Mine Again: A Second Chance At Love

3. Lauri-1

LauriHe was there. Mike was there, not more than a mile away from my apartment. How long had he been there, working and hating me? Whatever dream I had of our reunion, being kicked in the gut and tossed out hadn’t been it.

“Lauri!” I heard him yelling, and I wanted to get away. Everything seemed hazy, dust clouded around my car. “f**k! Hey!”

I needed to get out of the car. I needed to get home. I needed to go crawl under my covers. Everything in my body hurt when I tried to move. Mike yelled at me again to stay still. But f**k him. He’d just told me how much he didn’t want me in his life, how much he blamed me for what happened to him. He could just screw off.

My door opened, and then he was there, squatting down and looking me over. He lifted my arms slowly, felt around my torso. There had been a time when having his hands on me like that would have ignited a fire inside of me, but when he did it then it just hurt. I tried shoving his hands away, but he told me to knock it off.

“f**k you.” I groaned and tried to swing my legs out of the car. He stopped me, shoving them back in.

“Wow. Big words for such a little thing.” He held my legs inside the car and pressed his hand to my shoulder. “Stop trying to get out. Just stay the f**k still until the ambulance gets here!” I knew that tone. I’d heard him using it before. People jumped when he used it––not me, though.

“Let me go, Mike. Shouldn’t be too hard for you.” I tried to see his face, to witness if my words had any impact on him, but the tears flooding my eyes made everything too blurry. For once I wish I could get my body to listen to me and not cry. But it was Mike, I’d never had to hide my emotions from him. Not until that moment.

“Just stay put.” Sirens blared behind him.

“Is the other guy okay?” I asked, suddenly aware that I wasn’t the only person involved in the accident.

Mike snorted. “Just like you to think about someone else. No. The fucker took off. Stop talking. And stop f*****g moving around.” His heavy hand rested on my knee to keep my legs from moving around. The familiar sensations all flooded back to me, as though the past seven years hadn’t happened. I wanted to look at him, to memorize the man before me, but the pain in my shoulder kept me obedient to him.

“I don’t want to go to the hospital.” I rolled my head toward him. The ambulance doors flew open and several men jumped out the back carrying medical cases over to me.

“I know, but you have to.” I wasn’t prepared for the tenderness in his voice.

I closed my eyes for a minute, letting Mike do what he did best—take care of me. I didn’t want him to, I wanted to shove him away and scream, but the pain in my shoulder started to shoot down my back, and my face hurt.

The paramedics made quick work asking me too many questions to answer, and prodding me everywhere before they agreed to let me out of the car. When I tried to stand up on my own, the hulky men quickly pushed me onto a gurney and started strapping me down. I fought against the restraints, but quickly let them subdue me when I heard Mike arguing with one of the paramedics.

“Like hell I’m not going with.”

“Follow us to the hospital. You can see her there.”

I wanted to argue with him, to tell him to just go home and not to bother following me, but my head hurt too much and I wanted to close my eyes just for a second, rest my eyes for just a minute.