She loved me.
Everyone else can be damned, it would hurt if I lost them because I decided Tyler’s girl was now mine but I’d have her. And that was enough.
“Peyton!” I yell when she bypasses Colt, that hope extinguishes quicker than a candle in the wind.
I surge forward, ready to grab her, to get it all out.
She can’t leave like this. If she leaves like this I don’t know if I’ll be able to fix it.
“We can tell them!” I yell after her.
She stops on the stairs, her hands white knuckling on the railing as she spins around. Pure, unadulterated rage blooms in her eyes, usually so warm with love and compassion is now just ice and sharpness.
I flinch back at the look she gives me, her teeth gritting hard.
Slowly she looks to Decker and I follow her gaze, taking in his own restrained anger, at me? Probably but I doubted it was because we were together, no it was because this pain she was showing all over her face was because of me.
Her eyes move to Colt next and whatever she sees on his face breaks her. A sob escapes her throat and she doubles over, clutching her stomach.
I lurch forward, my feet pounding on the wooden floorboards.
Her eyes snap up, “Don’t!” She warns.
“Peyton,” I plead.
“Stay away from me, Fletcher.”
Her words slice like a blade laced in venom, cutting deep, “Tell me what’s happening right now.” I say, pushing down my own pain. That’s not important right now.
Colt steps forward, slapping a hand on my chest, stopping me from going to her.
I grab his wrist, squeezing hard as my vision goes red, “You gonna stop me from going to my girl?”
“Oh,” Peyton laughs manically, “I’m your girl now?”
All heads snap to her, “Peyton,” I try again.
“I’m no one,” she mimics my voice and I understand now exactly why she is like this. She didn’t hear me properly.
How could she ever believe I’d say she was no one. She was someone, she was everything. She was my heart. My future. My whole fucking life.
I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong.
“Peyton,” Colt tries and I stifle my growl of possessiveness as he steps down the first step, closing the distance between the two of them. I didn’t want him near her. I wanted to be near her. She was mine for fuck sake. Mine.
“It’s not what you think,” I blurt, “You heard it wrong.”
“I heard it wrong, huh?” She snaps.
“Yes!” I pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to cool myself. There’s too much going on inside me right now. Too many emotions I don’t know how to control.
“Tell me Fletch,” she sneers, “Did I hear it wrong when you were so adamant we keep this a secret? No I don’t think so. What was it? The sex? The fact that I was off limits? Tell me, what drew you to me? If I was no one, no one, tell me, please, what made you suddenly want me after all these years?”
I flinch, “You’re not no one, Peyton, you heard me wrong.”
“It makes sense now, why you didn’t want to tell anyone. These guys, they care too much about me to allow you to fuck me about. If they knew, you’d have to tell them that it was just sex whilst you knew I was in love with you.”
“It’s not like that!”
“Was it all lies?” She asks, voice cracking, “When you told me you loved me? When you confided in me? Was it all lies?”
“Never!”
She shakes her head in disbelief, “I don’t believe you.”
“Please,” I step forward and she edges back.
“No,” She shakes her head, the anger leaving her body. More tears slide down her cheeks and my heart shatters at the pain I see in her face. That’s because of me. I look to Colt for help but he’s as helpless as I am. How do we help her?
How do I help her?
“I believed you, Fletcher. But really how stupid could I be?” Her voice smooths out as if she’s suddenly shut everything out, “You had no issues cutting me out of your life after Tyler died, like I didn’t exist. You didn’t care how much that fucking broke me. Why should I be surprised? I thought you needed space. I thought you blamed me because of what happened to Tyler but now I realize it’s just because you didn’t care. I’m no one to you.”
I feel Decker’s eyes burning into the back of my skull. Yeah I know. I fucked up.
“You want me to get on my knees?” I yell, my own frustrations getting the better of me, “You want me to beg? I’ll fucking beg! You want me to show the whole fucking world that you own me? I’ll fucking do it!”
Her jaw pulses with her twitching muscles, “Save it.”
“Peyton please,” I step forward.
She steps back.
And my whole fucking world stops.
It ends.
It ends when I see her foot slip on the edge of the step. It stops when her eyes go wide and her arms shoot out to try and catch herself.
Her eyes meet mine when she realizes she’s too far gone to catch herself and I’m too far away to catch her.
All three of us shoot down after her, barrelling our large bodies down the narrow staircase to try and save her from falling but it happens too quickly.
One minute she’s there, the next she’s not and there’s absolutely fucking nothing I could do.
“No!” I boom, the anguish in my tone echoing through the halls, bouncing off the walls and then slamming into me like a tackle on the field.
“Peyton!” Decker yells.
“No!” Colt screams.
At no point, whilst her body, as small as it is, tumbles down the stairs, do her eyes leave mine. And I’ll never forget the pain, the heart break, the fear that masks her face, taking away the loving girl I know.
The thud of her body hitting the floor at the bottom of the stairs is a noise that’ll haunt me for the rest of my life.
And then silence.
Pure silence.
Time stops.
The three of us freeze on the steps.
This cannot be happening. This is not happening.
The pool of blood extending from the back of her head should snap me into shape, but I can’t move. Her lids are closed, her mouth slightly parted and from where I’m stood, it doesn’t look like she is breathing.
She’s gone.
I’ve lost her.
There’s this pain that starts low in my gut, a burning agony that leaves you paralyzed, the type of pain that leaves you speechless, motionless.
“Peyton,” I stutter, my knees giving out from beneath me.
A sudden breath from her body kicks me right back into it.
My eyes widen at the sight and then I’m barrelling the rest of the way down the stairs, leaving Decker and Colt behind.
“Peyton!” I scream.
Dropping to my knees next to her prone body, the blood pooling around me, seeping into the knees of my sweats. “Call an ambulance! Someone call a fucking ambulance.”
There’s a blur of motion around me, the guys rushing to grab a phone, some padding to stem the bleeding, me at her side, my hands pausing at her face, not sure if I should touch her.
“Stop the bleeding,” Decker cries.
“Move!” Colt nudges me out the way and I let him, too frozen in my stupor to do a single thing.
He presses a towel to the back of her head.
I reach forward, “Baby, please.”
Everything else zones out.
“You can’t leave me.”
The emotion of the situation finally hits me and my heart fucking breaks. It shatters inside my chest. Like a piece of ice under a hammer, shards scatter in every direction as I watch her take one breath and then another and then…
Nothing.
Thirty-seven
“Where the fuck is the ambulance!?” I bellow, snapping out of my shock.
“It’s on the way,” I look over to Decker when I hear the break in his voice. His green ey
es gloss over with emotion as he stands back, shaking his head.
“No!” I growl. “I’m not losing her!”
Colt holds the towel to her head as I begin CPR.
“Come on, baby.” I whisper, “Don’t leave me.”
“Fletcher,” Colt whispers, touching his free hand to my shoulder in a movement that tells me he’s given up. To him, she’s dead.
To me, she’s very much alive. I refuse to lose her. I refuse.
I breathe into her mouth twice and then begin the compressions again, “One, two, three, four…” I count them, “Fourteen, fifteen.”
The front door slams open.
The paramedics rush us.
I stumble away, my hand cupping my mouth to stop my cry of anguish.
They work over her, quickly, efficiently, moving her around, wrapping her in blankets and equipment and then onto a stretcher.
A stretcher is good right? It’s not a body bag. That means something right?
My legs move off their own accord, following the emergency personnel out the door to the ambulance that still has the blue lights flashing.
“Fletch!” Colt yells from the door way, his face pale.
“Later!” I yell back, not waiting for the questions, get them to stop me, see how that works out for them. I am going to the hospital. I am making sure my girl is okay.
A dread settles deep in my gut. It tells me this is not okay, she is not okay and tomorrow I’ll be dealing with a whole new tragedy, a whole new heart break.
It would break me.
Truly and irrevocably break me.
I look up at the paramedic and something in my face must make her soften.
She reaches over to me, holding my hand the same way a mother would, “We’re doing everything we can.”
I shake my head, reaching out with my free hand to stroke away the blood matted hair from my girls face, “I need you to do more. I need you to do everything. I can’t lose her.”
The paramedics hand squeezes mine, “She’s too young to leave us like this.”
With those words I lean forward and press my head to her abdomen, breathing in her scent, wincing as the usually sweet scent of strawberries is tinged with metal. It burns my nose. The blood. So much blood.
_
It’s been three hours.
Three fucking hours.
I pace the length of the family waiting room, my scalp stinging from the amount of times I’ve dragged my hands through them, tugging on the strands. My body aches. My stomach growls.
None of that is important.
Peyton is what is important.
Decker and Colt slouch in the fold down waiting chairs, their faces giving away their exhaustion, and across the room Peyton’s mom and step dad wait, joined by my own parents.
After much pacing my mom stands up and crosses the room, touching her gentle hand to my arm in a move meant to settle but only makes me feel trapped.
“Rest, Fletcher,” she mumbles, grabbing me forcefully to stop me.
She may be shorter and a hell of lot more lighter but the woman that is my mother is stronger in ways no one would understand.
It’s why I listen to her. It’s why I force myself out of that sterile waiting room and down that plain, white hall towards the coffee machine.
The gurgling noise the coffee machine makes is obscenely loud in the quiet of the hospital but shit, I could wake hell right now and not give a single fuck.
The shitty cup of coffee, basically a cup of dirty coloured water with a hint of coffee in the taste does nothing to the fatigue that wants to overtake my body.
I can’t rest though. Not until I know she’s okay. Not until I know that heart, the heart I love so damn much is still beating.
It will damn kill me if I lose her.
I can’t lose her.
With my shitty cup of coffee, numb legs walk me back to the waiting room. By the looks of everyone nothing has changed in the time that I have been gone and this cup of mud in my hand doesn’t make it worth it.
I’m about to demand a status update when the doctor that came out three hours ago to tell us that Peyton was going off for testing comes back into the room.
He buries his hands into the pockets of his long white coat and deep purple shadows gouge the space beneath his blue eyes.
He looks tired.
That doesn’t seem good.
I’ve watched enough ER programs to know that tiredness amounts to a fight they haven’t been able to win.
He holds up a hand when me and the rest of us rush him, demanding answers.
“She is resting.”
“She’s alive!?” I gasp.
He gives me a small, tired smile and nods, “She is alive. She took a nasty fall and she’s very lucky there wasn’t more damage. No bleeds on the brain, no oxygen loss,” he pointedly looks to me, “you’re very much the reason for that. She needed six stitches in the back of her head and there’s a skull fracture and concussion but she will be okay after a lengthy recovery.”
“She stopped breathing,” I shake my head.
“Shock of the fall, the bleeding and the fracture would have had something to do with that,” The doctor advises, “It is more common than you realize when someone’s had a fall for their heart to stop. If you hadn’t started CPR when you did, I’m not entirely sure we would be having this same conversation. The point is now though, recovery. She’ll be here for a while and then she’ll need to recover at home.”
A sob sounds behind me, from the position I’m assuming it’s Peyton’s mother.
“Can I see her?” I ask.
He looks behind me and then nods, “One at a time though please, visiting hours are over so please respect other patients.”
I don’t wait for anyone else to go first. They can wait. I follow the white coat through the halls, the quietness making my hair on the back my neck rise with unease.
The doctor stops at a closed door, turns to me and nods before taking off, leaving me alone. My hand shakes as I press down the handle. The first thing I notice is the steady beep of the machine hooked up to the body led in the bed, the tall silver poles containing bags of fluid next to that, tubes disappearing under the pale blue blanket that’s tucked around her body.
A sound I didn’t realise comes from me echoes in the room, something between a sob and a scream. It’s a strangled sound that matches the way my legs want to give out under me, how my body wants to crumble onto the sterile, white floor.
Her lashes rest on the apples of her cheeks and bar the white bandage that has been wrapped around her head, she could pass as sleeping. I stumble to her bedside, finding her hand as I sink into the high back chair at the side.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” I whisper, leaning my forehead on the side of the bed, “I’m so sorry.”
I want her to wake up, I need to tell her how much she means to me and that we don’t have to keep it a secret anymore. I should never have made her hide us, I should never have asked her to keep this secret. I was too fucking terrified, too blind to realize what everyone else thought was irrelevant.
God, if Tyler was still alive he would be beating my ass. He would tell me how much of a fucking idiot I am, how stupid I’ve been.
I don’t know how long I sit there for, long enough apparently for someone to come knocking. The door cracks and I peek from my position, head still resting on the bed to see Peyton’s mom. She looks tired, her face blotchy from crying, eyes rimmed with red. Mostly, she looks tired.
“Hi,” she whispers.
I straighten, “Sorry, uh, you should be in here.”
“Stay,” she commands, her voice so soft but strong.
She gently shuts the door.
“Only one of us should be in here.”
She scoffs, “No one saw me come in, we’ll be quiet, but I think we should talk.”
I swallow. “Okay.”
“You’re with my daughter.” It’s a statement, not a question, her blue eyes ho
lding mine.
“I am.”
She sighs and lowers herself into the chair on the other side of the bed, “She’s always loved you, you know? I always thought it would be you.”
I cock my head and she just smiles.
“I know my daughter. She loved Tyler and they were happy for the most part but I always thought she’d end up with you. You two together,” she shakes her head, “It’s like a puzzle finally being finished. She loved you even when she didn’t know what love was.”
I nod, understanding now how true that is. I loved her too. I had since the moment I saw her at her locker in middle school, looking a little lost. At thirteen it was a different kind of feeling, nothing really in comparison to the burn in my chest now.
“I worried she was giving too much, she’s so young and she hasn’t lived nearly enough yet but I think she will and she will do it with you by her side.”
“I fucked up,” I admit.
A chuckle, “Everyone does at some point.”
I shake my head, the emotion causing my eyes to blur. “We were arguing,” I tell her, “When she fell, we were arguing because I made her keep this a secret and she heard something wrong and she thinks I don’t feel the same way, but I do,” I rush out, “She’s everything, she always has been and I don’t know what I’m going to do if she doesn’t want me now.”
“My daughter is very forgiving,” she says, “whatever it is that is going on between you it will be okay.”
I nod, unsure.
“You should speak with your mother.”
Again, I nod.
“Go on home, Fletcher, get some rest. She will still be here tomorrow.”
My chest constricts at the idea of leaving right now. How could I leave her here all alone? What if she wakes up? What if she refuses to see me? If I’m already here there’s no chance of her telling people not to let me in.
“Go,” Peyton’s mother levels me with a look reserved only for parents, “I will call when she wakes up.”
Standing from the chair, I lean down and press a kiss to Peyton’s cheek, closing my eyes.
I will fix this. Us.
Fletcher( Boys of HGU #1) Page 19