Chapter 7 Meeting With Hot Guy

The city hits differently when you're walking without a destination.

My phone is in my hand and I am so deep inside my own head that I forget, completely, that the rest of the world is also still happening.

I am thinking about Callum, you really can’t blame me about marrying such a narcissistic cheating, conniving bastard.

Now, I know the architecture of his charm, I now have complete access to his pattern, but if I simply, don't smile back, after all I ridiculously chased him all through Uni.

If I see him in the coffee shop on Mercer Street and I just don't ---

The screech of brakes is the first thing I hear.

Then I feel the impact -- my hip catching the front corner of something large and expensive--and then the ground, palms flat on tarmac, phone skittering away, the world tilting before it corrects itself.

I lie there for one full minute.

"Don't move."

The voice sounds eternally deep and guttural, with the tone of a man who is used to giving instructions and everyone obeying.

I look up.

A sharp chiseled jaw with grey eyes currently doing something I can only describe as looking at me aggressively unimpressed.

This man is Tall with dark hair slightly disturbed from moving quickly

"I'm fine," I try to shrug.

He looks at me the way people look at things they couldn’t bother to disagree with, frown lines appearing on his forehead. "You walked into a moving car."

"You were going fast." I raise my eyebrows at him, tilting my head to get a better view of him without the sun pouring its rays into my eyes.

"The light was green."

"There's a thing called defensive driving—"

"Can you stand?" he cuts me off.

"Obviously I can stand—"

He eyes me quizzically, "Then stand."

He reaches forward with fingers closing briefly around my elbow and I shake him off because I am going to need no man in this life but my palms sting like a devil and my hip aches and my pride is somewhere on the ground next to my cracked phone but I am fine.

I have to be fine at least. There’s no point having two Callums in my life when I can’t even deal with one.

Or is the god of fate playing games with me!!!

Or goddess? The last movie I watched referred to them as goddesses.

Whatever.

"I don't need a hospital," I say watching his mouth open.

"I haven't suggested one yet." Frown lines appear on his delicious olive skinned forehead.

"Yet. You were about to." I say, placing emphasis on the yet.

A tick moves in his jaw. "The hospital is just four blocks away."

"I knew it." I eye him coldly.

"You have scrapes on both palms and you hit the ground hard enough that I heard it from inside the car." He shoot back at me, like he is reading items off a list.

"You're going."

"You can't make me go to a hospital."

"I can wait here with you until you either agree or fall over, whichever comes first. I’m not about to get sued later for whatever."

I stare at him, my eyebrows raised and the corner of my lips twisted in annoyance.

He stares right back at me with the patience of a man who has nowhere to be -- which I somehow doubt is true -- and the complete absence of any intention of moving.

"This is ridiculous," I scoff.

"The car."

He points to the black beauty that hit me, "I insist."

My head turns towards his outstretched hand and I and watch my defenses melt away.

I mean, it’s not everyday I’ll get the opportunity to enter the Bugatti La Voiture Noire.

---

The waiting room smells like antiseptic and recycled air and I am sitting in a plastic chair,.a far cry from the buttery leather seat of the Bugatti of my assailant -------

Wait. Is that even correct? Assailant?

What do they call those who hit people but stay to ensure they’re taken care of?

------ while a nurse wraps gauze around my left palm and tells me I'm very lucky and I say I know, thank you ma’am on autopilot because I am watching the man who hit me stand by the window looking at his phone like it personally offended him.

He has been on two calls. Both brief and both in a voice too low to catch. He checks his watch before he looks at the door and then looks at me.

I look at the nurse.

"Tender?" she asks, pressing gently.

"A little."

"You'll be fine. Just keep them clean." She smiles at me. "Your husband will have to help you in mobility and also do the dishes for a week."

I recoil at the word husband, turning my palms into a fist by reflex, “Ouch!.” I release them instantly.

“Let me get your husband.” She smiles warmly at me.

I scowl, "I don't have a husband."

"Boyfriend?"

"No."

She glances toward the window, then wiggles her eyebrows at me.

"Mm," she says, in a tone that implies something I choose to ignore.

"He hit me with his car," I say flatly, rolling my eyes inwardly.

"Right," she says, in a tone that implies she has noted this information and found it unimportant.

“If you want to press charges ---”

“No, no, no --- " I begin “ --- It was completely unintentional.”

God forbid anyone knows that I’m the one who ran into a car. Plus, I learned first-hand not to fight with those more powerful than you are. You might die.

I look at the ceiling.

"Emergency contact?" she asks, pen ready.

I scroll my phone with my good hand. My mother is first.

My finger hovers over her name and then--I don't know why, I genuinely do not know why--I scroll down.

"Callum Weston," I say.

The name is wrong in my mouth the moment it leaves it. Like fruit that has gone bad. I don't know what possesses me--some reflex that doesn't belong to this version of my life, some habit already wired into fingers that haven't learned better yet.

I stare at what I've just done.

"Got it," the nurse says cheerfully, and moves on.

Maybe I just want to see him. The husband that caused my death.