she knew it. She got up and went into the master bathroom. I went into the living room, sat on the couch, and took a deep breath. I called Aaron to make sure this was the right thing to do. He assured me it was, and that she was going to have to move past it to be able to keep moving. No more did I get off the phone with him, I heard movement behind me. I turned around and looked at Amy. She looked like my girl but yet not at the same time. Her skin is pale, she has bags under her eyes, her hair doesn’t have the same shine that it usually does, and her clothes hang on her tiny frame.

“Ready?”

She gives me a slight nod and off we go.

~**~

We’ve been driving around for about an hour, and she still hasn’t talked to me. I’m getting more and more irritated each minute that passes. I pull up to one of my favorite spots in Franklin and cut the engine. We sit there for what seems like an eternity before I decide to speak up.

“Amy, are you going to talk to me?”

“About what? What do you want to talk about that is so important that we couldn’t do it at home? You are always asking me if I’m okay, and do you really want to know the answer to that? I’ll tell you, no, I’m not okay. I was locked away in some house that looked exactly like my old house, the one from when I was married to Jeremy while he tortured me. At first, he wasn’t so bad. He kept talking about how we could finally be together and how much he loved me. Then when I wasn’t responding to the loving words, he hit me. The first time he hit me was because I said that I was in love with you. I told him I didn’t want to be with him and he hit me.”

I start to pull her in my arms because she’s crying but she pulls away and jumps out of the truck. It’s started raining so I leave the truck running to keep it warm and run out into the rain after her. I try to wrap her in my arms again but for a second time, she pulls away from me.

“No, I don’t want you to hold me right now. You wanted to talk about this so now we’re going to talk. I know you read my statement that I gave to the police so I don’t know what good this is supposed to do. After Jeremy hit me the first time, I was shocked. He had never so much as raised his voice to me the whole time we were married. It was like something in him had changed, almost like someone had flipped a switch in his brain. I tried telling him we could be together, but he didn’t believe me. Every time he would ask me a question about me and you, or the baby we lost, he held my right hand, and when I answered honestly, he broke one of my fingers. Every honest answer I gave him about how I was still in love with you, and wanted to have your kids, he’d break another finger. If I lied, he’d call me a liar and kick me in the ribs. Nothing I ever did was good enough for him. Then on the last day, he decided he was done hitting me, and since he had already broken all my fingers, he took to burning me with cigarettes. He never smoked, but he’d light one up, and as soon as it was good and lit, he’d put it out on my skin. He must’ve done this dozens of times. When he told me we were leaving the house, I had never been so happy. I thought this would be my chance to escape, but he had already had everything planned out. Once we started driving and I heard the sirens of the cop car trying to pull us over, I thought I was saved for sure. Only he didn’t stop, he sped up. I knew that he wasn’t going to stop, and all I could think about was you. I didn’t care that I was going to probably die, I thought about how you’d go on without me in your life. I wanted you to move on with your life.”

As soon as she gets the last sentence out, she’s collapsing at my feet. I rush over to her and hold her. She’s sobbing hysterically in my arms, but I’m glad she finally talked about it. She needed to get it out so she could start to fully heal from it.

“Amy, I can’t imagine what you went through, but you have to talk to someone about this. Do you really think it’s healthy, to keep all of this bottled up? I know you don’t want to, and I know it will be hard, but please talk to someone about this. I know the perfect person, if you’re willing.”

She nods her head while her shoulders shake from her sobs. I’m relieved that she’s agreed to see someone. I’m hoping she’ll agree to see Tyler. He’s the best there is for trauma victims. He’s made that his specialty, and I know he’s the one to help Amy through all of this. It’s going to be hard, but she’s strong enough to make it through anything life throws her way.

I pick her up and walk back to my truck. I gently put her in and buckle her seatbelt. I run over to the driver’s side and get in, put it in gear and drive off. I’m feeling pretty good about what happened. It was hard to hear everything, but I know she needed to get it out.

Half way home I look over at Amy because she’s been really quiet and I notice she’s sound asleep. She looks so peaceful, which is something since she hasn’t looked like since I brought her home. I pull my phone out to call Aaron to tell him how it went. To say he’s pleases is an understatement. He was as worried as I am. As I get off the phone, the clouds part and the sun starts shining down on us. I take that as a sign that things are going to be fine, and for the first time since this whole thing happened, I actually smile.