“Exactly.” I nodded, cracking open the door and bracing myself for yet more torture. “Now swap.”
“Don’t move.” Clamping a hand on the steering wheel that was far too big and ancient for her dainty hands, she faced me with a quick corkscrew of her body. “Don’t you think I can tell how much pain you’re in? You’re sweating, and it’s not that warm today.”
I tensed. “You don’t know me, Hope. Don’t pretend you do.”
“I know enough to see when you’re being stubborn and stupid.”
“Did you just call me stupid?” My voice fell deathly quiet. “I’d be careful if—”
“Oh, please. I’m not afraid of you, Jacob Wild.” Her forehead furrowed in concentration as she turned away from me and attempted to drive off again. “Close your damn door.” The crunch of old gears made me wince, and the roar of the accelerator being stomped to the floor made the engine squeal.
Her heavy foot worked, giving enough juice to the decrepit engine to prod it back into life. We leapt through the air in a lurch of machinery and diesel, the senior gearbox complaining as Hope redlined before clunking into a higher gear.
She didn’t look at me as she death-gripped the steering wheel, doing her best to navigate pedestrians and traffic law.
I pulled my door shut, looking at her from the corner of my eye.
Who was this girl?
Multiple versions of Hope lived inside my head. The timid, ice-cream-loving chatterbox at the movies, the shy morbid-questioning kid from her first ride, the nervous, apologetic girl who thanked me for talking about death, a letter-writing fiend who came across as desperate for a friend, and now this version.
A girl, who at the start, came to us as a refugee for a home-grown family rather than Hollywood fakery and seemed to be polite and sweet and quiet. Had that all been an act, or was this new Hope the imposter?
Because nothing was sweet about her when she was being so damn pushy and dictatorial. Instead of giving me sympathy for my pains, she barked at me like I was a pain in her ass. She snapped her fingers and treated me like some underling. As if she could control me.
It didn’t matter that she was right. At least the part about me driving. I could’ve driven but not all that well. The shooting pains were in my legs now and just sitting in the car’s uncomfortable seats put pressure on areas that screamed in displeasure.
I kept watching her as we drove through town, trying to figure out who she truly was. I didn’t like not understanding people because I didn’t like being surprised. I thought I had her nailed as the try-hard horse-obsessed girl who might giggle and attempt friendship but was a pushover and could easily be told to leave me alone.
This new Hope—or perhaps the real Hope—wasn’t so easily swayed.
“Which way?” she muttered, downshifting as she came to a stop sign.
“Left.” I ignored the urge to massage my spine, cursing the constant pins and needles.
With her tongue trapped between her lips in concentration, she slowed, looked both ways, then turned left and managed to keep the engine idling high enough to switch back into gear and gather speed.
Grudging respect filled me. “You said you’ve never driven before?”
She nodded once, eyes locked on the road. “Never.”
“Not even on your dad’s knee?”
“Not once.” She swiped at a strand of hair tickling her jaw. “He drives the latest model something or other. Most of them drive themselves these days, anyway.”
“Yeah, I saw that there’s a car that’ll parallel park for you. Taking away yet more skills and making humans ever more stupid.”
She threw me a look. “What other skills have we lost?”
“Map reading for one.” I winced as I shuffled, unable to find a comfortable position. “No one reads paper maps anymore. It’s all GPS on their phones.”
Her eyebrow rose. “You’re saying you still read paper maps? I didn’t even think they still printed them.”
I scowled.
Hope’s attention waned as the hulking, ugly hospital came into view. It squatted on the horizon, intimidating and fear-inducing with its prison-like windows, faded red and white paint, and aura of cemetery rather than healing.
I tried for the fiftieth time to get her to change her mind. “Let me make an appointment with my doctor. Honestly, I know you kind of have me as your hostage right now, but the hospital is completely unnecessary.”
Hope slapped on the indicator, pulling left into the car park and casting us in the shadow of the chipped and underfunded medical institution. “A doctor will just refer you to X-rays. You need them now, not in a few days.” Following the signs for A&E, she added, “Besides, your doctor might be sworn to secrecy to keep what happened from your mom, but there will still be a record of your appointment.”
“Huh.” I crossed my arms, studying her closely. “You really are showing your true colours.”
“What colours?” She pulled into a bay of three parks, nosing the wide truck into the middle one, going over the white lines. She should reverse and straighten up. Instead, she unclipped her belt, gave me a chilly look before slipping from the vehicle, and reappeared on my side.
My door swung open as she stood there, foot tapping, impatience bright in her green gaze. “What colours?” she asked again.
“You’re sneaky.”
“I’m practical.”
“You’re tyrannical.”
“I haven’t even started.” She smiled thinly. “Just try refusing to go inside, and then you’ll see tyrannical.”
My heart skipped a beat as she licked her lips, her body shifting as if preparing for a fight.
A physical fight.
With me.
The thought of her manhandling me from the car and dragging me into the hospital made laughter bubble but also a strange sort of other need bubbled too. A need to fight back. A desire to touch her and have her touch me, which was so against everything I stood for that the strange need switched into common nausea, eradicating whatever had sprung between us.
Tearing my eyes from hers, I did my best to hide my nerves. “Does your dad know you’re this overbearing?”
“I’m not overbearing.”
“Oh, really?” I chuckled, hollow-voiced and extremely aware of how this visit would tax me. “You’re like a headmistress.”
“And I’m sure you’d know all about being told off by the headmistress.”
“Are you telling me off now?” I used her as a distraction from the living, breathing monster we were about to enter.
“I will if you keep stalling and don’t get out of the car.”
“Not stalling.”
“I say you are.”
“And I say you should quit badgering me before I stop behaving.” Swinging one leg toward the door, I glanced at the hospital behind her. Already, my heart raced with denial.
How could I willingly step into that place of sickness?
Memories of Dad flickered and filled me with dread. It wasn’t often that I went with him for his treatments, but occasionally, I’d keep him company. I’d clutch his hand as we walked down sterile corridors and past rooms full of the terminally ill.
The beeping of machines keeping the unlucky alive. The scent of medicine fighting a losing battle for patients like my dad.
People would be coughing in there.
Loved ones would be crying.
Death would be cloying.
Life could not survive in such a place.
Goddammit.
Air was suddenly hard to come by as my throat closed in panic.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Jacob.” Hope squashed against me, leaning over me in a whip of movement. Her body pressed against mine. Her stomach on my thighs, her breasts on my crotch. Her long hair tumbled over her shoulder, landing in my lap.
“What are you—” My breath vanished. My voice disappeared.
I gulped.
She’d successfully stunned me stupid as
her tiny hand found my belt and unclicked the buckle.
Her heat was vibrant and warm and alive.
So, so alive.
She woke up the cold parts of me. She called forth the dormant pieces of me.
She made blood spring into unpermitted places and hunger unfurl at an alarming rate.
She made me feel real. More real than I’d ever felt. More noticed. More wanted. Just more.
My panic attack faded, bowing to fresh fear caused by her proximity.
She’d successfully made me curse something other than that doomed hospital all while we sat in the car park of a mortuary.
Her eyes met mine, her arm still slung over my lap.
My heart crashed and collided with so many new emotions. My fingertips burned to touch her cheek and brush aside that strand of hair all before burying a fist in the rest.
She licked her lips, a hitch in her breath causing my stomach to twist.
But then a wheelchair rolled past with a sick patient and grieving spouse, and the brief absurdity of whatever I felt toward Hope vanished.
The hospital grew bigger.
My panic swelled thicker.
And I remembered why I hated everything Hope stood for.
She was lying to me. She was hurting me more than anyone had in years.
She lied and said the hospital saved people, but really, it severed marriages, separated families, and I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t trust that Hope was young and invincible because death took even those who seemed immortal.
I couldn’t do this.
Rage replaced my hunger. Rage at being forced to recognise that this life of keeping people at arm’s length hurt me just as much as it hurt those who cared for me.
Maybe more.
“Get. Off. Me.” My hiss licked around the truck, sending goosebumps over her forearms. Looking through the windshield, I kept my attention on a crow preening its feathers on a skeletal tree. “Now.”
I struggled to suck in a breath as Hope slowly arched up and removed her touch.
She moved too slowly.
She needed to be gone immediately.
My hand lashed out. I hastened her journey.
I pushed as gently as I could. She still stumbled a little.
“Don’t touch me. Ever.”
Her eyes flashed green fury. “Well, stop making this so difficult.”
Difficult?
She didn’t know the word difficult.
She didn’t have triggers.
She didn’t have broken pieces that had the power to take bravery and turn it into sheer, mindless terror.
Her fury morphed into something else. Something I couldn’t quite recognise. Her head tilted like the finches I fed on my deck, her gaze flying from me to the hospital and back again.
And then, there it was.
The worst thing she could do.
Compassion.
Empathy.
Pity.
I wanted to be sick.
“Oh.” Her shoulders fell as genuine regret smothered her. “I get it now. I’m so, so sorry, Jacob.” She sighed softly, nervousness making her that much more annoying and pretty. She caught my eye, beseeching and kind. “It’s just a building. It’s…it’s okay. I don’t like hospitals either, but it’s just four walls and a roof with doctors inside. They’ll make you better.”
The pain she’d caused my heart was finally stronger than the pain in my back.
She’d granted me a miracle.
A miracle where I no longer felt anything other than panic as I slid from the car, brushed past her, and stalk-shuffled toward the lumbering, disgusting building without a backward glance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Hope
* * * * * *
“DID YOU SEE? Jacob Wild is here.”
I froze, the magazine I’d been mindlessly flicking through forgotten on my lap. For three hours, Jacob and I had waited in the ER. He wasn’t considered a top priority, and we’d sat side by side, butts aching in hard chairs, stony silence wrapping us in our own painful little world.
Fifty minutes ago, his name had been called on a crackly intercom, and he’d left on stiff legs and stiffer spine, not saying a word to me.
No ‘goodbye.’ No ‘I’ll see you soon.’ No ‘You can come with me, if you want.’
Nothing but his back and the awful feeling I’d done something unforgivable.
What was I supposed to do?
I’d headed to his house this morning, hoping to find him either in the fields or at least not too sore from his accident the day before. I’d planned on tagging along while he worked or asking for another forced day of hanging out together.
But that was before I’d knocked, peered through the glass sliders, and seen him sprawled unconscious on the kitchen floor.
I didn’t really remember much after that.
I’d shut down my terror and focused on doing whatever I could to help. I’d tried calling his mother. Only, his phone had a screen lock, and I didn’t know Della’s number. I’d contemplated calling an ambulance but knew the trouble I’d be in when he woke.
My only option was to stay with Jacob and try to wake him up or leave him alone and rush back to Della’s, all the while hoping she and Cassie were still around and not on some new errand or chore.
In the end, he’d opened his eyes, drenching me in residual jitters and a rush of adrenaline. I needed him better. And if that meant I was stroppy with him, then so be it. No one ordered him around these days, and that was part of the problem. They let him get away with too much. They walked on eggshells.
To be fair, his attitude made me want to do the same.
But the fear of pissing him off was mysteriously absent under the anger I now harboured. Anger because he didn’t look after himself, and I vowed I’d do it for him if he wouldn’t.
But there was also pity.
So much pity because the terror and grief in his eyes before marching into the hospital shattered my stupid heart. I’d pushed him without thinking. I’d been cruel and bossy.
“I know. It must be pretty serious for him to enter a hospital. After what happened with his father and all.”
I stiffened, eavesdropping when I shouldn’t.
“Yeah, I remember what happened after the funeral. You?”
Every inch of me wanted to spin in my orange plastic seat and stare at the gossipers who spoke about Jacob as if he were nothing more than town prattle and not a living, breathing, hurting…friend.
“Didn’t he ride his horse to the hospital a week or so after? Tied the thing up right outside by the ambulance bay.”
“You’re right. He marched in with hay trailing after him and demanded to see his father.”
“His dead father.”
“Such a sad day,” the older woman murmured. “My friend who works as a receptionist here said he wouldn’t leave. He was adamant his dad was still alive and the hospital was hiding him.”
Oh, God.
My heart squeezed and dropped lifelessly into my stomach.
Jacob had come here as a ten-year-old on Binky looking for his dad?
Tears sprang to my eyes at the thought.
“Took three staff to get him home.”
“So terrible. Least he didn’t do that again. But the coughing thing, Gladys.”
Gladys made an agreeing noise. “I know. So tragic.”
The younger woman tutted under her breath. “I was in line at the supermarket one day, a year or so after his father’s death. Jacob and his mother were in front of us, and Jacob had a total breakdown when my husband coughed. Wasn’t Neville’s fault. He had the flu, but the Wild boy turned catatonic.”
“Yep. He needed therapy then, and he probably needs therapy now.”
Their gossiping lowered to a whisper, “Well, he must’ve had some. Otherwise, no way he’d be here. Guess that’ll make the girls happy, seeing as he’s the richest unmarried boy in this town. If he’s not crazy anymore, that’l
l give them all a fighting chance to be the next Mrs Wild.”
A long pause followed by a shuffle of person and squeak of plastic as the two ladies committed deeper to their tattling. “Do you think he’s crazy from his daddy dying or from the rumour that his parents were brother and sister?”
“Ah, Lorraine, that Mclary court case cleared up there was no incest. You don’t still believe they were siblings, do you?”
“It would explain a lot, though, wouldn’t it?”
Another pause while my temper steadily rose.
How dare these women discuss Jacob as if he were some outcast of society? As if any of his behaviour was his fault? He’d been a boy who didn’t know how to deal with his grief, and they’d laughed at him instead of given sympathy. No wonder Jacob iced everyone out. I’d do the same if such rumours circulated about me.
I’d had a fair share of stories made up about my life. The online articles that said my mother was really Carlyn Clark who played Della in The Boy & His Ribbon and not a woman I looked very similar too called Jacinta Murphy who’d died by her own hand.
Every week, some blogger stated Dad had married some Scottish waitress or abandoned me in some equally ridiculous tale.
Rumours came with the territory of movies and TV.
But Jacob lived in a small-knit town that should have his back. Not suspect his origins, discuss his bank account, or talk nastily about the deceased.
“I always thought Ren Wild landed on his feet. Came from nothing, yet the Wilsons gave him part of their farm.” Lorraine sniffed. “If I knew a bit of hardship in my life would mean I could be a millionaire and a landowner in my thirties, then sign me up.”
“I know. Easy way to get rich, that’s for sure.”
Easy?
Right.
I’d had enough.
I couldn’t listen to another second of this.
Slapping my magazine onto the chair next to me, the loud thwack reverberated around the waiting room, making people in different states of injury flinch.
Spinning around, I found two women—one older with grey speckled hair and another younger with reddish blonde—sitting with their heads together and a conspiratorial look on their faces.
The younger woman, Lorraine, held a tea-towel around her hand where a small stain of blood hinted at a kitchen accident.
The Son & His Hope Page 20