He fell back against the bed when he realized that Amity wasn’t amongst the small crowd. Obviously, his mind was giving him some form of final wish fulfillment. As Cathy took all his vital signs and tried to get him to interact, all he wanted to do was sink back into his the dream.
What if that’s all it was? he wondered. What if it didn’t really happen?
It took hours for Drew to convince everyone he was fine, but they still didn’t release him from the tiny room. Even after the occupational therapist had come and worked with him for over an hour, finishing by saying he was making great progress considering, he wasn’t allowed to leave. No doctor was willing to be the one who discharged the chief of surgery’s son prematurely; not after he’d been unresponsive for over a week.
By early evening, Drew had been scanned, prodded, and poked, and was more than ready to leave. He’d read his medical charts, and knew they had yet to find anything of concern. Drew was satisfied that, other than a need for some minor ongoing physical therapy to rebuild his muscle strength, he was in perfect health.
He was about to sign himself out, and leave against medical advice, when his father came in and told him in no uncertain terms that if he left under those conditions—before the neurologist, psychiatrist, occupational therapist, and any other ~ist who wanted a piece of him was done—Drew would be unable to return to work. In short, he had to stay in the hospital or he’d be out of the hospital for good.
As if the fact that he was a patient, walking around in his damn pajamas most of the day, wasn’t embarrassing enough, he was forced into seeing the psychiatrist Dr. McGregor. The shrink was most interested in discussing the possibility that Amity wasn’t real. He argued that Drew’s increasingly erratic behavior in the weeks after his break-up with Becca could be seen as symptomatic of a trauma response to the rejection by the subject of Drew’s long-term idolization. The more Drew argued that Amity was real, the more insistent Dr. McGregor became about the fact that she wasn’t.
“A few people have mentioned you talking about this, Amity, but not one person has seen you with her.”
“We went to the bowling alley. We went for ice cream. We’ve been out for dinner on a number of occasions all over town. She was living with me, goddammit!”
“Your father was at your house shortly after you collapsed. There was no one else there.”
Drew could hardly say that she couldn’t have been there because they were in Heaven together. There was no way the doctor would think him sane if he started saying things like that. As the memories of his time in paradise with her became ever more dream-like, even he started to question his sanity.
“There was no evidence of anyone else ever having been in the house though either,” Dr. McGregor insisted. “No clothing. No female toiletries. Nothing.”
Drew blew out a breath. “We had a fight the night before. I told her I didn’t want to see her again—she probably moved her stuff out while I was at Dad’s.”
After talking around in circles, Drew finally got Dr. McGregor to agree to sign off on his part of Drew’s father’s list to allow for Drew’s release, on the proviso that Drew go for another appointment in a month.
So it went for the next twenty-four hours, with Drew having to argue, convince, and all but bribe his colleagues to get them to satisfy his father’s ridiculous list. When he was finally free to leave, his father insisted Addy drive him home. Thankfully, she left him minutes after she’d dropped him at home—more than willing to give him the space he now craved.
Looking around the room, he was flooded with doubt over what was real and what wasn’t, but equally engulfed by regret at taking Amity’s offer.
If there ever really was an offer, he thought as he sank into his sofa.
He leaned forward and buried his head in his hands.
“Amity,” he murmured, almost in prayer. “I wish things could have been different.”
I do too, Amity thought as she heard Drew’s words.
She’d watched him carefully from the moment he’d woken in the hospital bed. She’d seen his frustration as he wanted to leave; watched him struggle to take a few steps on shaky legs; heard him defend her against the psychiatrist who was determined to make Drew believe that she didn’t actually exist.
She sat on Drew’s coffee table watching as he murmured words intended for her. His quiet utterances, whispered in prayer as they were, would have reached her ears even if she was on the other side of the globe. Being so close to the source though, seeing all of the emotions that he experienced, made her long to reach out to him. She wanted to assure him that she was real. That she had cared for him. That she regretted their split just as much as he did.
As he pleaded with her for some sort of sign, some sort of proof that what they’d shared hadn’t just been a coma-induced dream, she longed to be able to give it to him. Only she knew she couldn’t risk a single word. If she did, she wasn’t sure she could walk away again.
The smart thing to do would have been to put some distance between them, to turn from him without looking back, like she’d asked him to do, but Amity had never really been one for doing the smart thing.
Chapter Twenty-Two
After the week spent in his own personal Heaven with his very own angel, and then another week recuperating at home, it was a struggle for Drew to go back to real life. The process was slow, partly because of the physical need to build up the muscle loss his body had experienced while he’d been upstairs, but also because of the mental barrier of trying not to think about Amity. Unlike his break-up with Becca, he didn’t have to see Amity every day. In fact, he hadn’t seen or heard from her at all since her goodbye on the beach.
He often found himself wondering where she was, what she was doing. Who she was helping, and how. When those moods struck, he’d usually walk past the bowling alley where they’d shared their first non-date. Or go to the park where they’d shared ice creams in the cold. For brief moments at a time, he even wondered whether Dr. McGregor was right—maybe she had been nothing more than a figment of Drew’s imagination. A figment dreamed up to help him recover from Becca’s rejection. He would have believed it, if not for the nervous way Becca seemed to dance around him since he was privy to Evan’s secret.
As hard as it was having to go back to a normal life without Amity, as much as he missed her and longed to hold her one more time, he felt healthier—better—than he had after Becca left him. He didn’t have any bouts of intense frustration which he needed to take out on his punching bag. It took a conscious effort to continue to do the things Amity had wanted him to do though. Instead of always being at the hospital or in the gym, like he had been in California, he went out. He had fun. Or at least the closest approximation he could get to it without Amity by his side.
Within a month, his life was back to some semblance of normal.
By the time Christmas came and went, he was no longer required to see Dr. McGregor, he’d been given a clean bill of health, and he was back to normal rounds—including being allowed back into surgeries.
On New Year’s Day, he’d stopped for a quick coffee in the almost empty cafeteria when the doors opened, carrying Cathy’s voice into the room.
“Oh, my God, that’s gorgeous!” she enthused.
The utter joy in her voice made Drew lower the tablet he was reading on and look up toward the door. Cathy clutched at Becca’s hand as the two of them moved to the counter lost in their own conversation.
“I would ask if you’re sure about rushing into all this so quickly,” Cathy continued. “But honestly, I’ve never seen you happier.”
Drew knew he should stop listening. He should turn away from the conversation, read through the article that he had in front of him, and pretend the two women didn’t exist. Only, he couldn’t look away.
“You should have seen it, Cath.” Becca’s voice carried easily to him.
Dropping his head into his hands, he tried harder not to listen. He attempted to read the infor
mation on his tablet, which had held his interest just minutes earlier, but which now only seemed to report Becca’s words back at him.
“He woke me up at exactly midnight. At first, I was upset that he’d woken me, but when I sat up, there were at least twelve dozen roses all over the bedroom and there Evan was, down on one knee in the middle of it all. He told me that he wanted to start the New Year the same way he wanted to live the rest of his life.” Becca’s voice was dreamy and filled with all of the things Drew had once wanted to experience with her himself.
Even though he no longer entertained even the smallest hope that there was any future with Becca—he didn’t even want there to be—the tone in her voice still cut him deep. It was a reminder of all the things he’d lost. It was a reminder of Amity and the promise he’d made—and the simple fact that he’d never be able to ask Amity that same, vital question.
He ground his teeth together so loudly that he was surprised the women couldn’t hear him. Then again, they were too wrapped up in their little private celebration to notice him.
“I’d always thought roses were a little cliché and tacky,” Becca continued. “But he’s definitely changed my opinion on that. And afterward—”
Becca met Drew’s eye and cut off. Her eyes widened as she realized he’d obviously heard everything. She was probably wondering what he would do now. In the weeks since his “incident,” as everyone in the hospital called it, they’d settled into a somewhat tenuous working relationship. He no longer stalked her movements or accidentally said anything inappropriate about her, and she spoke to him only enough to do her job. They weren’t enemies, but they were a long way from friends.
Drew broke eye contact first. He’d heard enough. Too much. He fell back into the relationship that he and Becca had shared for the last few months, and simply pretended she didn’t exist. He packed up his things, grabbed his coffee, and left the cafeteria without another word.
He didn’t stop until he was back in his office. He kicked the door closed behind him, dumped everything onto his desk, and then stood trying to process what had just happened—and how it made him feel. Although he didn’t want to admit it, one conversation—one little piece of jewelry—had changed everything. It had sent him back to the mindset that he’d experienced in the days and weeks following his break-up with Becca. It wasn’t that he wanted her back, those desires were long behind him. What hurt, what caused his chest to ache in a way it hadn’t in so long, was the reminder that his own happy ending was an impossibility.
Hiding in his office, it was too easy to recall Amity’s dazzling smile. Too easy to remember the night she’d first forced him to have fun. The only thing that was hazy in his mind was the snatches of his time in Heaven with her. Those memories haunted his dreams, but his conscious mind struggled to focus on them for any length of time.
When he saw Becca’s engagement ring, he was reminded of what he’d lost due to Heaven’s fuckery. He would never get to experience that joy with the woman he loved; never be able to ask Amity that magical question. Maybe he wouldn’t get the chance to ask anyone. There was one thing he knew for damn sure, he would have done something far more romantic than twelve dozen roses. Roses were just so . . . boring. What more could he expect from an ex-cupid though?
Nothing, he supposed.
He reflected on the crazy months since he’d made the choice to move back home. He’d thought Becca was the answer to his prayers, but that was bullshit. Then he met the real answer to his prayers, and he couldn’t ever see her again. She was someone he wasn’t allowed to want, but his stubborn heart refused to listen to Heaven’s edict.
It hurt.
Every part of him ached with the realization that, willingly or not, he’d opened himself up to two women only to be hurt and then abandoned by both of them. The pain of heartbreak—of losing Amity—that he’d been able to mostly stave off with pragmatic acceptance crashed over him like a tidal wave.
“Goddamn it,” he growled as he pushed away from his desk.
He turned and saw the dent he’d left on the filing cabinet in the corner the last time he’d been so upset. In two strides, he’d covered the distance and smashed his heel against it so hard that the metal bent inward almost halfway up the cabinet. He grabbed the top of the drawers and yanked, twisting his body out of the way as the cabinet tumbled down to the ground with a crash. He let out a primal roar—not caring who was listening or who heard.
He tipped his face up to the ceiling. “Fuck you all!”
“Fuck who exactly?” The voice surprised him and he wheeled around in disbelief.
He knew Amity could be anywhere—everywhere—but he hadn’t expected her to ever be in his office again. Especially not now. Not after almost two months of silence. Not looking so good. And especially not looking like she might have cared what happened to him in the months they’d been apart.
It was one invasion of privacy too far. She couldn’t just turn up in his office and expect him to be happy to see her. Even if his heart did skip a beat or two at the sound of her voice.
“Fuck who? Fuck you all. Fuck you. Fuck Becca. Fuck Evan. And most importantly, fuck Heaven. I didn’t ask for any of this. Did you know your precious cupid popped the question? Becca’s off the market. And of course the one woman I want more than anything else is off-limits. It’s like I’m not allowed to be happy.”
She flinched, but then assumed a stoic mask. “If that’s how you feel, then I don’t know how to help you anymore.”
“Of course it’s how I goddamn feel. How the fuck else am I supposed to feel?”
“I don’t know, happy that someone you care about is happy?”
Drew just blinked at her. He’d been so busy feeling bad for his losses and his aches that it had never occurred to him that he should feel happy for Becca. He supposed he did in a way—he just wished that he could experience some small sliver of that happiness for himself. At least something that he could remember and know without a doubt that it wasn’t a dream.
“Are you happy?” he asked.
Her eyes flashed with something that he couldn’t read. “My existence isn’t as simple as happy or not.”
“That’s not an answer.”
She shrugged. “Maybe not, but it’s the only one I’ve got for you.”
He wasn’t satisfied with her response; it wasn’t even slightly adequate after so many weeks of silence. Not to mention the lost memories. It was impossible for him to ignore the questions burning in his mind. He had to ask her the most important one, or he would go insane. “Maybe you can answer this instead. Did you know that the whole time would be like a dream that I can never quite grasp when I woke up from that coma?”
She broke eye contact. He read his answer in her body language. She did, or at least suspected it. “I had heard of humans having near-death experiences. Of being returned to Earth and not remembering the details of their experience in Heaven,” she answered finally. “I had hoped that it wouldn’t happen to you though.”
“Do you have any idea what it’s been like for me since I came back? I’ve been trying to convince myself it was real, and everyone else seems certain I had some sort of breakdown.”
“I never wanted that.”
“And what about you?” he asked. “You just disappeared. You didn’t even spend a single second trying to make sure I was okay. Did you push me out of your mind the instant you sent me back?”
“That’s not fair.” She moved forward, as if she was going to reach for him.
“None of this is fair,” he snapped, stepping back to avoid her touch.
“Do you think I meant to hurt you?” she asked.
“What else am I supposed to think?” He turned away from her, but was greeted with the image of his fallen filing cabinet. He squeezed his eye shut at the sight. He didn’t need the reminder of his anger.
When Amity remained silent behind him, he turned back around to face her.
“It almost feels like you we
re happy to forget me.”
She turned from him and brushed her hair behind her ear. Her bottom lip quivered and her eyes dropped to his mouth. Drew couldn’t help but ache at how fragile she looked. “I don’t have the luxury of forgetting anything.”
“You think forgetting what happened is a fucking luxury?” he stalked toward her again, trapping her against the door. “Tell me you don’t think about it.”
“I—I can’t.” Her tongue stroked forward to slick her lips as her eyes focused on his mouth. “That week was the most perfect time in all of my existence, but nothing has changed. I wish it had. We need to keep it professional.”
“Professional?” He blew out a frustrated breath. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I helped you. And in your own human way, you helped me too.”
He waited until her gaze lifted to his own. He saw the pain of her denial buried inside. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
“I don’t know what you want from me, Drew.”
Raising an eyebrow, he leaned closer to her—close enough that they shared the air they breathed.
“That’s bullshit too,” he whispered. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”
He lifted his hand and traced his knuckles over the soft curve of her jaw. She left out a shaky breath, signaling him to trail his fingertips into her hair and guide her face closer to his.
When their lips where almost touching, he murmured, “Why are you here, Am?”
She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch, tipping her head up so that her mouth was so close to his. “Because I couldn’t stay away when you were hurting so much. When you’re still hurting.”
The words were a reminder of everything that had happened, of everything he’d faced after she’d just disappeared from his life. He dropped his hand and stepped away from her. “You did a pretty good job of it for the last eight weeks.”
All Amity Allows (Fall for You Book 2) Page 19