All She Ever Wanted (Cedar Valley Novel Book 1) Read online

  She drew a big heart and signed her name through it at the bottom of the page. Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge and her keys off the counter, she headed out to her car.

  She had less than an hour to make it to Levy’s if she wanted to catch him alone—the only way she’d be able to talk to him without too many distractions.

  She drove west out of the city and onto the open, winding country roads. The vast open fields surrounded by mountains and tall trees made her miss the country that much more. Thoughts of growing up on the farm, when she had become a teenager, flooded through her mind. The farm had been a peaceful place—a place where she was able to escape reality and focus solely on the way the wind felt through her hair as she rode her favorite horse, Charley. It had been her way of forgetting about her parents.

  Her parents had both died in a horrific car accident at the start of her freshman year of high school. It had been hard for her to get through that first year of high school, but she had managed—all because of her grandparents and Rachel. Her grandparents never talked about that tragic day, for the fact they had not wanted to upset her more than she already had been. They had offered her comfort and had sent her to therapy sessions. She had thanked her grandparents for their dedication and commitment to raise her for the five most vulnerable years of her life—the age kids needed their parents the most.

  When she had reached an acceptance of the loss and finally realized her parents were long gone and never coming back, she allowed herself to move on—from the hurt and the pain, but never far from the fear of losing more people she cared about.

  Only when both of her grandparents passed away, had she decided to move on, leaving the farmhouse for her relatives to fight over—she had no business with that—even though her grandparents had thought otherwise, and had left it to her in their will. Choosing to move on and leave it all behind her hadn’t been that bad, because she had moved to the city with Rachel, but she had missed the country quite a bit over the years.

  Her ringing phone distracted her from her thoughts. She quickly wiped the tears from her face and reached for the phone. The car swerved onto the shoulder of the road. Rocks spit from her tires as she tried to get the car back onto the road. The phone continued to ring as it slammed to the floor. She tried to correct her error but instead she overcorrected, which sent the car nose first into the deep ravine. With a white knuckled grip, she held tightly to the steering wheel, never letting it go. The car ramped high into the air off the side of the ditch and when it came back down, she smacked her head against the door frame. A sheet of confusion overwhelmed her, and even though she couldn’t understand, she could still feel the movements of the car as it rolled—she said a silent prayer.

  * * *

  A man’s voice was heard in the distance followed by the sound of heavy footsteps against the pavement.

  She tried to open her eyes, but it caused her too much pain. Pain. She felt pain all over her body. Anxious emotion rippled through her. She was trapped in her car and there was no way out. She attempted to get the seatbelt off, but it was jammed. Hanging upside down against the roof of her car, she panicked.

  “Sit still, don’t move!” The man hollered out to her. Where he was standing, she couldn’t tell. She could see nothing more than the dirt and ripped up grass by her window. “I need an ambulance and jaws on highway 79! Now! We have a female trapped in a rollover! Get them here now! What? I don’t know! I haven’t checked her over yet!” The man shouted—his voice amped up as high as his adrenaline. She could hear him shouting, and heard him mention something about needing jaws, but she didn’t know what that meant. Panic overwhelmed her at the thought of how she was going to get out of her car. Looking left and right, all she could see was tall grass and dirt.

  “Ma’am, I need you to stay as still as you can for me,” the man said, as he approached her car. “I have help coming. You just sit tight and try not to move.”

  His instruction was clear, but she didn’t have a choice—she wasn’t able to move more than just her arm. Pain seared through her body with the slightest movement. She needed to get out of here.

  “Can you hear me?” The man asked, closer to her driver’s side window. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”

  She opened her mouth and tried to respond to him, but no words came out. Her throat was scratchy and her mouth was dry. She attempted to swallow what little spit she did have, but it caused her to choke.

  The man outside her car quickly met her face to face against the ground. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”

  She nodded. Pain shot across her upper back and into her arm. Tears escaped and dropped against the ceiling above her.

  “Can you tell me what your name is?”

  Clearing her throat, she said, “Leah.”

  “Ok, Leah, I need you to do me a favor. Stay as still as you can until help gets here. Can you do that, Leah?”

  Thoughts circled through her mind. Did she tell him that she was reaching for her phone when she went off the road?

  “My car went…” she tried to explain. The taste of blood was more prevalent in her mouth now. She ran her tongue along her teeth. No teeth missing—that was good at least.

  “Are you in pain?” the man asked. She nodded. “Where’s your pain?”

  Freaking out on the inside, she tried to breathe, to calm herself down. “My arms… my back… my... oww…” she cried out, as she self-assessed her injuries.

  “Ok, are you bleeding anywhere?”

  She scanned what she could see of her body, and realized there were only a few scrapes and bruises as far as she could tell. “No, no blood.” Panic set in as she continued to assess her injuries. “Are you going to get me out of here?”

  “Help’s on its way. They’ll be here really soon. I need you to stay as calm as possible and keep as still as you can. I don’t want to worsen your injuries.”

  Sirens could be heard in the distance. The horn of the firetrucks could be heard, as she imagined them weaving through traffic.

  “What’s your last name Leah?”

  “Adams.”

  “Where are you from, Leah?”

  “Rockford Bay,” she said, crying out from the sharp pain in her side.

  “That’s about an hour from here. What brought you this way?”

  She choked back the emotion that continued to overwhelm her. The thought of Liam not knowing she was in an accident…

  Sirens silenced as the trucks arrived. She could hear the screaming sirens of the ambulance in the distance. Relief flooded through her as the firefighters talked to her and told her what they were going to do—step by step.

  “Leah, I’m going to send Jack inside the car with you, ok?” another man explained. “He’s going to hold onto your neck and head, as we pry open this car and get you out.”

  “Stay as still as you can, Leah,” a man’s familiar voice encouraged her. “They’re going to help you.”

  The man who must’ve been Jack, crawled in through the side window. She felt him take hold of her head and neck as soon as he was behind her.

  “Leah, I want you to stay still. I’ll be right here with you.”

  She tried to nod her understanding, but he had too firm a hold on her. “I’m scared.”

  “You’re going to be all right,” he reassured her. “Just hang on, and we’ll have you out of here in no time.”

  “Ok,” she said, with a faint tremble in her voice. “I need to call someone. He wasn’t expecting me and has no idea…”

  The loud sound of a saw or maybe a jack hammer vibrated through the car. She squeezed her eyes shut as Jack said, “They’re going to cut the car now. That’s how we’re going to get you out of here.”

  A blanket was thrown over her head with the explanation it would protect her. The vibration of metal against metal and the sound of sparks made her nervous. Liam was a constant thought, in addition to all of the ruckus on the outside of her car. She needed to call him and tell him before he
found out from someone else. She wondered how he would react.

  The thoughts were interrupted by a slight tug on her upper body. The firefighters and ambulance crew were all hands on with getting her out of the badly beaten car. One of the paramedics asked her questions, and she quickly responded to them—more worried about Liam than herself. She didn’t want the news to get to him and worry him. She wasn’t sure yet of the seriousness of her injuries, but she was sure she’d be fine. She hated to be the cause of someone else’s worry.

  “I need to call someone, please,” she pleaded.

  “Who would you like to call?” The female medic asked.

  “I need to call my…” What would she call him—her friend? Well, of course, because that’s all they were—friends. “My friend.”

  “Okay, give me and my partner a few minutes to assess you and I’ll let you use my phone, ok?”

  She nodded. She lay on the stretcher patiently, as the medics worked busily beside her. A burning sensation, followed by pressure was felt in her lower right leg. Her head pounded with pain when they began to transport her, with the sirens blaring.

  “We have an approximate twenty-five year old female with slight abrasions and lacerations covering more than half her visible body. She has a possible fracture of her right lower leg, with a strong palpable pulse present. She sustained a rather hard hit to the front and side of her head, noted by two large hematomas. Pupils are reactive and equal. Vitals are stable,” the female medic said aloud, possibly talking on the radio. “ETA of less than ten minutes.”

  At least the hospital would know she was coming, unlike Liam, who was oblivious to the crash and where she was headed to now. She wondered which hospital they were taking her to. She wasn’t sure if Cedar Valley had a hospital close by, or if they were taking her to St. Mary’s in Rockford.

  “What’s the number you need to call?” the female medic asked.

  “My phone?” Leah asked. She needed her phone for his number. She didn’t know his number. Frustrated with the thought of her phone being left behind, she blew out an exhausted breath.

  “Who are you wanting to call, dear?”

  “Liam Spencer,” she said. “I don’t know his number. It’s in my phone.”

  The medic patted her hand. “No worries, dear. He’s a good friend of ours. We’ll let him know what happened,” the medic assured her.

  “Tell him I’m sorry,” she pleaded. She was frustrated, as tears seeped from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She licked her dry lips, tasting nothing but the salt from her tears. The medic handed her a tissue and ran a hand through Leah’s hair. She grabbed another tissue and dabbed at Leah’s cheeks. The medic reassured her, “I’ll let him know.”

  They arrived at St. Mary’s and wheeled her into the Emergency Room. Nurses crowded the room as they lifted her over to the ER bed from the ambulance cot. Every nurse was doing a specific task, never missing a step, like they had been doing this job their whole lives. Monitors beeped, and fluids dripped through her IV line. She wanted to fall asleep while they examined her, but the thought of Liam not knowing, and how he would find out, kept nagging at her. She closed her eyes, opening them suddenly as the bed rolled out of the room. She heard the nurses shouting back and forth to the doctor, “She needs surgery! Her blood pressure’s dropping!”

  The doctor, a scrawny male with big rimmed glasses and gray hair, hustled alongside the gurney while he shouted orders. She wondered how the nurses would remember, and if they would need the doctor to repeat them later.

  Lights blurred above her as they rolled her through the long hallways. A ding from what sounded like an elevator was the last thing Leah heard. Her body was begging her to close her eyes. She felt faint and queasy as the feeling of just wanting to sleep washed over her. She watched the lights above her pass by as the nurses wheeled her to a place unknown, slowly succumbing, and allowing her heavy eyelids to fall.

  14

  “Do you have any idea what happened?”

  “It’s really hard to say, but the way the medics described the scene, it appears she may have hit some loose gravel on the side of the road and tried to correct, but instead over-corrected,” the doctor said. “That caused it to veer into the ditch and roll like it did.”

  Liam stood by the doorway to her room in ICU. He had arrived at the hospital as quickly as he could, once he had received the news of the accident. At the time of finding out, his heart had damned near jumped out of his chest, at the same time his stomach knotted. He drove damned near eighty to get here. His buddies had informed him of the amount of damage there had been to the vehicle and what it took to get her out of the wreckage. Liam didn’t care about the vehicle, he only cared about the girl who was lying perfectly still, eyes closed, in the oversized bed while the machines buzzed and the monitors beeped. She looked rough, with bruises covering the majority of her visible body. Her casted leg was propped up with pillows. She was a wreck… but she was alive, and for now, that’s all he cared about. He knew it had been a close call, but he was thankful she had made it through.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Liam asked the doctor. Having never really settled from the adrenaline, he choked back the emotion that raged through him. He had never truly cared about anyone quite like this before—this emotion he had felt since day one of meeting her was new to him. Sure, there were plenty of women who had tried to win his heart, but this girl—she didn’t even have to try.

  “Sure, she’ll be all right,” the doctor said, patting Liam’s shoulder. “She’s real lucky though, whether she knows it or not. With the spleen the way it was, she’s real lucky it hadn’t ruptured. The wounds will heal in no time, give or take a few weeks, but that leg of hers will take the longest. I expect that to heal in two months, if not a bit longer.”

  The extent of her injuries made him cringe. Sure, his buddies were the medics and firefighters who had arrived on scene, had tended to her and had called to let him know, but they hadn’t been able to share quite the detail that the doctor had just shared with him. He was more than thankful that he had been too busy at the bar to respond to his pager when the tones had dropped. He would’ve lost his shit if he had had to see her in that damned car.

  The doctor opened the sliding glass door, waving a hand through the curtain. “Don’t let me keep you.”

  Liam walked around the curtain as the doctor closed the door behind him. He reached for the closest chair and lifted it, putting it next to the bed. He sat quietly—afraid to wake her.

  He looked around the room—emptiness—except for the two of them and the medical equipment, the room was empty. He wondered if her family knew and if they did know, were they on their way? He knew her parents had died, but didn’t know if she had any other relatives. He thought of his family, and the way they had always rushed to his side in a time of need. He wondered where hers were.

  He silently walked out of the room to find a nurse. Nurses were busily checking on each patient as they swarmed in and out of the many different rooms. He walked to the nurse’s station and asked the older woman, with white curls and a grandmotherly look, if Leah’s family had been notified of her accident. The nurse looked at the chart and with a concerned look on her face she typed something into the computer. Frowning, she shook her head. “There doesn’t appear to be any family noted on her emergency contact list.”

  The nurse scrolled through the information on the computer screen. Liam wondered why her family’s contact information hadn’t been added to her file—were they alive and not on speaking terms? The thought of them not knowing bugged him. He wanted them to know—she had almost lost her life—they needed to know.

  “Says here, a Rachel Elliot is her emergency contact,” the nurse informed him.

  “Has Rachel been contacted?”

  The nurse shook her head. “Since it says here that she’s a friend, we were waiting for her to wake up, to ask her if she wanted us to let her friend know.”

  “Wouldn’t t
hat be why she’s listed as an emergency contact? Because that’s how I see an emergency contact—to be notified in case of an emergency,” he said with irritation. He pointed to Leah’s room with annoyance. “Like this.”

  “I understand where you’re coming from, but it’s policy. It firmly states that if the emergency contact isn’t family—”

  “That makes no sense at all. Maybe she doesn’t have a family that gives a shit about her, and all that she has, or had, is Rachel.” She may have only had Rachel for however long, but now she had him too.

  He was irate—not at the nurse, but definitely at the stupid policy, and whoever wrote the damned thing. How stupid can they be?

  The nurse nodded, assuring him, “I understand your frustration, sir, but my hands are tied. I’m sorry.”

  “No worries, I’ll call Rachel myself, thanks.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed his friend’s number.

  “Hey, Adam,” he spoke with a slightly irritated tone. “Did you find Leah’s phone in her car?”

  “Her car was such a mess, dude, I’m not sure if anyone found it or not,” Adam clarified. “Let me check around and get back to you.”

  “All right, man, thanks.”

  He shoved his phone into his pocket and made his way back to her room. Frustrated with the policy, and being unable to call her best friend for her, he inhaled a deep breath and opened the door. Her eyes fluttered open as he stepped closer to her bed.

  “You’re here,” she whispered softly.

  He nodded. “My friends were the ones who rescued you.”

  She smiled that smile that had caught him off guard from the first night he met her. It had captured him—her smile was as beautiful as she was. “They were really nice.”

  “I’m glad they were there with you,” he said. “And if they hadn’t been nice, I would’ve had a talk with them.”

  She tried to remember the name of the medic who rode in the back of the ambulance with her on the way to the hospital. “They were all amazing, but the female medic is the one who was with me the whole time. She was super sweet.”