by K. A. Linde
“No,” I whispered, my voice suddenly hoarse. “I’ll meet you there. I have to bring Jason.”
“Okay. You’re sure you can drive?”
“Yeah,” I lied.
I wasn’t entirely sure I could drive. Or function as a human being for that matter.
All I remembered was Annie racing toward me on the Fourth of July, calling out to me to let me know that Maverick had collapsed. Then, the mad dash to the hospital. I hadn’t even known then what was going on. I had just been nervous. It’d made no sense that he’d collapsed. He had been perfectly healthy. He had been a marathoner, for Christ’s sake. He must have been dehydrated or something. But I couldn’t figure out why he’d go to the hospital for that.
But, by the time I had gotten to the hospital, it was too late. Heart failure. No one could have seen it coming.
He was gone.
Gone as if he had left for the afternoon and would be back for dinner.
Except he wasn’t ever coming back. And I’d had a one-year-old in my arms with not a clue as to what to do with my life.
Just numb and shocked.
Death.
A word I’d heard too much in my short life. A word I’d never come back from. A word that had dismantled my existence and left me hanging in the balance.
Thank God for that toddler in my arms. I wasn’t sure how I would have gone on without him.
And, now, I needed to bundle him up and rush him to another hospital and pray that we could get me through this, too.
We made it to the hospital fifteen minutes later. Jason was not happy about missing out on his dinner, but I packed him some snacks and hoped for the best. Even as I feared the worst.
The last time I’d walked through these doors, I’d assumed it was nothing. I couldn’t have that mindset this time. My life didn’t account for happy endings anymore.
My stomach twisted as Jason and I followed the nurse’s instructions to David’s room. By the time I got there, I thought I was going to hyperventilate. I could barely control my breathing and get it together. But I knew I needed to—at least for Jason’s sake.
Before I could even knock on the door, Morgan thrust it open. “Oh my God, I was about to call you.”
“Yeah, we just got here,” I said.
“Hey, Jason!”
He waved at his aunt Morgan, and a grin broke through her tough exterior. Then, she looked back at me, and it slipped away. I wanted to ask how David was, but the words wouldn’t leave my lips. All I could do was stand there and wait…and pray.
“Why don’t you go on in? I’ll stay here with Jason. We’ll go get ice cream downstairs. How does that sound?”
“Yes!” Jason cried in excitement.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“Anytime.”
My hands were shaking when I pushed the door open and entered the hospital room. My nerves were frayed. I was barely holding on. I didn’t know how I was going to do this. How I was going to talk to him. I felt like I was holding on by a thread, and that thread was unraveling.
David was seated on the bed. Not in it, but on it. His arm was bandaged, and he had a pretty wicked bruise forming on his neck and up his cheek where it looked like an airbag had gotten him.
“Hey,” I whispered, taking another step into the room.
“Sutton.” He glanced up from where he’d been staring at his phone. “I didn’t expect you to show up.”
“Of course I’d show up.”
“I know how you feel about hospitals.”
I tried to still my shaking hands, but it wasn’t working. The hospital room. The sanitary smell. The white lights. Everything made me nauseated. I hadn’t been in one in over a year. And the last one…the last one had wrecked me.
“Do you?” I murmured.
“Yes,” he said calmly.
I nodded. There was nothing else to say to that. David always seemed to know more about me than he let on.
“How are you?”
“I’ve been better.” He tried to turn his neck and winced. “Doctor says I have a mild concussion, a serious case of whiplash, and that I’m going to be sore in my neck, back, and ribs for a while. Some glass from the windshield embedded in my arm. They had to take it out—hence the bandage. Airbag rash on my arms and face, but otherwise, I’m fine.”
“Otherwise,” I said with a tight laugh. It was really more of a grimace than anything. “What happened exactly?”
He shook his head and seemed to immediately regret it. “I was an idiot. The college kid who hit me was an idiot. It was raining. I was driving too fast. I sped through a yellow light, and oncoming traffic tried to turn in front of me, skidding through one of those stupid Lubbock puddles. Hit my Ferrari with his truck hard enough to shatter my windshield, the side window, and deploy both airbags. My car spun in a circle and hit another car before coming to a stop.”
I could see it all like watching a movie. The rain pouring down. The college kid not paying attention. David driving in anger, trying to get as far away from my house as possible.
“But I’m fine,” he repeated.
“Fine,” I whispered.
Fine.
He’d said he was fine.
He was sitting in a hospital bed because of an argument with me. He was here, in a place I could barely stand in, with a concussion, bruises, and so much pain that he couldn’t turn his neck. But he was fine. Sure.
“I’ll probably get discharged when the doctor shows up. Do you want to stick around?”
“I…” I steadied myself on the hospital table as my brain spun.
I hadn’t thought about what to say in this moment. What to do about where we had left things. I’d thrown all my shit in a bag, grabbed Jason, and disappeared. Now, I was here. Standing here with him, and it all seemed so impossible.
Like all my walls were breaking down.
Because I had stopped for a total of one second before dashing over here. No matter that we had been on rocky terms. No matter that he’d stormed out of my house. All that had flown out the window when I heard he was hurt. I’d rushed to the hospital just as fast as I had for Maverick. The same fears had hit me fresh. It was no different. And yet…utterly, incomprehensibly different.
The worst part of it all was the realization that I was all in.
He’d asked me if I was.
And, if anything, this had proven it to me like nothing else could.
I was in love with him.
Unequivocally.
Undeniably.
One hundred ten percent.
And I wanted this so much that my heart hurt. It physically ached from the need. From the desire to make this right.
And, at the same time, with perfect clarity, I knew I couldn’t do this.
Not because of David.
But because of me.
Seeing him here, no matter whether he was dying or not, just brought all those horrible memories to the surface. All of that pain. It seemed contradictory to both feel like I couldn’t lose David and to know that I had to. That I’d already lost Maverick like this. I couldn’t handle losing David, too. I remembered what it was like to watch someone I loved with my whole heart die. And it wasn’t Linda or Austin guiding my emotions. It wasn’t just fear clogging my reactions.
It was that I couldn’t face the truth.
I wasn’t okay. This was too soon. And I wasn’t over Maverick’s death.
I wasn’t over any of it.
“Sutton?” David asked. He waved a hand at me. “What’s going on up there?”
“I can’t do this,” I finally said. “It’s not…fair to you.”
“Sutton, please…”
“We should break up.”
David’s jaw went slack. “You’re not serious.”
“I’ve been lying to myself. This isn’t about anyone else. I’ve been telling myself it’s not too soon. I’ve been saying that I’m ready. I want to be with you, but you’re only getting half of me. And I feel split in two because of it.”<
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“No, no, no,” he said. “We can fix this. We can work on this together.”
I took a step back. “No, we can’t. You can’t fix what’s already broken.”
David was about to open his mouth again, but right then, the doctor walked in. “All right, David Calloway, let me take a look at your file here.”
“I’ll…talk to you later.”
“Sutton, wait.”
But I didn’t wait. I hurried past the startled doctor and out into the hallway. I knew I’d done the right thing, but somehow…I felt even worse.
Twenty-One
David
The doctor discharged me ten minutes after Sutton left.
But, oddly enough, I didn’t feel any better.
I felt like my heart had been run over a cheese grater.
And the worst part was that I understood where she was coming from. I knew exactly where she was in her grieving journey. I’d known from the start that it might be too soon for her, and still, I’d thought it would be okay. So, now, when it was blowing up in my face, it all made perfect sense.
I was causing her more heartache than happiness, which was the opposite of what I always wanted for Sutton.
Morgan was waiting when I got out of the room. Sutton had taken Jason and was gone.
“Will you take me home?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she muttered. It was clear that her heart was in her throat, and that was something for Morgan.
“Don’t know how I’ll make it into work tomorrow.”
“You can have the day off.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“You got into a major car accident…and your girlfriend broke up with you. I think that’s an okay idea.”
“Let me rephrase; I don’t want to stay home.”
She sighed. “Okay.”
Morgan drove me home in silence. All I wanted was to crawl into bed and pass out, but the doctor had said that I needed to make sure I was careful with my concussion. Morgan followed me inside and promised to watch over me. I wanted to be alone, but there was no talking to Morgan about any of this. Luckily, after she badgered her way into my house, she didn’t ask any more questions or talk about Sutton. She just let me stew.
When pain meds finally kicked in, I was more than grateful. The physical pain subsided, but the emotional toll never let my brain up. By the time my mind finally gave in to the exhaustion, sunlight was streaming into the house.
Morgan was still downstairs when I finally came to. “Do you know how hard it was to wake you up in the middle of the night?”
“You woke me up in the middle of the night?”
“Don’t remember? Yeah, I followed doctor’s orders and made sure you didn’t have serious head trauma. But you seem okay.”
She yawned. She must have slept like shit if she’d waken me up multiple time at night. “I’m going to head home and change. See you in the office.”
I nodded. “See you there.”
I felt clearer than I had in a long time. A perfect dark clarity.
I dressed for work, gritting my teeth as I slid into a suit. I still looked like shit from the accident. But my car looked worse. That college student was going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble for running into my car. I feared for the wrath of his parents when their insurance went through the roof. Maybe I’d be nice and save them the trouble.
My rental car had shown up sometime in my delirious state between being passed out and waking up in a haze of pain meds. It was a sad-looking champagne-colored Lexus, but it would do the trick.
I drove into work and went straight up to my office. It was empty, and I wasn’t used to coming here from home rather than the gym. My whole routine was messed up. But it wasn’t like it mattered.
Sutton was gone.
I had been running from my past as much as she had. Running for a lot longer than Sutton, too. I’d put my family name and my family behind me. Even after I knew that the Calloways were worse people than the Van Pelts. Even after I left for Lubbock. I still hadn’t gone back. So, if anything, Sutton had opened that back up for me. And it was time to stop running.
“You look like shit,” Morgan said with an arched eyebrow when she entered the office an hour later. She, however, looked perfectly put together.
“I feel like shit,” I admitted.
“Well, a truck ran your little sports car over. It seems reasonable that you wouldn’t feel too well.”
“Agreed.”
“I feel like I’m going cross-eyed, trying to catch up on everything so that I can be present for Emery’s wedding on Saturday. I cannot believe that it’s already here.”
“I’m not going.”
Morgan sighed. She dropped her bag down and sank into the chair in front of his desk. “Sutton is going to come around to this, you know?”
“I find that highly doubtful.”
“She lost her husband. You being in that car accident just triggered every one of her fight-or-flight responses. Freaked her the fuck out, and all she did was react. She is going to be okay.”
“She is. Just…not with me.”
“I don’t believe that. I haven’t seen Sutton this happy since Maverick died.”
“Happiness doesn’t seem to be enough. She has to figure out how to put herself back together without me. I’d like to help her, but I know from personal experience that I can’t.”
“You already have,” Morgan insisted. “You just can’t see it right now. She can’t see it. But she will.”
“That’s cheap talk.”
“You’re not even going to fight for her?”
I launched out of my chair, my back and neck screaming in protest. “Fight for her? That’s all I’ve been doing since day one, Morgan. I have been there every step of the way, as caring and understanding as I could be. I love her. I want what’s best for her. But I can’t fight for someone who won’t let me fight for them.”
Morgan lowered her hand, as if to tell me to sit again, but I blew her off.
“I can’t do any more than I already have. I’m hurting her more than I’m helping her. And I’m not going to stand by and continue to do that.”
“David—”
“I’m resigning.”
Now, it was Morgan’s turn to jump up from her seat. “No, absolutely not.”
“It’s a small town. I’m going to see her around. I work for her family. I work for you. It’d be easier if I just left.”
“You can’t quit. I forbid it.”
“You don’t have that kind of control.”
“I’m telling you that you cannot do this. Go talk to her. Convince her otherwise.”
“It would only make it worse.”
“Take the week off. Go blow off some steam and think about this. I can’t accept your resignation.”
“It’s too late.” I glanced down at my watch. “This morning after you left, I booked a plane ticket to New York for after lunch. I’m going back home.”
Morgan ran a hand down her face. “Okay. You know what? Go home. Go back to New York. Think about what it would be like to live in that city again. To live by your family again. I think that’ll be enough to bring you back.”
“I wouldn’t count on it, Morgan.” I turned to leave but glanced back at Morgan once. “You’re a good friend and a great boss. And I’m sorry it all had to end this way.”
“This is not the end.”
And she said it with such conviction that I almost believed her.
Twenty-Two
Sutton
“Here you go,” I muttered. I passed a cupcake to my customer. “Have a nice day.”
The girl gave me a half-smile that was more like a grimace and then hurried away.
“Your people skills are seriously lacking today, sister,” Annie said from where she was seated on a raspberry-colored barstool.
I shrugged. It wasn’t just my people skills. It was everything.
I felt like I’d been hit by a truck.
I had known that severing my ties with David would hurt. I’d anticipated that. But I hadn’t expected to feel like I had lost a limb. Like I was slogging through quicksand, trying to claw my way out and only making it worse with every step. I hadn’t eaten. I’d barely slept. I was a walking zombie.
“You going to talk to me about it?”
“No.” I went about wiping down the counter. It was about to get busy with the lunch rush, and I needed to drink a Red Bull or 5-Hour Energy or something to stay awake. Mostly, I just wanted to go home and cry myself to sleep again.
Because I knew I’d made a horrible, horrible mistake.
I was the master of my own demise.
I needed to find a way to make it right, but at the same time, I knew that I couldn’t. That I’d broken what we had. Even if I went to David right now, I didn’t know what I’d say. Except that I was miserable without him. And I was so tired of being miserable.
But it didn’t erase all the things I’d said.
Or make them any less true.
“All right,” Annie said, going back to her schoolwork.
“You’re awfully calm.”
“Sut, I’ve been here through it all. I know when to shut up and when to push you. Right now, it’s better to shut up and let you figure it out on your own. I think you’re already there anyway.”
Yeah, my best friend knew me too well.
“I don’t know how to fix it.”
“You can’t. You have to accept how you feel about Maverick and about David. If you don’t do that, there’s no fixing.”
I nodded. She was right, of course. Acceptance was the hardest part. I’d thought I was already there with Mav. But raking my emotions over the coals every week wasn’t helping anything.
The bell rang overhead.
“Well, looky here,” Annie said.
My head popped up, and I saw Morgan saunter into Death by Chocolate.
“Oh God,” I grumbled and made a beeline for the back room.
“Sutton Wright, don’t you dare,” Morgan said. She slapped her hand twice on the counter and tapped her four-inch high heel on the tiled floor.
I stopped in my tracks and sighed. Then, I slowly turned and walked back to the cash register. I plastered on a fake smile for my sister and said, “Welcome to Death by Chocolate. What can I get you?”