The Scandal Before the Vows novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: Hydrangeas
I did not die.
I landed on my side in the hydrangea bed, and the pain came in three separate pieces, ribs, wrist and head, one after another.
Somebody's hands were already on me.
"Don't move. Don't try to sit up. Look at me."
It was a man in a dark paramedic's jacket, kneeling in the wet leaves with a bag open beside him.
He had come up the drive from the house next door, still in his boots.
"What's your name?"
"Corina," I said.
"Corina. I'm Elliot. I live there." He nodded at the lit porch next door. "I just got off a shift. I'm going to hold your head still. Can you feel your feet?"
I could.
I almost wished I couldn't.
He had a phone to his ear and a voice that never rose.
"Female, thirty, fell from the second-story roof. Conscious, talking. I need a unit on Linden, and I need it now."
The front door of our house banged open.
Trenton came down the steps barefoot in a pair of jeans, his hair wet, his face the color of paper.
"Corina. Corina, I didn't. I never meant..."
He dropped to his knees in the mud and reached for my face.
Elliot's arm came across without hurry and stopped his hand an inch short.
"Step back."
"She's my fiancée," Trenton said.
"Then you can sit over there and stay quiet until the ambulance comes."
"You don't understand, I have to..."
"I understand fine," Elliot said. "Back."
Trenton didn't move.
I looked at the sky, which had begun to turn blue at the edges.
I had been out there all night.
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