by Joanne Rock
He dressed her gently. Thoughtfully. Even so, she could feel his anger and frustration in the tense way he moved. The cool divide between them. She wanted to tell him this wasn’t a big deal, but the fatigue of so much pain kept her from doing anything that wasn’t necessary. Besides, she remembered how much he hated secrets and agendas.
Her body had given up. It killed her to think that an hour ago she’d been enjoying the sensual nature of her body—and his—in a way she never had before.
Sex had been beautiful. Profound. And she’d been looking forward to more with him all night long. Except she didn’t have that kind of physical stamina anymore. In fact, when the time came to leave the house and head to a medical facility, Zach didn’t bother trying to help her to her feet.
Instead, he scooped her up in his arms, cradling her as if she weighed nothing, juggling her in his arms as he slid her into the passenger seat of the SUV, already warmed and ready with blankets inside.
He was such a good man. A good, angry man. She didn’t quite know why he was so upset about a health secret that was hers to keep. But the cold set to his jaw as he drove her north—out of town—toward Franklin, told her everything she needed to know.
He’d treated her with tenderness and made her body come alive under his touch, but in exchange for a beautiful time together, he felt betrayed. Too exhausted to figure out why, let alone explain or apologize, Heather closed her eyes and fell asleep to escape the hurt.
Not only the physical kind, either. There was a new ache in her heart that had Zach Chance’s name on it.
* * *
THE MORNING AFTER confronting J.D. on the baseball field, Megan waited in line at her study hall teacher’s desk to get a pass to the physics lab. The class was quiet, the room unnaturally dark with a rainstorm raging outside. The girl in line in front of her wore headphones despite the teacher’s strict rules against it. Her head whipped back and forth to music only she could hear, her spiky blue Mohawk immobile, shellacked into place.
Sure enough, the teacher gave Mohawk Girl a pass to the principal’s office.
“Can I go to the physics lab?” Megan asked. “I have a makeup to complete.”
“I don’t know. Can you?” Mrs. Markowitz, an old-school English teacher, already scribbled the information on a scrap of blue paper.
Seriously?
Megan tried to smile as she corrected herself. “May I?”
Mrs. Markowitz winked at her as she handed over the pass and Megan scurried out the door. She’d dressed in sweats and a hoodie today, so tired from the night before she hadn’t even showered. But she needed to take the lab she’d missed the day before. She knew the science teacher—Ms. Leister—had a free period and would let Megan make it up.
As much as she hated being stuck in the halls of Crestwood High every day, she felt guiltier hating it when she knew how much Wade would give to trade places with her.
Wade.
His name circled her mind as she hurried past the full classrooms and down toward the science wing. She’d thought about him way too much since his unexpected kiss. What was she doing mooning over a boy when she needed to leave Heartache as soon as school was done? It wouldn’t be fair to let him think otherwise. And yet...
The kiss had been the nicest thing to happen to her in a long, long time.
Turning a corner at the end of a row of red lockers, Heather hurried into Ms. Leister’s room. A handful of underclassmen were already working in the back of the lab. Up front, she spotted the teacher speaking with Bailey McCord.
Crap. Crap. Crap.
She spun on her heel, causing her tennis shoe to squeak on the hard floor.
Everyone stared. At least, it seemed that way.
Her face burned.
“Your timing is perfect, Megan!” Ms. Leister called with a seemingly never-ending supply of good cheer. No other teacher embraced their subject matter with as much insane enthusiasm. “Bailey missed yesterday, too. You can be lab partners for the makeup.”
Bailey made eye contact for the first time in months. With her perfect makeup and flawless blond hair held off her face by a black lace headband, Bailey looked about as different as possible from Megan in her ratty sweats. Yet their expressions matched perfectly—both their mouths hung open in disbelief.
Megan’s brain worked fast to think of an excuse. She was deathly ill. She just got her period. She could fake a fainting spell like the women in all those Ann Radcliffe novels she’d been obsessed with last summer.
Then again, why should she?
She needed to complete her work. If Bailey hated her so much, she could come up with the excuse.
“Here you go, ladies. Follow me.” Ms. Leister waved them toward a lab table off to one side of the room. “I left out a few sets of the beakers and cylinders for student makeups today. Just find the instructions in the book for the density lab. If you work quickly, you should be able to finish before the period ends.”
Any moment, Bailey would think of somewhere else she needed to be. Beg off for one reason or another. Yet when Ms. Leister walked away, Megan’s former friend didn’t speak.
Megan flipped open a spare textbook. Each turned page made a snapping sound that echoed her annoyance.
“You know, you don’t have to do the experiment with me.” Bailey withdrew a bookmark from the page she’d already flagged in her text. Columns neatly drawn, she had the paper all prepped for the work.
Megan rolled her eyes. She might steal boyfriends and lie to her friends, but the girl was seriously organized.
“And let you get the A while I take an F for not completing an assignment? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Since when do I root for people to fail?” Bailey frowned at the text, one manicured hand smoothing over the bookmark with glossy ultrapink nails.
Megan recognized the bookmark and the book it advertised—a romantic trilogy with a hot hero from an alien planet. They’d both read the series in between the Ann Radcliffe stuff last summer when they’d been friends.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe ever since you started stealing boyfriends and trash-talking your friends behind their backs.” Keeping her voice low, Megan yanked graph paper and a ruler from her bag.
She didn’t know what had gotten into her this week—this need to confront people. Maybe it had been eating away her insides for so long that the toxic poison was starting to leak out.
“That’s bullshit,” Bailey whispered furiously. “I never trash-talked you.”
Bailey walked to the sink and measured the necessary water so they could start taking their mass and volume measurements. Megan opened the isopropyl alcohol and filled another cylinder, two steps ahead so they could finish faster and get the hell away from each other.
“So you’ll admit to stealing J.D.—not that he was any great loss—but you won’t admit you tried turning the whole school against me?” Megan noticed Ms. Leister looking their way, so she made an effort to pull her mouth into a smile that felt more like baring her teeth.
“Girls,” Ms. Leister called. “Do we remember the first law of thermodynamics?”
Bailey straightened from her work on her graph. “The total energy of an isolated system is constant despite internal changes,” she retorted, never missing a beat.
“Show-off,” Megan muttered between her teeth.
“Exactly!” Ms. Leister beamed. “And if you add heat to a system, there are only two things that can be done—change the internal energy of the system or cause the system to do work to use that energy.” She peered at them over her glasses. “And since you have quite a bit of heated energy over there, let’s use it for more work instead of distracting chatter. Okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” both of them answered at once.
For the next thirty minutes, Megan worked ne
xt to Bailey in silence, the lab going faster and—she had to admit—better than it would have with Jennie, her usual lab partner. She and Bailey had been friends once, after all. Despite everything that had happened between them and Bailey’s decision to be a backstabbing liar, they still had some things in common. Intelligence, for one thing. No surprise Bailey had known her thermodynamic laws.
Commitment to good grades was another.
Megan knew plenty of smart kids at Crestwood, but not all of them bothered to—as her father would say—“apply themselves.”
Bailey did.
That was probably why Wade had discounted her as the sender of the mean texts. Wade hadn’t believed that a smart girl with her eye on the future would be involved in the kind of bullying Megan was experiencing. And considering how fast Bailey had denied the trash-talking accusation, it made Megan wonder about it, too. What if Bailey wasn’t the reason behind all the evil at school?
What if she hadn’t sent the texts? And if J.D. hadn’t, either... Yes, that amounted to a lot of ifs. But she felt less sure about what the hell was going on. And as much as she hated the idea that Bailey and J.D.—or their friends—were harassing her, it freaked her out even more to think that a total stranger had targeted her.
“Time to finish working,” Ms. Leister announced, glancing around the room at the few people still using lab equipment. “Let’s get things packed up and put away before the bell.”
Crap. They really hadn’t worked fast enough, because Megan hadn’t gotten all the data written down for Bailey’s portion of the lab. Normally, they would have had a double period to work on their measurements and copy all the notes.
“Switch notebooks?” Bailey thrust her composition book full of neatly written columns in front of her. “We can take pictures on our phones. Ms. Leister won’t care. I’ve done it before.”
Megan glanced toward the front desk, where the teacher worked on her laptop.
“Either that, or you can call me later.” Never had words been spoken with more sarcasm.
“Good point,” Megan muttered, passing over her notes while she withdrew her phone to take a picture of Bailey’s data.
When the bell rang, Bailey practically sprinted out of her seat, leaving Megan to put away the last of the equipment. At least the work was done. Honors physics was tough enough without taking late grades, too. Besides, Megan didn’t need to rush since her next period was her regular physics class anyhow.
She didn’t know what made her look up at Bailey again as her ex-friend reached the door, but she was just in time to catch sight of J.D. in the hall, waiting for her. He had such a pissed-off look on his face that Megan wondered if he’d seen her. But from where she stood, it sure seemed as if he glared at Bailey instead.
And although she couldn’t see Bailey’s face, she could sure tell that she darted right past him. Ignoring him?
Maybe she was just in a hurry or had a class on the far side of campus. Still, Megan didn’t like the vicious expression on J.D.’s face. What had gotten into that kid to make him act like such a complete waste of space all the time? He didn’t use to be that way.
Packing up her papers, Megan slid them into her bag before she noticed a pink sticky note on the back page of her composition book.
You stopped talking to me, remember? I’ve never said one bad thing about you, no matter what you think.
The note wasn’t signed. But—unlike the mystery texts—Megan knew exactly who’d written this.
Was it true?
Had she concocted the whole rift between her and Bailey? She sure hadn’t dreamed the way the kids had made fun of her at the wedding breakfast. Or the mean texts and website. But when she thought about the way her friendship with Bailey had dissolved, she had to admit that there’d never been a big blowup or confrontation. Had Megan imagined that Bailey was talking and whispering about her with her friends?
Peering around the physics class, Megan could find at least three pairs of girls who were talking and whispering right now. Some of them even looked her way as they did it. As if they were talking about her.
But what if they were simply looking around to see who was watching them? To see if they were overheard? To see if any boys noticed them, since that seemed of inordinate importance to most high school girls.
Maybe Megan could imagine a scenario where she’d dreamed up the idea that Bailey hated her. But she sure hadn’t imagined that Bailey had set out to steal J.D. Even Wade knew the two of them had been hanging out before Megan broke up with her former boyfriend.
As the bell rang to signal the start of class, Megan settled deeper in her seat and shoved aside Bailey’s note. She could ask Wade what he thought. He’d said he wished that Megan trusted him more, so she would trust him with this new piece of a puzzle she didn’t understand. If nothing else, it helped to know she had someone to talk to.
And if there was another kiss in their future...?
Megan couldn’t wait.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“ARE YOU RELATED to the patient?” an emergency room nurse asked Zach three hours after he’d brought Heather to the hospital.
He’d been by her side for the first hour, waiting for one kind of doctor and then another, watching over her as she snagged snippets of sleep that didn’t look all that restful, based on the pained expression pinching her mouth and furrowing her forehead. But he’d been there when she’d spoken to the first doctor. Heard her confess she’d been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis over the summer. Heard the doctor discount that RA could be causing her such sudden acute pain. But when they’d wheeled her down to the imaging department for some X-rays, Zach had been left behind and he hadn’t managed to find her since, after a staff change at dawn.
Frustrated, he was in the general waiting area searching the hell out of rheumatoid arthritis on his phone. He wanted to be with Heather, and instead, he was surrounded by assorted coughs, broken bones and one old man who couldn’t stop wailing despite no visible injury. Zach’s nerves were stretched thin, and the scent of antiseptic air was giving him serious flashbacks to the worst night of his life—when he’d brought Ellie to this hospital. He just wanted to find Heather. Make sure she was okay.
Unable to stand it any longer, he shot to his feet. He tucked his phone away and strode to the nurses’ station.
“I brought Heather Finley in last night.” Too tired to apply any charm to the situation, he stared down the nurse, the woman who was now in charge of the registration desk. “I have her personal belongings,” he lied. “I know she’ll want them. Can you just point me in the right direction?”
“Unless you’re related, sir, I can’t allow you into the restricted section.” Unimpressed, the woman lowered her attention back to her computer screen. “But I can print a label with Ms. Finley’s name and give you a bag for her personal items. I will make sure she gets them.”
“I don’t want a label.” He covered his face with one hand, squeezing his temples to ward off the ache in his head. “I want to see my...girlfriend.” What else came close to describing their relationship? “We are not related. But I’m not some stranger off the street asking about her. I’m worried about her. She’s seriously ill.”
Pulling her hands off the computer keyboard, the nurse swiveled her chair to face him. One long ponytail trailed over her shoulder, not quite covering a name badge that read Lorena.
“Sir, I realize you want to be with Ms. Finley. But this is a hospital, and there are strict privacy laws in place to protect our patients. Those laws are there for a very good reason, even if they feel inconvenient to you this morning.”
Right. They were there to protect people like Heather, who didn’t want to share jack shit about herself with him. Who hadn’t told him or anyone else in her life that she was suffering from a serious condition, which he’d only learned
about thanks to scanning the internet. Clearly, in Heather’s mind, it didn’t matter that they’d slept together. That he was falling for her fast. He had been for months.
Heather Finley had one foot out of Heartache before she’d ever kissed him, and nothing—not him, and not a debilitating disease—was going to slow her down.
Zach debated storming the doors behind the admitting desk. As he stared at them, the first doctor who’d seen Heather shoved through them, his attention on his phone.
Thanking Lorena for her help and leaving her to her work, he jogged to catch up with Dr. Watts. The resident hadn’t been much on bedside manner, bleary-eyed and spending half the exam time talking about growing up on the West Coast once he’d found out Zach had attended college in San Jose.
“Doctor.” Zach matched his step to the older man’s, noticing the guy checked out ESPN highlights on his phone. “I’ve been waiting for Heather to return from her X-rays. Do you know where they would send her afterward?”
“Sure, sure...” The guy nodded, never taking his eyes off his screen as he pivoted the device so Zach could see it. “Look at number 33 tomahawk this one down.”
A one-handed dunk followed, and Zach faked interest, figuring he hadn’t gotten anywhere with Nurse Lorena by being demanding.
“Nice,” he commented, fresh out of sports enthusiasm at the moment.
But the bland remark must have been enough, because Dr. Watts clapped him on the shoulder to turn him around, then marched him right past Lorena through the restricted-access doors.
“This way.” Dr. Watts nodded to a colleague as they passed a nurse escorting a shuffling older woman down the busy hall. Most of the doors were open to treatment rooms where patients waited to be admitted or see different doctors. “I ordered some fluids for her and called for a rheumatologist to take a look before we send her home.”