The big swinging doors made this satisfying bang as I sent them crashing back into the wall. All the way down that long, cruel corridor were more and more doors and they all banged as I pushed through them. It wasn’t enough. There was a neat row of chairs lined up outside the relatives’ room, but they scattered like birds flying south for the winter as I kicked them— picked one up and sent it hurtling into the air.
All I could feel was this suffocating, blinding rage, which made me want to lash out and scream because it was too big to be contained.
But when I got out of the ICU there was nowhere to go. I crawled into this tiny alcove behind the lifts, and that’s where Marie found me an hour later, banging my fists into the wall.
“And she took me back to the relatives’ room, and Dad and Felix were in there because they were tidying her up, and I just sat in this chair, next to him, and I couldn’t speak. ’Cause I knew that if I opened my mouth, I’d start screaming and I wouldn’t ever be able to stop.” I paused to take in a few, deep breaths. “He was sitting next to me, hunched over, and I remember thinking that he hadn’t shaved in days, and then he turned and he said in this really quiet voice so Felix couldn’t hear, ‘I will never forgive you for this.’ ”
Smith had been silent up until then, holding my hand and squeezing my fingers, but now he let go and I was adrift. “Why wouldn’t he forgive you? For making him sign the DNR form?”
I shivered inside my borrowed jacket, which was this horrible shade of puke green. “I guess, it didn’t really feel appropriate to ask him to go into details, y’know?” I sat up straight because I didn’t have him to lean on. “So is it my turn yet?”
He slumped back in the chair and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Your turn for what? Do you want a tissue or have you still given up crying for Lent?”
“Don’t change the subject,” I hissed, because if he thought he was going to get tears on top of everything else then he could bloody well think again. “It’s my turn to get you to be honest with me!”
“I have been honest with you!” he protested indignantly, but I wasn’t going to let him get away with that crock of shit.
“Did you get some freshman pregnant so she had to have an abortion? Is it true you’ve shagged half the campus? Did you ever see anything in me other than some skanky little ho-bag who’d let you get some touch because Molly wouldn’t?” I could have carried on until it got light, but he clamped his hand over my mouth.
“You meant more to me than that and you know you did, so don’t rag on what we had,” he said harshly, and I could have pushed out my lips so I’d be kissing his palm, but I didn’t. “If I take my hand away, will you shut up and listen to me?”
I raised my eyebrows meaningfully, but Smith wasn’t fluent in eyebrow, so I had to give him a muffled “yes.”
“I love Molly,” he said, and I realized my heart still had a bit of breaking left in it. “I know it’s never going to happen, but she’s my friend and I care about her deeply and if you can’t handle that, then it’s your problem. And for what it’s worth, Is, despite all the crap you’ve piled on me, I care about you, too, despite what I said that day by the swings, but I’m not going to help you destroy yourself.”
I opened my mouth to demand a retraction, but he held up his hand warningly.
“Thank you,” he said ironically when I pouted but kept my lips together. “As I was saying, I won’t be that guy. And really you deserve better than me. You really do.” He smiled faintly. “Okay, you can say something now.”
“I don’t want anyone but you, why can’t you see that?” I tugged at his shoulder so he had to look at me, even though I was wailing loud enough to be heard in Hove. “You hate me!”
“I don’t hate you . . .”
“And I don’t care what my so-called friends think of you, I never did and even if all those stories were true, they didn’t stop me, did they? I still loved you.”
I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he smirked a little at that and his arm crept around my shoulders. “Is, I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but I’m not the low-rent, coffee-bar Casanova that you seem to think I am. Sorry about that.”
“I don’t believe you,” I insisted doggedly. “I mean, you said you’d only wanted this no-strings hookup with me . . .”
“Yeah, because you blew hot and cold the whole time,” he snapped. “You didn’t exactly act like you were after a relationship, and then you’re declaring your love for me and going into a full-blown hissy fit when I won’t say it back. I should have known you were only sixteen, you sure acted like it.”
It was really mean of him to twist the facts like that, especially when I wasn’t at fighting weight. “When will you stop hating me because I told you some stupid lies that I regret more than anything?”
We were locked in this verbal Ping-Pong match and just when I thought I’d slammed the ball over the net and had the advantage, he snatched it away from me.
Smith cupped my face in his hands, and because I was a sucker for all the things that weren’t to be, I leaned forward so he could kiss me. But kissing wasn’t on his agenda. Instead he moved in for the kill. “And when are you going to stop hating your mum because she left you when you needed her most?” he whispered right in my ear.
I guess he thought it was game, set, and match or whatever you have in Ping-Pong. But he should have known better. Should have known me better.
Now it was my turn to stroke his cheeks, rub my thumbs over the sharp planes of his cheekbones so I could get close enough to . . .
“Fuck you, you bastard,” I said sweetly, and while he was still reeling from that blow, I swung out my hand and slapped his shocked face hard enough to make him jerk back from the impact.
Smith touched the hot red mark on his cheek wonderingly and then shut his eyes like he was exhausted. “You know something, Isabel?” he asked in a gravelly voice. “You make it impossible to love you.”
Let'sGetLost
Let's Get Lost
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I don’t think I’d ever felt as unlovable as I did at that moment. I felt ugly, inside and out.
Smith slid one seat over to make absolutely sure that I wouldn’t accidentally touch him, and yawned as if all the drama of the last half hour had wiped him out.
I craned my neck to look at the clock. It was edging toward three-thirty A.M. “It’s late,” I muttered. “You should go.” I’d learned my lesson now. Blabbing out your darkest secrets just gives people the knife they need to stab you in the gut. First Dot, now Smith . . .
He pulled a face. “You’d love it if I just left you here, wouldn’t you? Then you could work your martyred routine a little bit more, instead of asking for help.”
“I don’t need you to help me,” I sniped. “I don’t need anyone.”
“Yeah, well, you’d still be standing by the side of the road with a compound fracture if that was the case,” Smith pointed out, before giving a resigned sigh. “Come on, I’ll give you a lift.”
A lift to where, though? That was the question. Maybe I could . . .
“Before you even say it, you’re not coming back to mine.”
Smith could read minds now, which was just beyond irritating, if I could have mustered up the energy to actually be irritated. The drugs were starting to wear off, the adrenaline had exited stage right, and I’d reached rock bottom.
In fact, if there was someplace that was lower than rock bottom, then there’s where I was. I ached in places where I didn’t know I had places. My head was throbbing, my eyes were dry and itchy, and I had this awful metallic taste in my mouth that all the Freshmint gum in the world wouldn’t cure.
I was starting to cobble a plan together. It wasn’t great as plans went, but it didn’t involve going home or having to spend any more time with Smith and his insightful observations into my psyche.
“Where to, princess?” he asked, jangling his car keys impatiently as I hoisted myself upright and bega
n to hobble toward the exit.
I stuck my chin out defiantly. “I’m going to find a hotel in town, and before you get pissy about that, even though it’s, like, none of your business, I’m going to call my grandparents in London tomorrow, or later today, whatever, and ask them to come and pick me up. Happy?”
“Not remotely,” he hissed, shouldering the door open for me. “But, hey, that makes two of us.”
It was a relief to collapse onto his majorly uncomfortable passenger seat. I closed my eyes as he started the car and let the rhythmic putter of the engine lull me into a doze.
“C’mon, Is, wake up, we’re here,” Smith said, nudging me gently with his elbow. “And promise you won’t get too homicidal with me.”
“Too tired for long words,” I mumbled, snuggling a little further into the seat. “You’d better have picked me a nice hotel.”
I opened my eyes and started struggling with the seat belt, until Smith pushed my hand away. I couldn’t see anything but his face and the worried way he was gnawing his bottom lip.
“Look, hey, I’m fine,” I insisted, almost keeping the tremor out of my voice. “I said some stuff, you said some stuff, it’s been the longest night of my life, let’s just agree to disagree.”
“I’m sorry but I think this is for the best,” he said, and he didn’t just look worried, he was worried, and as I looked over at my house, all the windows ablaze with light, the front door open, and—oh, look—a police car parked right in front of us, I knew why.
“How could you?” My breath hitched in my throat, because there was someone standing in the doorway, hand shielding his face from the porch light so he could see out into the street.
Smith was already opening my door, hand under my elbow so he could help me out. My body was being way too obliging and stepping onto the pavement so it could walk the necessary distance toward the shadowy figure still standing in front of the house.
“He’s going to kill me,” I said under my breath. “He’s going to chop me into little pieces, sauté me, and then send me away.”
“I’ll come in with you, it will be all right,” Smith said soothingly, but it wasn’t all right, because he was coming down the steps onto the path, and I was trying to use Smith as a human shield.
“Isabel!” he thundered, and my insides turned to liquid and whooshed down to my feet. He reached us in three long strides, face blazing with fury, and only Smith grabbing my hand and tucking it into his stopped me from turning tail and fleeing.
I had time for one heartfelt “Oh, God” before the Brighton Inquisition started. Except it didn’t. He just stood there, staring at me, wearing his disgust like cheap aftershave. If it had been humanly possible to shrivel away from the force of someone’s loathing, I’d have fitted inside a Dustbuster.
“What the hell have you been doing?” he asked quietly. Shouting would have been better, not that gossamer growl that made my blood go cold. “Give me one good reason why I should even let you through the front door.”
He grabbed hold of my arm, my broken arm, as a prelude to probably putting me in the back of the police car himself, and I squealed in pain as he let go and Smith stepped between us.
“Sir, I’m Atticus Smith,” he said politely, holding out his hand. “I’m a friend of Isabel’s.”
And it might have been the dumbfounded expression on my father’s face as he shook Smith’s hand or the whole Atticus thing, but he let go of my arm and I started to giggle. And then I wasn’t giggling but almost bent double with laughter.
“I think she’s still in shock,” Smith said loyally, and I straightened up, still tittering feebly, and decided I’d be okay if I didn’t make eye contact with my father.
And I didn’t have to because there was a policewoman hurrying down the steps, holding something, while a pajama-clad Felix peered out of the front window.
“I take it this is Isabel?” she asked my father, who turned at the sound of her voice.
“Yes, yes,” he said heavily, like he wished it wasn’t true. “She’s back.”
She held something up—something red and bedraggled in a see-through plastic bag. “So, Isabel, is this your coat, and could you tell me exactly what it was doing in a car that was reported stolen earlier tonight?”
Spending the night locked up in a police cell seemed to be the lesser of two evils, compared with the way my father was still staring at me like he was already sizing me up for a coffin.
But when she started haranguing me before my arse even connected with the sofa, he turned and gave her the full effect of his most glacial expression. Think frozen tundra and you’d be halfway there.
“My daughter’s been through quite enough for one night,” he said in his most “Don’t mess with me, I’m a professor of English” voice.
“I need Isabel to answer a few questions about what she’s been—”
He cut her right off with an impatient flick of his hand as Smith collapsed next to me on the couch. “Bet you’re regretting your misplaced chivalry now,” I hissed out of the corner of my mouth, and his eyebrows pulled together in a ferocious scowl.
“I think what Isabel needs is some food and some sleep. If you leave me your number, then I’ll arrange a mutually convenient time for you to come around and . . .”
“We’ll need you to bring Isabel down to the station, sir.” She shot me a look to let me know that I was a thoroughly bad little girl.
“As I was saying,” he drawled slowly, and Smith shuddered like he was starting to believe everything I’d told him, “you can come around when Isabel’s feeling better. I’m sure she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
It was really nice of him to stick up for me like that. But he was sly and tricky. It was probably just a cunning ruse to ship me off to reform school before sunup.
She was still spluttering away about procedures as he walked her to the door.
“He doesn’t seem that bad,” Smith offered uncertainly, fidgeting against the cushions.
“Whatever,” I whispered. “You haven’t seen his game face yet.”
There was a muffled squeak as Felix came in, holding a brimming mug in front of him. “I made you tea,” he announced importantly.
Smith jumped up and took it before he could slop any more over the carpet, and once he’d been relinquished from his burden, Felix was hurling himself at me in one of his infamous “tackle hugs.”
“Hey . . .” I protested. “Watch the arm!”
“We thought you’d run away,” he exclaimed, eyes wide and bottom lip already quivering. “And then he called the police and she came around with your coat and I thought you were dead!”
“As if!” I scoffed, tugging on his cowlick. “Just a little battered. Look, you can draw something on my cast.”
Felix gave it a good rap with his knuckles. “Does that hurt?”
“Yes,” I snapped in unison with Smith who’d been gazing at Felix with amusement.
“Who are you? Are you Is’s boyfriend? Dad said he was going to horsewhip you,” Felix recalled gleefully as the man himself came back into the room.
“I’m sure I said no such thing.” He ran his fingers through his hair and looked thoughtfully at Smith, who squirmed deliciously. “I trust you weren’t involved in tonight’s debacle?” he asked pleasantly.
“He wasn’t . . .” I started again. “I called him after the accident and . . .”
“I took Is… I mean, Isabel to the hospital and oh, yeah . . .” Smith rummaged in his jacket pocket. “There’s a prescription for some antibiotics and some painkillers and instructions on how to take care of the cast. It’s not meant to get wet, so she needs to wrap it up in a plastic bag when she has a . . .”
“Thank you,” Dad said calmly, taking the papers from him and giving them a cursory look. “Felix, will you please go to bed?”
“But Dad . . . !”
“It wasn’t a suggestion, go!”
Felix went, grumbling with every
step, sure that he was going to miss all the action. Lucky Felix.
Dad walked over to me, brushing past Smith, who looked like he was planning an intervention, then crouched at my feet. “Let me look at this arm of yours,” he ordered softly, and I stuck out my plaster cast for his perusal. “Can you move your fingers?”
I wiggled them feebly, staring at the spot on the rug where Felix had spilled the tea. He turned my head toward the lamp so he could see the damage for himself and I could see myself reflected in his pupils.
“Well, you’ve certainly managed to wreak havoc everywhere you went tonight,” he remarked. “A-plus for effort, Isabel.”
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