"You could let him come in and see for himself that you're all right," Cord said. "Ease his mind. Doesn't mean he has to stay long. I know he hurt you."
She nodded slightly. Then grabbed his hand before he could turn away. "Stay with me?"
He gave her a quick squeeze. "Of course."
He was only gone for a few seconds before her father followed him back in.
Dad's eyes crinkled with concern as he took in the IV and heart monitor still attached to her hand.
He stopped beside the bed. "I was so worried when I got the call from the hospital last night."
He was? He must still be the emergency contact on her insurance card. She hadn't given a thought to how she'd been admitted. Cord must've done the paperwork.
Cord stood beside her and laced their fingers together on top of the hospital bedspread.
"I'm okay." What she really wanted to ask was why he hadn't been worried when she'd told him about Toby in the first place.
"Have the doctors said when you'll be released?"
"They're still monitoring her head injury," Cord answered. "We'll know more in the next couple of days."
Dad shot him an inscrutable look.
Cord returned his stare with a level one of his own.
Dad refocused on her. "We want you to come home, and we’ll help you with whatever you need before you head back to school next semester."
Too little, too late.
Remembering the terror she'd experienced in Austin during the weeks when Toby had followed her, stalked her, sent a shiver. Her ribs ached, and her side pulled where they'd stitched her up after surgery.
"I'm not going back to Austin," she said on a slight gasp.
Her dad frowned. "Of course you are."
She shook her head, but it didn't faze him.
"We don't have to talk about it right now. When you're ready, I can get on the phone with the dean's office and get everything sorted out."
He wasn't even listening to her.
Cord seemed to sense her distress. "I think it's time you headed out."
Her dad bristled. "Look—"
"No, you look.” His voice was low, nearly a growl. “Look at what happened to your daughter."
Dad's gaze slipped to her in the hospital bed and then away.
"When Molly's ready to go home, she's leaving this hospital. With me."
Dad’s mouth opened. He looked at her as if waiting for her to argue, but she would do no such thing.
He seemed too shocked to speak as Cord ushered him out of the room.
Overwhelming emotions brought tears to Molly's eyes, and she closed them. She felt like a regular watering pot these last twenty-four hours. Maybe longer than that. Since Toby had showed himself just outside the No Name's boundary.
Cord said something indistinguishable to her dad and then closed the door. He returned to her, leaning his hip against the side of her bed.
"You want to lay back down?"
She shook her head, then nodded. What if her dad made a stink about Cord kicking him out of her room?
Sometime during the hours she'd been here, she'd overheard Cord call himself her fiancé. She figured he’d said it so he'd be allowed to stay with her.
But if her dad told the hospital it was a lie, Cord could get in trouble.
And right now, he was the only steady thing in her life.
She couldn't stop the tears that slipped free. She squeezed her eyes closed.
He stopped the motor lowering her bed. "Am I hurting you? Is it your ribs?"
"No," she whispered. "It's…" She opened her eyes, and more tears spilled out.
He was right there, pressing a tissue into her hand. "Hey, hey." He brushed a kiss on her temple. "It's okay," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to school." She hated that her voice wobbled and broke in the middle of her sentence. She sniffled, dabbing at her face.
"He can't make you do anything you don't want to do."
She hiccupped a tiny sob. "What if he tells the nurses we're not engaged?"
He brushed away another tear leaking out of the corner of her eye. His face was close, his expression serious. He wasn't discounting her emotions, even though they were running wild.
"If that happens, we'll deal with it. If I need to, I'll get down on one knee and ask you properly."
He cracked the slightest smile, and that, combined with his words, helped her draw the first moments of comfort since she'd woken up alone in the room.
"That's right," he encouraged. "Take another breath. Not too deep. Don’t want to hurt your ribs."
She did. And the oxygen helped her body regain the tiniest bit of equilibrium.
She was acting crazy.
And Cord had talked her through it, even teasing her about proposing.
"Everything's gonna be okay," he whispered as her eyes grew heavy again. He brushed a kiss across each one of them when she closed them.
Everything's gonna be okay.
20
Molly woke in the dark of night from fractured nightmares, but Cord's warm hand in hers soothed her back to sleep. His murmured words reminded her she was at the No Name and safe.
It was late when she woke up. Bright sunlight streaming through the window illuminated Cord's framed picture, the one that had previously housed that awful newspaper article, which she'd re-wrapped after loading it with pictures.
She let her eyes linger on it as the last vestiges of sleep fell away.
She was glad to be out of the hospital after two and a half days. They'd released her yesterday. It had taken far too long for them to finalize her paperwork, and she and Cord hadn't arrived at the No Name until late in the evening. She’d been wiped out and gone straight to bed.
She made her painful way to sitting, let her legs hang off the side of the bed. She tried to gather the remaining willpower to stand. Her ribs ached. Her side ached. They'd casted her wrist,
