Love Is Beautiful (Chelsea & Max) Read online

  “Come on, Chelsea,” slurs Hudson. “Lighten up. Smile a little. I mean, that pout is sexy as hell. What I wouldn’t do to that mouth, am I right?” He turns to Douchebag and actually high fives the guy. “But you’re sitting in the hottest club, with the hottest guys, drinking the hottest drinks, looking mighty fine yourself. Relax. Have some fun.”

  I smile while June giggles and wonder how long I have to stay in order to not jeopardize our relationship at work. This was such a mistake. What kind of idiot dates her own patient? Especially when she knew from the get go that he wasn’t her type…

  This kind of idiot, I think with a sigh.

  “Dance with me?” I ask Hudson, trying not to show my irritation.

  June actually bounces in her seat and claps her hands. “Oooh. Yes. Let’s dance, Sloan.” She bites her lip and bats her eyelashes.

  Sloan, that’s the douchebag’s name. Sloan Anderson.

  “I’m a fighter, not a dancer, baby girl.” Sloan crosses his massive arms over his chest and leans back while June melts into a puddle beside me.

  I turn to Hudson and raise my eyebrows. “What about you? Fighter? Dancer? Little of both?” If I could just get him away from Douchebag and Vapid Moron, maybe we could start having some fun.

  A grin slides across his face and for some reason it makes me recoil. “Me?” he asks with a little twist of his head. “I’m all about the ladies.” He stands and offers me his hand and I get the feeling that I’m supposed to cover my mouth and titter, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I knew Hudson was a player, I just didn’t realize the ramifications of spending an evening with this kind of guy.

  It’s lame.

  He’s lame.

  I regret everything.

  We work our way through the crowded club and I catch more than one person recognize Hudson. I also catch more than one person size me up, try to figure out who I am and how I warrant such prestigious company. Part of me wants to throw up my hands and let everyone know the experience isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but I think there are plenty of people here who would beg to differ. They see the hot guy, the dimpled smile, the expensive clothes and total disregard of the cost of anything, and that all just seems like the best life has to offer.

  Me? I see tired pickup lines and tedious affectations. I see shallow people being impressed by shallow things. This just isn’t me. But I’m here, so I’ll make the best of it and for me, that means dancing.

  Hudson is a little too drunk to call what he’s doing dancing. For a guy who makes a living with his body, he’s being completely uncoordinated, jerking his hips and hands in some weird spastic seizure that I’m pretty sure he thinks is sexy. And, true to form, no matter how many times I push him away, he comes right on back, invading my personal space like he has already decided he owns me. He pulls on my hips, runs his hands up my back, even goes so far as to grab me by the back of my neck and lean down until our foreheads are almost touching.

  “You’re so fucking hot,” he slurs, his tequila tainted breath slapping me in the face. “You’re gonna be famous after tonight. You looking like that, with me looking like this.” He steps back and flares his hands down his body, eyeing me like he thinks he’s setting me on fire. “Your face is gonna be plastered on all the tabloids.”

  Sure. Because the tabloids care enough about an injured rookie in a club in downtown Cincinnati to make him front page news. “You think?” I ask.

  “Uh-huh.” Hudson nods and steps back into my space grinding his hips into me until I back up. “Fast track to fame, London. I’m on it.”

  I’ve pretty much hit my limit of sleazy asshole for the evening. I pick his hand off my shoulder and drop it before holding out my palm in a gesture that clearly means stop. I take a deep breath and shake my head, swallow hard and wait for his eyes to focus on me. “Fast track to fame?” I ask and raise my brows. “Not if you don’t start leading more with that heel.”

  And with that, I do my best about-face and make a beeline for the bathroom. My heart is racing and I can’t quite catch my breath. I can’t believe I just said that. I’m never rude. Like, never ever. And that was pretty much the rudest thing I’ve ever said to anyone. Ever. But I tried getting my point across delicately and he was way too drunk for delicate. So much for not affecting our work relationship.

  I am so dumb. What was I thinking?

  I push through the bathroom door, intent on getting to the sink and splashing some cool water on my face before I figure out how the hell I’m going to get myself home. As the door swings shut behind me, I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing.

  There’s a man. A big man. And a little woman. Struggling.

  His hand is on her mouth. The other has her dress hiked up over her hips, fighting its way between her legs. Her eyes are wide, her mascara joining with her tears and running down her face. She sees me, and her eyes go even wider, the whites showing in fear and desperation.

  If you believe the movies, things slow down in a situation like this. That’s not at all what happens for me. There’s no slow motion sequence where I get to see everything and makes sense of it all. Instead, I get flashes of information. Everything going too quick for me to understand it all at once. First, I recognize the woman as June.

  The man turns and I recognize Sloan. Worse, I recognize the slow smile of a predator as he realizes he knows who I am, too. There’s a scuffle. June screams and he slaps her. Hard. Her head ricochets into the wall and her eyes go blank while somehow, some way, Sloan gets his hands on me. I struggle. His hand clamps on my throat and I rake my fingernails down his face.

  “Dirty bitch,” he hisses as blood raises to the surface of the scratches glaring red and angry on his skin. He hits me. Pain explodes across my cheekbone, sending starbursts of color through my vision. My body betrays me, going limp, and all I can think is that I’ve never been hit before and that there’s a first time for everything.

  Sloan’s hands are all over me. Pawing. Grabbing. I struggle but he’s just so big. He drags me over to the still recovering June and hauls her to her feet. I scream for help while he’s distracted and earn myself another explosion of pain.

  Somewhere, far away, I hear my name. Someone calling for me. I call out as Sloan fiddles with his belt, the clank of the buckle coming free echoes through the bathroom and is the most ominous sound in the entire world.

  No. I take that back. June’s words to me are the most ominous sound in the entire world.

  “Stop struggling,” she says. “It’ll hurt less.”

  There’s my name again. Hudson’s voice. Concerned. Questioning. “Chelsea?”

  I struggle to make a sound, squealing against the hand pressed to my mouth and somehow, somehow, I manage to bring a knee up into Sloan’s balls. I slip as I do, skittering in my heels, but by some miracle, I manage enough contact to stagger him. He grunts and folds in on himself, letting me go.

  “Hudson!” I scream “Help!”

  The rest is just a blur of confusion. The bathroom is suddenly too crowded. There’s the low growl of men’s voices, threatening and heavy. I slump, my vision swirling with tears. June’s face, pale and bruised, an ever reddening reminder of Sloan’s hand standing out hard and angry across her mouth. Her eyes scare me, wide and glazed, rimmed in running black.

  I curl into a ball on the floor while Hudson deals with Sloan. I know pain like I’ve never known it before. My face screams at me. A dozen little scrapes on my arms and hands burn like fire. And my shoulder, it hurts too.

  But you know what? Pain or not, I am not the kind of woman that curls up and dies when things get hard and I’ll be damned if people find me bruised and sobbing on the bathroom floor in some stupid night club. I am not that girl. I swallow and push into a sitting position, wincing as I wipe my tears.

  “Are you okay?” I ask June.

  She nods, blinking rapidly. “He didn’t do anything to me.” I can’t stop staring at the red mark on her mouth, another on her throat, bru
ises forming on her neck and face. Remnants of Sloan’s hands on her body.

  “Yes. He did,” I respond. “He most definitely did.”

  I stand, both afraid to see myself in the mirror and desperate to assess the damage. My lip is bleeding and swollen. My right cheekbone is already bruising. My hair is a disaster, my eyes rimmed in black just like June’s. My dress is torn and I don’t even know how or when it happened.

  A crowd has gathered outside the door, people ogling and staring and I can’t help but resent the fact that no one has come in to check on us yet. The sheer number of people who have their phones out, texting or tweeting or whatever the fuck they think is more important than calling the police makes me angry.

  And then Hudson pushes his way through the crowd, apology and fear twisting his handsome face into one of the more gruesome parts of the evening. A face like that wasn’t designed for such tragedy. It was meant to smile and be admired, not bear the weight of something like this. “Fuck. I can’t even ask if you guys are okay because look at you. You’re not okay.”

  He’s beside us, his touch gentle, his eyes concerned. I flinch from him anyway.

  “Come on,” he says, wrapping us up like two injured birds. “Let’s get you guys to the hospital.” I leave with him, resenting how much I need his strong arm around my shoulders.

  4

  Of course the asshole had to run. Of course, he couldn’t just pull over and take the speeding ticket like any normal person. No. He had to be a jerkoff with a dirty conscious who panicked and bolted before I even got out of my car.

  So, of course, I had to take off after him. And now, wouldn’t you know, I hurt. My knee is on fire. Throbbing and laughing and pointing out just how very weak and vulnerable I actually am.

  I caught the bastard. Got him in spite of my knee. In fact, I even made sure to jam it in his back as I took him down, just to prove a point. Then I cuffed him, dragged him back to the car, and drove him into the station. It’s taking more out of me than I want to admit to manage walking without a limp while I’m here because I’ll be damned if anyone sees me and tells Bossman. I will not ride a desk. I sure as hell didn’t join the force for the paperwork.

  I manage to maintain an even gait all the way to my car and let a long breath out through my mouth as I lift my leg inside and shut the door behind me. Rain patters on my windshield while I take a moment to let the pain dissipate. First just a few drops, and then a whole mess of them come gushing down, detonating on the glass as I twist the keys in the ignition. The thump of the windshield wipers keeps me company while I wait for my Bluetooth to connect to my phone so I can turn on some music. The last thing I need right now is silence.

  The ride home is an exercise in frustration. A little rain on the roads is more than most people can handle and all four lanes on the highway are going about ten miles per hour under the speed limit. I get the need to feel safe, I really do. But how about you go ahead and feel safe over in the right lane so I can go the speed limit in one of the other three lanes?

  My knee throbs and I hate to admit it, but I’m actually looking forward to physical therapy tomorrow. I was sore the first day after my first appointment last week, but I’ve been faithful with the exercises I was given to do at home. Diligently following all the directions that little blonde nincompoop gave me. Over the weekend I actually started to feel like I was making progress. The pain was receding. I was moving with more freedom. Wouldn’t you know that right now I hurt worse than I did the day I twisted the damn thing playing basketball with Charlie? Maybe the nincompoop will get me back on track with her freakishly strong hands when I go see her tomorrow.

  I pull into my garage, the roar of the rain hiding the familiar squeak of the garage door rolling up on its hinges. Reagan’s losing her mind just inside the house, a disaster of pent up energy. Poor thing is in desperate need of a walk but with the rain and the knee, she’s just going to have to wait. I grab a beer and head right through my silent house to sit on my covered back patio, bringing Reagan with me so she can at least enjoy a change of scenery. I have to chase her out in the yard so she’ll pee.

  “You’re such a girl sometimes,” I say as I twist off the cap to my beer and take a seat. “Too worried about getting your poor feet wet.”

  Reagan does her business, cocking her head like she’s listening to me before she runs back and curls up at my feet. Her nostrils flare and her chest heaves as she scents the air. Even with the rain pattering all around me, it’s too quiet. I pull out my phone and load up some tunes just in time to hear the sliding glass door on the other side of my privacy fence slide open.

  “You sure?” asks a small voice, almost totally overpowered by the rain. “I’ll get really wet.”

  “Totally sure,” replies an adult voice, a mother to a child. “I used to play in the rain all the time when I was a kid.”

  And just like that all the air is sucked from my lungs. As the neighbor kid shrieks with laughter, his mother’s voice a low hum of joy twining with his, a memory transports me to one of the few good moments I had with my own mom. The images are old and tainted by age, idealized over the years, I’m sure.

  I hear my mom’s voice, the voice of an angel, warm and lyric and soft. The sound of comfort and safety. “Look, Max! A rainbow!”

  I’m five again. Maybe four. And the sun shines through a rainstorm. Everything is golden and I laugh and laugh, arms out to the side, twirling in a circle while the rain drops onto my upturned face. I stop and stare in the direction my mother points. “It’s so pretty!”

  She crouches down and wraps an arm around me while we watch the colors arch across the sky. “It’s just for us, Max. A perfect rainbow for a perfect day.”

  The happy sounds of the neighbors twine themselves with the sound of my mother’s voice in my memory and I can’t stand it. The days she sounded like that were few and far between. I don’t want to taint it with anything.

  “Happy birthday to me,” I mutter and throw back the rest of my beer before I stand and head back inside. Reagan stops just outside the door, reluctant to go back in after just breaking free of the place, but she’s a good dog. “Go on,” I say and she does.

  Today is not the day I was actually born. I don’t celebrate that day. Birthdays are meant to celebrate the day a person came into existence and I didn’t really exist until I was accepted into the police academy. All the stuff that came before that is just what keeps me awake at night. Besides, if we get really deep and really think hard about the way things unfolded, the day I was born set things in motion that led up to the first great tragedy of my life. Why in God’s name would I celebrate that?

  But the academy saved me. Gave me purpose. A reason to exist. A way to make sure there’s at least someone out there making sure the bad guys don’t get to do bad things to good people and get away with it.

  I limp upstairs to take a shower, haunted by memories of my mother. Her skin, soft like silk. The way she always smelled like a cupcake. Her eyes, blue like mine, staring empty and lifeless at me where I hid under the kitchen table, blood pooling under her cheek, matting her dark hair…

  The shower isn’t cutting it. Rage boils in my veins. Like Reagan, I feel trapped in this house, the walls and the silence closing in on me. Fuck it. I can’t be here, memories churning like knives in my stomach. I’m seeing the physical therapist tomorrow, she can fix whatever damage I do.

  I pull on a pair of shorts and a shirt, lace up my running shoes, and clip Reagan’s collar to her leash. She’s going to like being out in the rain about as much as my knee is going to like going for a run, but neither of them get a say in the matter. If I stay here, the demons in my head are going to get me.

  5

  I didn’t go to work on Monday. The weekend was all about me getting my emotional shit in order and hiding my bruises from the world. By the time Monday morning rolled around and the bruise on my cheek was still vivid and my lip was still swollen, I just couldn’t bring myself to fac
e all the judgement and sympathy from my colleagues. I called in and I never do that.

  Like, never ever.

  Believe me, I’m totally aware of how much I’ve been saying that lately.

  Is this some kind of not-quite-mid-life crisis? A just-past-quarter-life crisis? An I’m-turning-thirty-next-month crisis? Or has it just been a really bad week and I’m over thinking everything? Because that’s something I never do. Ha. Even I can’t bring myself to believe that.

  I’m going to work today. I don’t think I could handle another day alone in my house with nothing but the bitch in my head to keep me company. Sitting still has never been one of my strong points. If I’m not actively working towards something, I start to go a little stir crazy, a little stagnant. I need a project. A goal. A reason to believe I’m worthwhile. Spending a few days alone in my quiet house did nothing to make me feel like there’s a purpose to my existence. It just made me feel, what? Not worthless, although that’s part of it. Not invisible, because I know people care about me. But, what? Inconsequential. That’s what. And as much as I don’t want to deal with the judgement and sympathy of my co-workers, I really don’t want to feel inconsequential.

  That’s a dangerous way for me to feel.

  I tried texting with my sisters to keep me company, but Maya had a crisis at work—and as a pediatric surgeon, her crises are pretty damn all-encompassing—and Dakota was somewhere halfway across the world and was in and out of cell reception. They both know what happened to me and are both absolutely mortified. We have plans to get together over the weekend when Dakota’s in town so we can talk about it in true London sister fashion.

  By then I should actually be ready to talk about it. Truth is, I’m ashamed and don’t know why. I’m so embarrassed, like my bruised cheekbone is some kind of scarlet letter, marking me as faulty or broken. Like I am somehow to blame for what Sloan did to me at Aura.