to drive him to her house. That’s because Tate’s mother, and therefore, Tate, were Mila’s cousins.
Once Valerie and she had been close, too, since Vita had raised Valerie as her own. But it didn’t matter that Mila had once thought of her as a sister because she hadn’t seen Valerie in years. That didn’t matter to Tate, either. He just seemed to want a connection with anyone who was blood kin with his mother.
Something Mila understood, because she missed having that with her father.
Plus, Tate knew that Mila kept a spare key in the verbena plant so he’d be able to get into her house. She checked, and it wasn’t there now.
“I’m going inside to see if he’s here,” she assured Roman.
Mila got the door unlocked as fast as she could, and her gaze fired all around. Her house wasn’t that large—two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bath. So, it didn’t take her long to check out the place.
And spot him.
Tate was on the sofa, asleep on top of her Buttercup dress.
“He’s here,” she told Roman.
Roman said something she didn’t catch. Profanity mixed with a prayer, maybe. “Put him on the phone. I want to talk to him.” That didn’t sound like a prayer, though. More like the profanity tone.
Mila was about to tell him to take it easy on the boy, but she froze. “Oh, God.”
That’s because she spotted something else. Something in Tate’s hand.
A bottle of pills.
Tate didn’t have a firm grip on it. In fact, he didn’t have a firm grip on anything. His hand was limp, the bottle resting on its side in his palm, and he was as white as a sheet of paper.
“Call an ambulance,” she managed to say to Roman.
Mila dropped the phone and ran to Tate.
THAT WHOLE LIFE flashing before a dying person’s eyes applied to fathers, too. Roman now had firsthand proof of that.
In that moment when Mila had shouted for him to call an ambulance, Roman saw it all. His childhood on the ranch. His screw-ups. His arrest for underage drinking. Another arrest for reckless driving only a year after that. The arguments with his parents those things had caused.
He was probably being punished for all the crap he’d done, but Roman wished to hell that the powers that be had taken that punishment out on him instead of Tate.
In that life-flash, Roman had seen Valerie telling him that she was pregnant. They’d both been just eighteen and in their senior year of high school. He’d felt the sickening feeling of dread that this was yet something else he had screwed up. The feeling hadn’t lasted though, not after Tate had been born. The moment Roman held his boy in his arms, he knew he’d never love anything or anybody the way he did his son.
And now he might lose him.
Tate was breathing, that much he knew, and Mila had said something about Tate holding a bottle of medicine. Roman didn’t know what he’d taken or how much, but he knew what this meant.
His son had attempted suicide.
Hell.
Roman was damn perceptive when it came to his job, but he hadn’t seen that his own son was on the brink of doing something like this. It made the fight at school and being expelled fade way, way to the background.
“How far out are you now?” Mila asked from the other end of the phone line.
Roman wasn’t sure he could speak because his chest and throat were so tight. “About five miles. Anything from the doctor yet?”
Though he knew the answer to that. If there’d been something, anything, Mila would have told him. After he’d called the ambulance about thirty minutes ago, he had called her right back. She hadn’t gotten off the phone with him since then and had been updating him every step of the way.
The ambulance’s arrival.
The drive to the hospital, which thankfully was only a few minutes from her house.
And Tate and her going into the emergency room.
The medics had immediately whisked Tate away, but they hadn’t allowed Mila in there with him. Instead, she was outside the examining room.
“Nothing yet from the doctor, but I’m certain that Tate will be fine,” Mila said. It was hard to tell if she was BS-ing, but Roman decided to take her at her word. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around anything else right now. “Focus on your driving,” she added. “Make sure you get here in one piece because we don’t need another Granger in the hospital.”
That was for sure. One was more than enough.
He wanted to know if Mila had learned what meds Tate had taken. Or where he’d gotten them. But again, if she knew something she would have told him.
Unless it was bad, that is.
People kept all kinds of old meds in their bathrooms. Maybe Tate had even gotten into the Percocet that was left over from when Roman wrenched his knee. Or, hell, he could have gotten it from some kid at school or stolen something from the nurse who’d been cleaning his busted lip. Tate could have taken something that could kill him.
Roman heard his too-fast breath, felt himself losing focus, so he forced himself to keep talking to Mila. “Were you able to get in touch with Sophie and Garrett?”
Mila didn’t jump to answer that. Something that caused Roman’s chest to tighten even more. “Yes, Sophie’s here,” she finally said. Then Mila hesitated again. “You want me to put her on the phone?”
It was tempting because he loved his sister, and it might have soothed him to hear her voice, but Sophie was mega-pregnant, and there was nothing in his own voice that would soothe her. He damn sure didn’t want her going into early labor because she was upset.
“No. I’m taking my exit now,” Roman told her. “I’m almost there. Meet me at the ER doors so I know where to go. Oh, and try to get Sophie to sit down or something.”
He hit the end call button and started the last couple of miles. They crawled by. Too bad, though, that his thoughts weren’t crawling. Apparently, the life-flash was the only thing that was going to fall into the fast category today because his truck suddenly felt as if it were in snail gear. It didn’t help that Mila was right. He had to focus on his driving because it wouldn’t help anyone if he got in an accident.
It was the second time today that he screeched into a parking lot, and he hit the ground running as soon as he brought his truck to a stop. It took another lifetime for him to run to the ER, and just as he had known she would be, Mila was there.
“This way,” she said, and he pulled her into a quick hug as they ran. “The doctor is still in there with him.”
Roman
