“They would still go on with it?”
That bitter laugh again. “Who the hell knows what those guys would do.”
“Levi. They love their brother. No matter what else they might do wrong, you know they love him.”
His shoulders sink. “I know.”
“Where will you go next?”
“I guess that depends on what Lennon needs.” He meets my gaze, and his eyes seem to plead with me. “I’m not running from him, Karen.” Somehow I get the sense he’s trying to convince himself, as well as me.
“Okay.”
He nods, satisfied, and pulls the bag up onto his shoulder. But you are running from me, I think sadly. “I guess that’s that, then.”
“Yeah. I guess it is.”
I don’t know how long we stand there, staring at each other. For a second, he looks like he might hug me, his fingers reaching out a few inches into the space between us. But then he must decide the distance is too far, because he drops his hands. “I’ll see you around.”
“Okay,” I whisper, close to tears all over again.
But if Levi notices, he doesn’t stop. Just like Paige. He turns his back and walks through the bedroom door, leaving me alone in the empty room.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Levi
Lennon is in the hospital for a full week. Once his father tells the doctors what had really happened with the accident, they transfer him to psych. Somehow, the record label pulls strings to get the hospital to put him on a long-term care floor, instead of the psych ward, to keep the gossip down. They clear out an entire section of his hallway for privacy. I hope like hell the label makes a huge ass donation for their trouble.
For the first few days, Lennon refuses visitors. We all still come to the hospital every day, his brothers hanging out up on his floor while I spend my days sitting in the waiting room downstairs. I make sure that Will tells Len I’m there, but the Ransomes don’t ask me to come up. Fine by me. I don’t want to see the other brothers, and I think it’s good for Lennon to have the time with the doctors without anyone else around.
The rest of the tour is cancelled. The European tour is in limbo. Dan released a statement about Lennon’s accident, citing his injuries as the cause for the cancellation. So far, no news has gotten out about the real reasons for his continued stay at the hospital.
On the seventh day, I head down to the cafeteria to get some food. I know Dan has been arranging for real food to be brought up to the guys every day, but I’m forcing myself to make due with the selection downstairs. Not even hospital food is grim enough to make me want to spend any time near Daltrey.
Which is why I’m so shocked when he appears in the cafeteria and sits down at my table.
I gape at him for a long moment, sandwich frozen halfway to my mouth, waiting for him to swear or yell or hell, even punch me. Instead, he’s staring down at the table, looking incredibly uncomfortable.
“Can I help you?” I finally ask, his stony silence annoying me all over again.
“I just wanted…” He blows out a gust of air, running his hands through his hair. It looks like he hasn’t showered in a while, and there’s a thick layer of stubble over his jaw. Not for the first time this week, I wonder what it’s been like in those private rooms upstairs.
“Here.” I push my can of Coke across the table to him. “You look like hell.”
He shoots me a quick, almost relieved glance. “I feel like hell.”
“So what’s going on up there?” I ask as he pops open the top and takes a long gulp. “Has he let anyone in to see him yet?”
“Just Daisy.” He wipes his mouth and pushes the can away a few inches, then he looks up. There are tears in his eyes, and it’s all I can do not to gape at him. The Ransome boys don’t do sappy. “They talked for about three hours this morning.”
I close my eyes. Three hours. Daisy was in a psychiatric hospital for months after her suicide attempt. I can’t imagine what that conversation between the two of them must have been like.
“Is she okay?”
“She was pretty broken up when she came out,” he says, his voice cracking. He rubs a hand over his face. “But he’s going to go to Horizons—that’s where she was—on Monday.”
“Shit,” I mutter. I kind of can’t believe he would agree to it. Then again, if she was the one who asked him… “Thank God for Daisy,” I mutter.
Daltrey lets out a strangled sort of laugh. “Yeah. That’s what we’ve all been saying all day.”
“How is everyone?” I ask.
“Oh, you know. Cash keeps breaking shit and swearing at everyone. He’s been a little better since Sam got here.”
“Reed?”
Daltrey winces. “Reed doesn’t talk to anyone. Not even Paige. He blames himself.”
“Of course he does.” Reed had considered it his job to look after his brothers ever since their mom left. He would think of this as the greatest failure of his life. I remember the words I had flung at them that night, about how they should have noticed, and wince. “I probably didn’t help out much there, huh?”
“You said what needed to be said,” Daltrey says, surprising me. He looks up and meets my gaze. “That’s why I came to find you. To thank you. And to…apologize.” His eyes flicker across my black eye. “I can’t believe I punched you.”
I give a strangled laugh. “I think you’ve wanted to punch me for a long time.”
He grins weakly. “Well, yeah. But that doesn’t mean I should have.”
We sit in silence for several minutes. A weight in my chest seems to be slowly lifting. Lennon is going to get help. And Daltrey is apologizing.
“We all owe you a huge thanks, Levi,” he says, staring at the table. “I shouldn’t have attacked you for not telling us. I should have just thanked you for being there for him.”
“I wanted to tell you,” I mutter. “I went back and forth every day, it seems like. But in the end…he trusted me. I didn’t want to mess with that trust.”
He nods. “I know. That’s what he told Daisy.”
“Did she tell you to come apologize?”
He looks up, meeting my gaze. “No. I wanted to.”
I release the breath I was holding. “Apology accepted.”
There’s a beat of silence. “Just like that?”
I shrug. “That’s what you do for friends.”
His face crumples, and he looks away again, struggling to force his expression into something more neutral. “I haven’t been a friend to you in a long time.”
“Things got fucked up, Dalt—”
“I’m the one who fucked them up. Everything you said was true, Levi. I left her for all those months. I knew something was wrong, and I didn’t check on her. I flew to Ohio to go after Justin even though I knew it would affect her. I felt so guilty for all of that. And I think it was just easier to push it off onto you than to deal with it myself.”
I don’t say anything.
“But when I think about Lennon…” Again he roughly runs his hands over his face, and I wonder how close he is to completely breaking down. I doubt any of them are sleeping well. “I forced you away, and you were the one he was counting on. He could have…something could have happened, without you there, and it would have been…”
His breath is coming in sharp gasps, his hands balled up into fists on the table.
“You were right, Levi. We should have noticed. We’re his brothers. We always knew Len was more sensitive. We teased him about it. I had no idea it was… I don’t think I can ever forgive myself, and if something—”
“Hey, Daltrey.” I slide over a few chairs so I’m next to him, placing a hesitant hand on his shoulder. He screws his eyes shut, one fist coming up to press into his forehead. “You can’t blame yourself, man. He’s going to get help, that’s the important thing.”
“But he could have—”
“I know. I know. But he didn’t. He’s here, and he’s going to be okay.” I squeeze his shoulde
r. “When Karen found out, she told me that the important thing is that he always asks for help. The first time this happened, back in high school, he came and told me, right away. Told your dad. He always made sure I knew what was going on. With the drugs, when he was hurting himself.” Daltrey winces at the word hurting, his whole body shuddering. “What scared me the most the other night was that he wasn’t telling me anymore. He wasn’t asking for help. That’s why I freaked out the way I did.”
Daltrey nods.
“If Daisy got him to admit he needed help, then I know he’ll be okay.”
“He has to be okay,” Daltrey whispers. “I can’t lose him, Levi. We wouldn’t survive that.”
“I know how scared you are. But I also know that Lennon doesn’t want to die.”
“But he could have.”
“But he didn’t.”
“Why is this happening?” He opens his eyes and stares at me, his expression a heartbreaking mixture of panic and desperation. “Why does he feel like this?”
“I don’t know. He’s never told me.” I pause, not sure if I should admit to the feeling I always had about Lennon’s issues. I’ve never said it out loud, certainly not to Lennon. But Dalt looks so desperate for some kind of answer. I take a deep breath. “I think it has something to do with your mom.”
“Mom?”
“I don’t know, man. It’s just a feeling I have. I think…maybe that’s why he didn’t tell you? I think that he’s been trying to protect you guys from something.”
Daltrey’s face screws up in thought, but at least the panic has gone from his eyes. None of them ever talk about their mom, but if we can figure out what’s happening in Lennon’s head, maybe we can help him.
“It’s something to think about,” I say. “Hopefully, he’ll let us talk to him about it soon.”
He looks away, and I drop my hand from his shoulder.
“Will you, uh, be around? To talk about it, I mean?”
“I’m not going anywhere, Daltrey.”
Suddenly, he grasps my shoulder, the pressure of his hand so strong, it hurts a little. “I’m glad,” he says, his voice shaking. “I’m so sorry, Levi. Please don’t go away again.”
I think this is as close as he’d ever come to hugging it out. It just isn’t the Ransome boys’ style. But I’m not a Ransome. So I grab him around his shoulders and hug him, tight.
“I won’t.”
He’s still for a moment, but then he hugs me back, and the last of the weight in my chest slips away, just like that.
I don’t torture him by prolonging it. I release him, slapping him once on the back so he can pretend it was manly, and pull my sandwich over in front of me while he takes another sip of Coke.
“Where’s Karen?” he asks after a minute, and some of the weight falls back into my chest. “Paige mentioned she wanted to give us privacy, so I thought she’d be down here with you.”
“She went home.”
His eyebrows go up. “Home? Why?”
I shrug. “There wasn’t much point in her sticking around. No merch to sell if the tour is cancelled.”
He’s looking at me like I’m crazy. “But why wouldn’t she stay to be with you? I thought you guys were really tight.”
It’s my turn to avoid his eyes. “We weren’t really…a thing.” My words hang in the air between us, and I can hear how lame they sound. How totally inadequate for the situation. “It was all fake.”
“Fake?”
“We were pretending.” It sounds so stupid, when I say it out loud. “Karen had this thing going with…someone, and it was bad for her, so…she wanted a buffer. And I…”
“Had to deal with me making you feel like shit about Daisy,” he says. “Jesus, man. I’m sorry.”
“Let’s not go back down that road,” I tell him. “It was stupid. We both thought it would make it easier for us to not feel so much like outsiders, you know?” I shrug. “It’s over now.”
Daltrey just watches me for a long moment. “I don’t know, man,” he finally says. “It didn’t look fake to me.”
“I guess we’re just good actors.”
He snorts. “Really?”
“I’m telling you, man. We planned the whole thing.”
“I’m not saying you didn’t. But that doesn’t mean it was fake.”
“What are you—”
“Dude, I saw the two of you together that night. There was nothing fake about the way you were dancing. Or looking at each other.”
For the first time all week, I let myself think about what it had been like to have her in my arms. About the electricity that had sparked between us. The way the tension had grown and grown until I was sure it was going to explode. And then I had gone and fucked it all up.
“I, uh, may have pushed her away.”
“Because of Lennon?”
I have a sudden flash of her face in the limo, the way she had looked like she couldn’t fathom the words coming from my mouth. I had never imagined Karen in tears, but fuck if she hadn’t been close that night.
“Before we got the news about Lennon.”
“Why?”
I stare down at the remains of my sandwich. “According to Karen, because I’m letting bitterness rule my life.” I steal a glance at him. “I think she might have been on to something.”
Daltrey fidgets with the edge of the Coke can. “Look, man. I’m not an expert or anything. But if you think she’s right, that sounds like a pretty shitty way to live your life.” He punches my shoulder lightly. “And you deserve better.”
“You think?” I can hear the hope in my voice, and it embarrasses me. What kind of grown ass man needs his friend to reassure him that he deserves to be happy?
“Of course you do. Hey.” He gestures at himself. “You’ve been taking care of everyone else for years now. I think you deserve a little happiness yourself, you know?”
Karen had said something pretty similar all those months ago in the mountains. I hadn’t believed her then. Would she still say the same today, after all the terrible things I said to her?
“Life is too short to be bitter,” Daltrey says, sliding his chair back a few inches so he can stand. “I think this week has proven that, you know?”
I look up at him. “Yeah. You’re totally right.”
I expect him to walk away, but he grabs my arm instead, pulling me to my feet. “Come on, man. You should be upstairs with the rest of the family.”
I have to swallow a few times to get myself under control, but Daltrey waits, even pretending he doesn’t notice. When I’m ready, we head upstairs to his brothers, together.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Karen
The apartment is quiet. It’s crazy to think that I used to wish for this, when Paige was bugging me with some plan or another. What I wouldn’t give for some of her chatter now. The campus is almost completely deserted for the summer, no parties or friends to offer distraction. Not that I would have wanted to see anyone, anyhow. I’m perfectly content to sit on the couch all day, watching Netflix and ordering take-out.
If by content I mean depressed as hell.
The worst part is that I know I have this to look forward to for the foreseeable future. Paige most definitely won’t be coming back to school after all of this. Would she want to see me even if she did?
And then there’s the constant worry about Lennon. The entertainment sites are full of gossip about his injuries, speculating that it must be much worse than the family is saying for him to still be in the hospital. I hold my breath every time I see mention of their name, waiting to make sure that no one has found out the real reason behind his extended stay.
I can’t ask Levi or Paige for updates, obviously. And it feels intrusive to bother Daisy. I can’t imagine what this week has been like for her, with her history. She’s always been particularly close to Lennon. How must she feel, knowing that this was happening to him without her noticing?
I think I would be going out of my mi
nd if it weren’t for Sam, of all people. She sent me a text the day after I got home. Paige says you had to head back to Tennessee. This might not be any of my business, but are you guys okay? She seems to be taking it so hard.
I stared at the phone, feeling like shit. Sam is nearly a stranger to me, and even she could tell that I’ve screwed things up with my best friend.
Paige is upset with me, I finally write back. I’ve been trying to stay out of her hair while things are so stressful there.
Sam writes back immediately. I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?
Just help her out if it seems like she needs it. I try not to feel bitterness at the words. The important thing is someone helping Paige, even if that someone can’t be me.
Absolutely.
After that exchange, she takes it upon herself to send me semi-regular updates about Lennon and the rest of the family. It’s much easier to deal with my isolation knowing that he’s hanging in there. When she texts to say he’ll be going into treatment, I’m so relieved I could cry.
She doesn’t say a word about Levi. When I’m not obsessing about my mistakes with Paige, I’m thinking about him. Is he there? Is he still fighting with Daltrey? Does he miss me?
Stop thinking like that, I remind myself for the hundredth time. Levi made it perfectly clear that the arrangement—and that’s all it was to him—is over.
Still, I can’t help the sting when he doesn’t call.
Dan, on the other hand, does call. I take great pleasure in telling him off for interfering with Levi at the club. When I tell him that I stopped loving him months ago, I know that it’s the truth. He calls again and again over the course of the week, but I stopped answering after that first call.
I’m sitting on the couch eating Chinese and watching Gilmore Girls, trying not to think about how it’s Paige’s favorite show, when the door bangs open. I look up in surprise, not entirely sure if I’m seeing things. I’ve imagined Paige banging into the apartment so many times, I can’t even tell if she’s real.
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