Read Only for You for Free Online Page B

her she wasn’t Kelly’s mother.
    Tears fall freely, and I
don’t even care if she catches me.
    For all intents and
purposes, she’s alone, crying out to God and anyone else that can
hear her. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. I want to go to
her, to comfort her, and say that everything’s gonna be okay. That
if she just holds on a little longer, it’ll be over and she’ll be
in my arms.
    My hands shake as I x out
the site. There aren’t enough words in the English language to
convey how I feel in this moment, but it’s not about me. It’s about
her...
    “ Rae? Baby… come out now.”
I knuckle the tears away, anger growing at the bastard who put this
up on the Internet for the world to see. What kind of sick asshole
does something like this? What pleasure from her pain could they
get from this? “Rae?”
    She still doesn’t come. So
I go to her, only I find her on the floor, passed out.
    “ Oh, hell no. Rae!” Images
of finding my mother exactly like this play in my mind as I pick
her up. Her head lulls to one side. “Come on, baby. Wake up for
me.” There’s dried puke on her mouth but none on the floor, and I
don’t see a bottle of pills anywhere, not even the
trashcan.
    “ Rae, come one, baby
doll.” I tap her face lightly and she moans. I want to cry in
relief, because it’s the sweetest damn sound I’ve ever heard in my
life. “Rae…Violet, what did you take, sweetheart?”
    Another moan is her
answer.
    “ Baby, I can’t leave you
like this… I need to call 911, okay?” Pulling out my cell phone, I
dial the number and explain what I found. The woman stays on the
line until paramedics rush inside, taking Rae from me.
    “ Has she taken
anything?”
    Hands in my pockets, I
shake my head. I’m helpless right now, just like when I was
little.
    “ There’s nothing in the
medicine cabinet except some OTC acid reflux.”
    Another paramedic listens
to her heartbeat. “Her heart’s fine. Blood pressure is slightly
elevated. There’s a contusion on the right side of her head. She’ll
need to be observed overnight.”
    Officer Ford walks in. “Did
you do this, son?”
    Not taking my eyes off Rae,
I say, “Do you really think I’m that stupid?”
    “ I have to ask,” he
says.
    I glance up at him. He’s
looking at Rae. “What—no roughing me up tonight?”
    “ The women you run with
seem to have lots of accidents, Cole.”
    The last time I called 911,
my mom had taken a butcher knife and sliced her arm open from wrist
to elbow. Ford had gone nuts, immediately assuming I’d been the one
to hurt her.
    “ Seem is the key word,” I
say. “Crystal hurt herself.” And our family, but Ford knows
this.
    “ Yeah,” I hear him mutter
before he turns away to speak with the EMTs. I know he’s getting
Rae’s hospital information so that he can question her later, when
she’s fully conscious.
    I step forward. “I’d like
to go with her. I can call her parents on the way. Her mother’s due
anytime now, so I’m not sure how soon they’ll be able to get here,
and Miss Violet’s out in California, visiting her son.”
    “ So you’re family?” one of
the paramedics asks, his brows drawn together. He knows who she is
and he’s wondering how in the hell she got stuck with some white
piece of trash like me. But I know a lot of information for someone
who’s plain old white trash.
    I have two choices: Tell
the truth, or lie.
    Grimacing, I go with what
my family’s known for. “She’s my fiancée.”

Chapter Six
     
     
     
     
     
    Violet
    When I come to in the
hospital, I’m alone, and for a moment, I’m back, stuck in my now
not-so-private nightmare of pain, of learning about the baby I
lost. The baby I killed by drinking and driving, then crashing into
a tree.
    The baby I had no clue
about. But I’d been punished; now, I’ll never be anyone’s
mother.
    Having an emergency,
partial hysterectomy at the age of nineteen tends to do
that.
    I whimper, unable to stop
the tears