by Tracy Wolff
“Yeah. ’Cuz I’m the one embarrassing her in this situation.” But I relent, because Luc looks like he’s actually going to punch me and Sarah is turning a shade of red I didn’t even realize it was possible for human skin to achieve.
“Actually, I came in to talk to you for a few minutes while loverboy makes dinner,” I tell her. “I just want to get your take on what happened with Logan this afternoon.”
“Of course.” She ducks her head, spends a moment shoving her light brown hair back from her face. “I’m, uh, sorry about this whole thing. I don’t know what I was thinking …” She gestures between her and Luc and it occurs to me that she thinks I’m mad.
Maybe I should be, I don’t know. She’s still on-duty, after all, but Z and Cam are taking good care of Logan so what do I care if she and Luc want to fuck around a little? More power to the both of them. Not that I can exactly say that, with Luc looking at me like he plans to rip my tongue out of my throat if I say the wrong thing.
“It’s cool,” I tell her, not sure what else to say. “But … Logan.”
“Right, Logan. He was sick of being cooped up inside, so he challenged me to a one-on-one basketball game in the driveway. We’d been playing about twenty minutes when the basketball got by him. He tried to reach for it and ended up falling out of his wheelchair.” She pauses for a second, like she’s debating how much she wants to say. “You know, it’s not a big deal. It happens all the time—”
“He falls out of his chair a lot?” My stomach clenches at the news. How could I not know—
“No, no. I mean, it happens to nearly all patients a few times, especially as they’re trying to learn the boundaries of the chair and their strength. The only reason I took him to Urgent Care was because of the bump on his head. But the doctor says he’s fine and not to worry, so …” She takes a deep breath, and I can all but see her psyching herself up for what she wants to say next. “It’s not a big deal, Ash.”
“He hit his head.”
“Yes. And he’s fine. You need to not make a big deal out of it.”
I glare at her as anger rips down my spine. “Have I made a big deal out of it? I mean, I’m not fucking someone in the kitchen a few feet away from where my injured brother’s sitting, but still. I thought I took it pretty calmly.”
“Dude!” Luc straightens up, looks like he’s going to get in my face and I am more than ready for it. Hell, I’d love it. It feels like I’ve been spoiling for a fight for way too long. But before I can do anything more than brace myself, Sarah throws a hand up to stop him.
“You’re right,” she tells me, sounding calm and professional despite the pink once again staining her cheeks. But when she looks me in the eye, I can see a slight sheen of tears and it makes me feel like a total douche. I know I should apologize, tell her I was out of line. But the truth is I don’t have it in me. Not right now. Not when I’m trying so hard to stay calm and hold things together and not lose my shit over the fact that my baby brother nearly gave himself a concussion on her watch.
“About what?” I ask grudgingly.
“About the fact that you’re handling this well. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I just wanted to say that Logan dealt with the fall pretty well, once he got over the shock and embarrassment he felt at losing control in the first place. I think he’s more worried about how you’ll react than he is about the actual fall.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighs, reaches out a comforting hand to my shoulder. “He’s afraid you’ll stop him from playing basketball or going outside.”
“What? I would never—” I break off, because I realize that there was a part of me that was thinking just that. That it would be totally okay if he never went outside again, except to get into the car. He’s paralyzed, crippled. Why should he need to worry about shit like playing basketball? There are about two million things he can do sitting inside instead.
Except … except, he’s a fourteen-year-old boy, one who is used to being outdoors. Used to snowboarding and hiking and swimming and doing a million other things. Keeping him inside just because I want to keep him safe is stupid and damaging and ridiculous.
It doesn’t feel ridiculous, though. He’s already been through so much, already lost so much, that I just don’t want him to get hurt anymore. I just want to keep him safe.
Which is a laugh, since I’m the one who caused all of this to begin with. If it wasn’t for me, if it wasn’t for that stupid competition they insisted on coming to see, the accident would never have happened. Mom and Dad would be alive, Logan would be whole and everything would be how it’s supposed to be. Instead of this mess I don’t know how to get out from under. This mess that I’m terrified will eventually suffocate us both.
“If he wants to play basketball, it’s not like I’m going to stop him,” I tell her finally. “His physical therapist says it’s good for him to do stuff like that.”
“It is,” Sarah says, her voice soft with understanding and what sounds an awful lot like pity.
I jerk my gaze up, see Luc and Sarah both looking at me like I’m the broken one—the fragile one—and it pisses me off. I’m fine. Totally fine. Logan’s the one who’s injured. The one whose whole life changed in the flash of one spin-out. One crash. One fall.
The thought haunts me, has anger curling in my belly and my fists clenching at my sides. I want to lash out at her, to yell at her for having the nerve to lecture me when she’s the one who let my brother get hurt. She’s the one who stood there and let him fall out of the fucking chair.
But yelling at her won’t do any good. Nothing will.
I turn around and walk back into the family room. Once there, I pick up the phone and dial the pizza place I’ve got on speed dial.
“I thought Luc was cooking?” Cam asked, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, well, there’s cooking and then there’s cooking,” I tell her.
She looks confused for a second, but then her face clears and she rolls her eyes. “I don’t even want to know.”
Yeah, neither do I. About anything. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the way the night is going.
We devour four large pizzas between us before Logan starts to look a little tired from everything that happened today. He fights it, but his endurance still isn’t what it used to be, though it’s been six months since the accident. But he’s had several major surgeries and goes through a lot of physical and occupational therapy every day, so it’s no surprise that he still tires pretty easily.
Sarah offers to stay, but to be honest, I don’t want her here. I’m still annoyed with her—for the fall, for her pity, for the way she acts like she knows more about my brother than I do. Luc and Cameron came together and they head out right behind her, but Z isn’t in any hurry to take off. Ophelia’s taking a night class in Salt Lake tonight and he has nothing else to do but hang out here, play video games and bug me.
That’s actually fine with me. I need a distraction. Between what happened to Logan and the conversation I had with Tansy today—not to mention, Tansy herself—my mind feels like it’s on speed. I keep jumping back and forth between worry for my brother, thoughts about that kid Timmy and images of Tansy’s slender neck and shoulders beneath my lips.
Which is ridiculous, considering how fast she shut me down. Yeah, I made a mistake when I first met her, thought she was like the rest of the sun- and snowbunnies who come up here. Thought she just wanted to get laid by the once famous snowboarder, Ash Lewis. And that was fine. More than fine, really. With her pixie-cut pink hair and her big hazel eyes, she was adorable. More than adorable. She was beautiful.
Really beautiful.
Not to mention tiny. Normally, I don’t go for girls who look like her—all pale and soft and fragile-looking—but there was something about her that got to me. Maybe it was those eyes of hers, so big and dark and earnest. Maybe it was that husky bedroom voice, totally not what I expected to come out of her tiny frame. Or maybe it was the way s
he talked about Timmy. The way she fought me—fought for him—when I said I couldn’t go to Oregon.
I don’t know, but whatever she’s got, I’m still thinking about her hours later and that’s a problem. One, because it’s not like I’ll ever see her again. And two, it’s not like I’m in the position to do any more than fuck and run. Not right now, with Logan in the shape he’s in.
“Hey.” Z nudges me with his foot—I’m sprawled out on the floor in front of the sofa, pretending to watch as he and Logan play Call of Duty this time—and I glance back at him to see what’s up. He’s nodding at my brother, who has fallen asleep with the controller still in his hand.
Poor kid.
“I’ve got him,” I say, jumping to my feet. I pick him up—which is no easy feat as he’s almost as tall as I am—and carry him down the hallway to my parents’ bedroom. His bedroom, I remind myself as I set him on the midnight blue bedspread Ophelia picked out when she redesigned the room for him.
It’s the only bedroom on the first floor, so of course it made sense to give it to Logan. But for my whole life—right up until Logan came home from the hospital—this had been my parents’ room. It seems strange that it’s not anymore. Stranger still that they’re gone. Sometimes I swear I can still smell my mom’s perfume lingering in the corners of the room.
“Is he okay?” Z asks, and for the first time I realize he’s right behind me, pushing Logan’s wheelchair.
“Yeah.” I pull a blanket over my brother, who mumbles sleepily for a minute, but then rolls right back over and goes back to sleep. I step away as Z positions the chair next to the bed, so Logan can reach it when he wakes up in the morning. I change his catheter bag really quickly, dispose of the old one in the biowaste trashcan in the corner, then wash my hands in the bathroom.
Z’s waiting for me when I get back to the room. He claps a hand on my back, propels me out the door and back down the hallway before shoving me toward the couch.
He disappears into the kitchen, comes back with a beer and another can of Coke—which he tosses to me. I guess everyone knows my no-alcohol rule.
“How ’bout you?” he asks as he settles on the couch.
“How about me what?”
“How are you doing?”
I stiffen. I hate that fucking question, almost as much as I hate the way he’s looking at me, his eyes all intense and serious and probing. Like he’s a fucking shrink or something, which is a fucking laugh, considering how screwed up he is.
“I’m good,” I tell him, taking a long swig of my drink.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I try not to get defensive, but it’s hard. He’s poking at me, looking for something. A reaction, a weakness? I don’t know and I don’t give a fuck. Not right now.
“ ’Cuz you seem a little tightly wound.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“Exactly,” he says with a snort. “Believe me, I know the signs.” He pauses, takes a deep breath, then says, “It was just a fall. Kids fall playing basketball all the time. A year ago, no one would have even gotten upset.”
“Yeah, but it’s not a year ago, is it?”
“No, it’s not. Which is why I’m checking in.”
“I’m fine with the fall. I mean, not fine. But whatever. He seems okay and that’s what matters.”
“You know that you’re doing great with him, right?”
I shake my head. “That’s debatable.”
“No. It isn’t.”
He’s watching me, but I’m very deliberately not looking at him, choosing instead to study the frozen video game image on the TV like my life depends on it, but I know Z is still watching me. I can fucking feel his eyes trying to bore a hole straight through to my brain.
“So, if this isn’t about Logan,” he finally asks after setting his untouched beer aside, “what exactly has crawled up your ass and died?”
I do look at him then. “Seriously? That’s the best you’ve got?”
He holds up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, you’re the one who looks like somebody pissed in his Frosted Flakes. I’m just trying to figure out what the fuck is wrong.”
He looks so disgruntled that I can’t help laughing. “Nice to see the real Z is still around. With all those feeling questions earlier, I was beginning to think Ophelia had turned you into a total pussy.”
He reaches over and punches me in the arm, hard. I don’t complain, because focusing on the physical pain is so much better than dealing with the shit in my head. For the first time, I see the appeal of Z’s balls-to-the-wall boarding style. Of the pain he used to inflict on himself regularly, and still does occasionally.
He doesn’t say anything else, and for a long time, neither do I. Instead, I stare blindly at the TV as Z flips channels for what seems like hours. But then I reach into my pocket for a piece of gum and feel my fingers brush against Tansy’s card. Shit.
“Hey, can I ask you a favor?”
Z stops his seizure-inducing channel flipping long enough to say, “As long as it doesn’t require a blood sacrifice, sure.”
“What the fuck? A blood sacrifice?”
He shrugs. “Dude, usually we just say what we need. If you’re actually asking for a favor, I figure it’s got to be big. And bad.”
“It’s big, but there’s no blood involved! Shit.” I pull out Tansy’s card, hand it to him. “This chick came by work today.”
“Make-A-Wish?” Z looks confused.
“Yeah. I guess some dying kid is a big Ash Lewis fan. He wants to meet me before … you know.”
“Oh. Wow.” Z hands the card back and I ignore the little tingle of relief I feel when it’s once again in my possession. “That’s pretty heavy.”
“Yeah.”
“So you need Ophelia and me to stay with Logan while you go? ’Cuz that’s not a problem.”
“What? No! The kid wants to go up to ski camp in Oregon, see me snowboard and everything. I don’t do that anymore. You know that.”
Z’s sitting up straight now, looking a shitload more alert than he was even a few seconds ago. “He wants you to snowboard?”
Shit. “Don’t you fucking start with me, too, man.”
“I’m not starting anything. I’m just gathering information.” He rolls his eyes at me. “So, if you don’t want me to watch Logan, why’d you bring this up? What do you need?”
“I thought maybe you could go. Do a few runs, hang with the kid for a day.”
“But he doesn’t want to hang with me. He wants to hang with you.”
“Whatever,” I scoff. “What snowboarding fan doesn’t want to meet Z Michaels?”
“This one, obviously, or that girl would have come knocking on my door instead of yours.” He reaches for his beer, drains it in one long gulp, almost like he’s gearing up for something. And since I’m pretty sure I know what that something is, my whole body tenses.
I want to get off the couch, want to walk away. Want to be anywhere but right here, having this conversation. But it’s like I’m frozen, my body refusing to heed the frantic orders my brain is sending to it.
“It’s just one day of boarding, Ash.”
Fuck. Looks like I can move, after all. I scramble off the couch. “I don’t do that anymore.”
“I know that. I do.” He pauses, thrusts a hand through his hair. “I just don’t know why.”
“Fuck you, Z. You know exactly why.”
“The accident. Yeah, I get that you feel guilty. You have nothing to feel guilty about, but believe me. I get that.”
The thing is, I know he does. Hell, with the shit in his past, I figured he’d be the last one to push me on this.
“Still, you’re throwing your whole life away, Ash. For what? Feeling guilty won’t bring your parents back. Believe me, I know.”
“Jesus Christ, you think it’s that easy? You think this is just about guilt?”
He stands then, too, though he makes sure not to crowd me. Which is good, considering I feel lik
e I’m about to shatter into a million tiny pieces.
“What’s it about, then?”
“Logan. It’s about Logan.” Everything is about him now. It has to be.
“I know that. But I still don’t get it. You spend as many hours away from him when you’re at work as you would snowboarding. So what’s the deal?”
Is he really that dense? “Logan loved snowboarding. He fucking loved it. He was never happier than when he was tearing up the pipe or shredding the mountain.”
“You think I don’t know that? I was right there with you, teaching him how to board all those years ago. Right there, watching him, in all those youth competitions.” His voice breaks and for the first time, I see how much this whole thing is tearing Z up, too. It’s just another hit, just another weight pressing down on me.
But, at least maybe he’ll understand now. Understand why I can’t board. Understand why I can’t go meet this Timmy kid when I have a badly injured kid of my own to deal with.
“So, you get why I can’t board, right? He loved it so much and now he’s paralyzed, because of me. How the fuck can I get on a board, knowing that? How the fuck can I go out and do what he loves when he’ll never be able to do it again? It’d be like rubbing his nose in it and I won’t do that. I can’t.”
Z doesn’t answer for long seconds, maybe even minutes, and when he does his face is carefully blank, his eyes revealing nothing. I hate that look. He wore it for too many years before Ophelia, and as I look at it now, I realize it’s been months since I’ve seen it. Months since he’s felt the need to hide his feelings behind a mask. It makes me wary, makes me wonder what he really thinks about this whole fucking mess.
“I get why you think you can’t board.”
I freeze. “That’s not the same thing as actually getting it.”
“No. It’s not.” He blows out a long breath, runs an agitated hand through his hair. “Man, I get where you are. I do. Fuck, I lived where you are for years. But you were the first one to tell me I had to keep going, that I couldn’t let what happened to my sister rule my whole fucking life.”
“It’s not the same thing.”