Chapter 16

BEA

After Ky left for work, I didn’t know what to do with myself. He told me to make myself at home, as it was my place now too, but that still felt strange. It felt as though I was an uninvited guest in my best friend’s home. Yes, it was dumb to feel that way because I knew Ky did not see it that way at all. Still, I couldn’t help that nagging voice of anxiety in the back of my mind that filled me with self-doubt after being ditched by my original fiancé during my wedding.

Damn Law. If he only knew the damage he had done. Not that he would care. As I had started to realize far too late, Law only cared about himself and how things affected him.

I decided to put all my newfound insecurities aside and go out into town to look for a job that would keep me occupied for the rest of the summer. Getting showered was a strange experience where I ended up sniffing Ky’s body wash for far too long. It smelled like him, and his scent had always brought me comfort. He would probably tease me relentlessly if he knew. I thought that right up until I noticed that my own body wash had been moved from where I’d put it the night before. Maybe Ky wouldn’t tease me after all.

Once I was ready, had my curls tamed, and grabbed all my important documents I left to go search a few places close to Ky’s place. Our place. It was weird to think about living with him now. While we may have already known one another more than two people who just started dating, there was still a strangeness to how quickly we went from best friends to almost married and living together.

I almost passed by a daycare that was only a block over from where I now lived, but children’s laughter caught my attention. Two frazzled looking women attempted to round up a class of toddlers from their fenced-in playground, but the kids played a good game of distraction and dodge. Some would run away from their teachers again the minute another one would offer up a good enough distraction.

Toddlers were diabolical, but also hilarious. I giggled the whole way into the building where I introduced myself to the owner of the facility.

“Hi, can I help you?”

“I hoped to speak to someone in charge of hiring or whoever runs this place.”

“Why? Did you have an issue with one of our employees?” The lady, who appeared to be about my mother’s age, asked as she gave me a bit of side eye.

“No, I happened to be passing by on my way to go look for summer employment. I’m a language arts teacher at the middle school over on Jackson St. I will go crazy without something to do this summer, and I thought you might need the help.”

The woman, Suzanne Richards, looked up toward the ceiling and mumbled something about answered prayers. “We need to run a background check and get all your information, including a tuberculosis test, but if you could start next week and your background and a call to the school board checks out, we would love to have you. We always lose employees temporarily for the summer. I guess the women who have children and don’t want to pay the daycare fee so that they can work in a daycare, decide that we don’t need the help in the summer.”

“That’s awful. I’m happy to step in and fill someone’s shoes for the summer, though.”

“Come back to my office and I’ll get the paperwork for you to fill out. I don’t suppose you have your birth certificate and social security card on you?”

“I do. I figured I should come prepared in case I got lucky.”

“Please, tell me you haven’t filled out applications for a better job.”

I shook my head and smiled at Suzanne. “Nope. This was the first place I stopped when the children’s laughter outside caught my attention.”

She grinned knowingly. “Ah, you caught them playing bait and switch games with their teachers, hmm?”

“I did. I love that age. They’re always a delightful challenge.”

“I’m happy to hear you think so because they’re probably the group I’ll put you with. Marissa normally works with the infants, but she had to fill in when one of our girls decided to take unofficial ‘summer leave’.” Suzanne rolled her eyes as she said the last bit.

“That must be frustrating.”

“It is, but it also isn’t your concern, so that’s the last I’ll say about it beyond thanking you for wanting to fill in for people who can’t be here during the months you’re off work for the public schools.” She riffled through a file cabinet and then produced a stack of papers with an “Ah-ha!”.

“You can fill these out at home, if you like, or you could do it here and save some time coming back.”

“Thank you,” I said after taking the stack of papers. I pulled a pen out of the cup that held several on Suzanne’s desk and started to fill out the forms.

“Can I ask why you work with middle school children if you enjoy the toddler age so much?”

I continued to fill out the form as I answered her. “I also love middle school kids.”

Suzanne giggled. “I think you’re the first teacher I’ve ever heard say that and sound as though they meant it.”

“Oh, I do mean it. They’re on the cusp between childhood and the teen years. It’s one of the biggest discovery times in adolescence. Sure, they get super hormonal and my goodness do they stink some days.” Suzanne giggled along with me at that revelation. “They’re also so eager to learn and their curiosity hasn’t been sapped quite yet. I’ve worked with high school students and even elementary ages, but middle school is the sweet spot in between. They still have a bit of innocence. I don’t know. It’s kind of magical. I guess I love them for the same reason toddlers grab my attention. They’re in the transition between being babies and big kids. I guess I like the in between ages.”

“Well, it sounds like you’ll be a perfect fit here.” After I handed Suzanne all of my paperwork and stood to shake her hand, she passed along a list of things I needed to get done before she could put me on the schedule. Besides fingerprinting for the background check, I had to get the TB test, and couldn’t start until the results for both of those came back.

“Well, now I have to figure out what to do with the rest of my day.” I laughed. “I honestly anticipated my job search would take me a lot longer today.”

“I am glad you decided to start here. You just took a little weight off my shoulders.”

“Happy to help. I’ll get these taken care of today and bring the results for the TB test back as soon as I can get it done.”

“It only takes a few days,” Suzanne reassured me. “The background check information will come straight to me from the Sheriff’s Department.”

Since I didn’t have to waste time looking for employment, I went to the health department to get my TB test, then went to the Sheriff’s office to get my fingerprints done for my background check. It always amused me that it would be blank, since I’d never even had a speeding ticket, let alone committed a crime, but I understood the need to check.

After all that was done, it was almost lunchtime, so I decided to check to see when Ky would be taking lunch.

Bea: Hey, already did all the things to be hired for my new job. When are you going to lunch? Maybe we can have a quick celebration.

Ky: Can’t today. I’m putting out some fires that started to smolder while I was off work.

Bea: Okay, let me know if you need me to bring you something. I don’t mind.

Ky: No need. See you tonight for dinner. Love ya.

Bea: Love you too.

The sigh that left my body was pure disappointment. This was exactly why I needed a job to keep me busy during the summer months. I didn’t do good in my own company. I had just rounded the corner and was only a few steps away from the entrance to Ky’s - our - condo when the screech of someone’s brakes and then the squeal of tires locking up made me snap my head around just in time to see a car coming for me. I jumped back and plastered myself to the building beside Ky’s and just barely missed being hit by the ugliest rust and green Cadillac I had ever seen.

The car missed me by only a couple inches. When I finally got a look at the driver, I was stunned. “Are you kidding me?” I yelled. A couple people had come out of the coffee shop across the street to see what in the world was going on.

“You ruined my life!” Sandra screeched at me. “Ky was supposed to be mine!”

“Oh my God! Are you serious? You just tried to hit me with your car because your hookup didn’t want to date you?”

“He was more than a hookup!” Her pitchy voice yelled. I should have known better than to taunt her because Sandra’s vehicular homicide attempt was the end of her plan. It had been a warm up because opportunity struck before she could get up to Ky’s apartment to get to me. “He’s the love of my life.”

“You’re nuts!” I shouted at her, which was the wrong thing to do because she jumped from her car and started to run for me. I wasn’t that far away and she had a knife in her hand. A freaking knife. And it wasn’t a tiny little steak knife either. It looked like something a serial killer from a horror movie would wander around with so they could chop up unsuspecting strangers.

“You really are nuts!” I yelled. Again, probably not the best way to deescalate the situation, but my brain was a little slow to process the fact that someone wanted to kill me. I vaguely heard someone yell that they called 9-1-1, but they wouldn’t get here fast enough.

“You think you’re better than me?”

“Lady, I don’t even know you!”

“You stole my man and then I pretended to be you so that pathetic man you were meant to marry could be legally married to you. You were supposed to go back to him after that.”

“I was…?” Yeah, I had no words for that. Sandra had lost her ever-loving mind somewhere along the way. She didn’t bother to hear me out, or to see reason, and instead jumped forward as she brought her knife wielding arm down in a stabbing motion I was not the least bit comfortable with. I had a building at my back, a dumpster to my left, and her coming at me from the front. I tried to throw myself to the left - toward the sidewalk and road - but didn’t manage in time.

The knife cut through my arm like heated steel through butter. I screamed as momentum took me down to my knees and then gasped out a few obscenities as my knees and hip hit the ground just before I rolled right onto the arm that had been slashed by Ky’s crazy ex-hookup.

Sandra threw her head back and gave a banshee-like shriek before coming for me again. I had nowhere to go because it was hard to scamper up off the ground with a busted knee, bruised hip, and slashed up arm. Luckily for me, a do-gooder ran over and tackled Sandra before she could stick me with her murder stick again.

“You crazy bitch!” I yelled as the man who tackled Sandra flipped her over so she was lying on the ground on her stomach. He sat on her and held her knife wielding hand down until his buddy could pry the damn thing out of her fingers.

A woman ran over once Sandra was secured, and kneeled down beside me. “I called 9-1-1. They’re sending an ambulance.” She looked at my wounded arm and clucked out a weird noise. “She did a number on your arm.” She then tried to yell into the crowd. “Does anyone have any bandages? We need to get this bleeding stopped.”

“Here!” A teenage boy ran out of the coffee shop carrying a small first aid kit.

“Not sure anything in there will suffice for this,” the woman lamented. “Let’s have a look anyway.”

Before the stranger could try to play doctor with me, we all heard the wailing sirens of the ambulance and police cars that responded to the emergency call. “Thank God!” I mumbled as a shiver ran through me.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” the boy from he coffee shop admitted.

“Welcome to the club,” I muttered as I tried to shift into a more comfortable position. My arm screamed at me as did my knee, so I stopped moving and decided uncomfortable was better than added pain.

“Did you really steal her man?” The boy asked tactlessly.

“No. Ky is my best friend and that woman is nuts. She pretended to be me and signed a marriage certificate with my ex-fiancé - not Ky - so the police were looking for her for the fraud case.”

“Wow, you live an exciting life.”

“I really wish I didn’t.”

Two police officers and a couple EMTs came over to assess the situation. I felt nauseous by then and listened as the bystanders relayed what happened. Sandra stopped all her shrieking and wailing as she was handcuffed. The knife was collected into an evidence bag, and someone told the police they got everything on video, including the attempt to hit me with the car.

The EMTs bandaged up my arm and then pulled a gurney up beside me. “Pretty sure I can walk,” I croaked out.

“Ma’am, I just gave you something for the pain that will make you unsteady on your feet and we don’t know the extent of the damage that was done. It is safer for us to get you on the board and up onto the gurney for transport.”

“Okay.” My one-word response was nothing more than a whisper. My day had started so promising and quickly turned to absolute shit. “My purse?” I questioned.

“Got it,” the other man stated. “I’ll make sure it comes with you.”

“Thank you.”

My eyes drooped and my arm felt like a throbbing noodle attached to me instead of the painful, bloody catastrophe of moments ago.

“Get some rest. By the time you wake up, you’ll be at the hospital for some stitches in that arm.”

When I woke up it was to a doctor smiling at me as he put the last stitch into my arm. “Holy crap, what did that man give me, a horse tranquilizer?”

The doctor chuckled. “Nothing that potent, though it seems you probably didn’t need as big a dose as he gave you.” He smiled as he took in my hair. “Probably thought all those beautiful curls weighed more than they do.”

“No flirting with my wife, Doc.” I glanced over to my right to see Ky stood there. His hair was in disarray as if he had been tugging at it. His eyes tracked every movement the doctor made as if he thought he could do better.

“Ky, when? How did you get here?”

“The usual way. One of my neighbors, Josh Manus, is the man that tackled Sandra. As soon as the cops had her cuffed, he called me to let me know what happened. I drove straight here.”

“How did he know to call you? I only moved in yesterday.”

“Sweet Bea,” His eyes took on a softer look. “Every man in my building has been asking about you since I moved in. They’ve seen you coming and going from my place. Josh was one who hoped you were my sister.” He chuckled at that and the doctor joined him and nodded his head as if he had a similar thought. My cheeks heated with what I was sure would be a visible blush.

“How long have you been here?”

“I got here the same time the ambulance pulled up outside. Been by your side the whole time.”

A relieved sigh left me. “Thank you.” I turned to the doctor, “No offense,” I said before looking back toward Ky, “it scared me to think of what might have happened to me with me being so out of it. Whatever that EMT gave me hit me hard and fast.”

“He was a paramedic, and we’ve already addressed the issue with him.”

“Thank you. What happened to Sandra?” I asked as I turned back to Ky. “Did they lock her up? Is she still there? I hope they didn’t let her back out.” Panic started to take over as I thought about the fact that the crazy woman knew where I lived.

“Maybe we should wait a bit to talk about that situation, Ms. Robeson. We don’t need your heart rate going crazy.”

“Sorry, but what if she comes after me again?”

Ky stepped forward and made his way to my other side. “You don’t have to worry about her. She’s been charged with a felony in the fraud case, attempted vehicular homicide, and attempted murder as a second incident since the car didn’t hit you. She’s also facing an assault with a deadly weapon charge. Your dad and Flynn are down at the courthouse talking to the magistrate in the hopes that he can put in a word about keeping her until trial for your safety.”

I rolled my eyes. “They do realize everyone gets due process, right? They can’t just demand that she not be released.”

Ky shrugged. “If I didn’t need to be here by your side, I would be there doing the same damn thing, Bea.”

“Well,” I didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“I have it on good authority that even if the judge sets bail, it will be high, and she won’t be able to pay.”

“All done here,” The doctor broke into our conversation to say. “We’ll get you down to radiology shortly to check out your knee and hip to make sure there were no fractures. I think they’re both just bruised and sore. The knee swelled quite a bit, but we gave you something for the swelling and iced it down while you were out.”

I glanced down as he started to wrap a bandage around my arm. “How many stitches is that?” My arm was stitched from the middle of my bicep in an arcing line to the outside of my mid forearm. It seemed to hurt again the minute I looked at it.

“There are 44 stitches. You’ll need to come back and have them removed in about seven days.”

“That sounds like a load of fun.” I rolled my eyes to indicate the level of sarcasm that went with my statement.

“It won’t be as bad as getting them put in.”

“Considering I was unconscious for most of that, I think you might be lying to me, Doc.”

He grinned and patted my leg. A low growl came from my other side and I turned to see Ky staring daggers at the man’s hand. The doctor snatched his hand back and laughed nervously. “Right. Well, we’ll see you in seven days to get those stitches out and a nurse will come by shortly to wheel you down to radiology for those X-rays. Once we get a look at them and make sure there are no fractures, we’ll get you discharged with care instructions for the wound. I hope the person who did this to you is kept behind bars so it doesn’t happen again.”

“That makes two of us,” I mumbled as he left. Then my eyes landed on Ky’s. “Did you really just growl at my doctor?”

“He shouldn’t have touched you.”

“He just patted my leg reassuringly.”

“Well, I was about to reassure him that you were taken. You were playing sleeping beauty too long and missed the way he appreciated the view.”

“Ew, that’s creepy.”

Ky shook his head. “You’re a beautiful woman, Bea. Even when you’re drooling on yourself and mumbling nonsense about your husband’s exes.” He grinned at the last bit.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Oh, you did. It was cute. I think you were plotting your revenge on Sandra while you were knocked out.”

“Well, that’s a shame because I don’t remember what I came up with and now I have to start from scratch.”

“I was so damn scared, Bea.”

“You and me both. She tried to run me over and then stabbed me. If I hadn’t tried to tuck and roll she would have gotten me in the chest.”

“I’m so fucking sorry. I swear to you, she never seemed crazy and we were never serious enough for her to even be that bonkers about me.”

“Stop.” I whispered as he took the hand on my uninjured side into his own. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. Did you forget we were best friends this whole time? I knew about your hookups with Sandra, that they were few and far between, and that she was never even worthy of a mention by you to me. Any girl you have ever been close to serious about - enough to date them semi-regularly - you have told me about. I only knew about Sandra in passing because Law told me he saw you with her.”

“I’ve been wondering about that, actually.” Ky seemed to be looking over my shoulder, but he was lost in thought for a moment before his attention returned back to me. “It’s weird that Sandra was ever on the scene. We didn’t cross paths normally and then suddenly, six months or so ago, she was everywhere I was. She knew where I lived even though I never brought her home with me. The way she showed up to my home out of the blue when Law was there and then conveniently showed up to the courthouse with Law…” He shook his head as if the thought was too preposterous.

“You think Law set her on you to begin with?”

Ky nodded his head. “I’m not sure why, but yeah, it feels that way considering everything that has happened.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Maybe he thought Sandra would keep my mind off my feelings for you.” Ky stared at me a moment before his cocky grin appeared. “You might have been oblivious about my feelings for you, but Law never was. That’s why he pushed so hard for you to ditch our friendship.”

“If I find out he set this bullshit into motion-” I was cut off before I could say more as a nurse came into the room with Law hot on her heels.

“Ms. Robeson, you already have your husband back here with you, but this man just proved to us - with a copy of your marriage certificate - that he is indeed your real husband.” Two security guards stood at the door ready to pull Ky from the room.

“That man is wanted by the police. He is part of the reason I am in here. The woman who signed that marriage certificate, while pretending to be me, is the one who attacked me today.”

“Jesus, I am so sorry, Bea. I can’t believe Sandra would do this to you.”

I glanced at Ky, seeing that he also noted the familiarity with which Law spoke of Sandra. “Did you know Sandra this whole time?” I asked.

Law’s face flushed and then drained of color in an instant. “I didn’t think… I never meant for any of this to happen. She was supposed to distract Ky. I swear, that was all. When I started paying more attention to Jackie, I knew you would lean on Ky. I wanted him out of the picture while I made my mind up about who I wanted most.”

I scrunched my nose in disgust. “Please, call the police and don’t let this man escape. He is partially responsible for the attack on me today.”

“No! I’m not. That’s what I came to tell you. Sandra called me from jail and wanted me to bail her out. At first I thought it was just the fraud thing with having her sign the marriage certificate in your name. When she told me why, I hung up on her and came directly here.”

“You really shouldn’t have.” I turned toward the guards who nodded at me. I guessed that meant they alerted the police. I squeezed Ky’s hand tighter because it felt as though he would get up and go after Law at any moment and the last thing I needed was for him to get into trouble as a result of my ex’s crap.