Landon didn’t hesitate with his next question. “Are you screwing him?”
April shook her head. “That’s none of your business, Landon, and it’s highly inappropriate for you to be asking.”
“Spare me the scolding, April. You’re like six years older than I am, and I don’t need a lecture about what’s appropriate from a woman who’s screwing her boss.”
She parted her lips to argue but then paused when she realized she couldn’t lie about the situation.
“Mrs. Harrison, sorry to interrupt, but your husband is awake if you’d like to see him. He’s in room 2033,” a nurse said, walking over to the three of us and throwing another curveball into the situation.
Landon’s face paled as the words left the nurse’s mouth.
“Thank you,” April muttered, her tone brusque.
“What the hell does that mean?” Landon barked. “Why did she call you Mrs. Harrison?”
“I think we all know what marriage is, Landon.” She stood taller, but nowhere near tall enough to meet Landon eye to eye. “Your father and I love each other. We have for a while, and after the divorce was finalized, we were finally able to act on it.”
“Why do I think that’s bullshit, and you didn’t wait to act on it at all?” he murmured. “Screw it. I’m not here to talk about whatever the hell circus you and my father are living. I’m here to make sure he’s all right. So, if you will excuse me, I’m going to see my father.”
He took my hand into his and pulled me away from April and her revelations.
We headed to his father’s room, and when we reached the door, I paused my steps. “I’ll wait here.”
“You can come in,” he offered.
“I think this is something you should do on your own with your father.”
“Please, Shay,” he said softly, voice low. “I need you in there with me.”
I couldn’t say no to that request. If he needed me to, I’d follow him to the end of the world.
“Okay.” I nodded, squeezing his hand in mine. “I’m here.”
5
Landon
Dad was lying in the hospital bed, looking drained as ever. I supposed looking as if you’d gone to hell and came back battered and bruised was common after having a heart attack.
Shay came into the room with me and stood back in the corner, not wanting to get too involved with my interaction with my father. At least she was there, though. Knowing she was in the same room as me made it that much easier to breathe.
“Hey, Dad.” I grimaced as I approached his bedside.
He looked over to me and huffed before turning to face the window. There were machines beeping around him, wires running all around. Oxygen tubes sat in his nose, and each breath he took seemed to exhaust him.
“What are you doing here?” He exhaled as if the effort of those words was enough to shave three years off his life.
“I wanted to make sure you were okay. April messaged me and—”
“I told her not to.” He frowned deeply.
“I’m happy she did.”
Grumbling sounds came from him as he moved around slightly in the bed. “Who’s the girl?”
I glanced at a nervous-looking Shay in the corner. “She’s my girlfriend.” It was a term we’d never used before, girlfriend or boyfriend, but I figured it was a given that Shay was mine, and I was hers. We’d just never really needed labels to express that fact.
Dad eyed Shay up and down and shook his head. “You think you’re good enough to keep a girl happy?”
Fuck you, Dad.
I cleared my throat and stuffed my hands into my pockets, not wanting to be a dick toward the dick who’d had just had a heart attack.
“He is,” Shay shouted, her voice loud and stern. “He’s more than enough.”
“Wait until he crumples,” he muttered, shutting his eyes. “You can always count on that son of mine to crumple and leave you with his mess.”
Shay stepped forward to give Dad a few choice words, but I held up a hand to stop her. It didn’t matter what he thought anyway. He was just an old man with a cold heart. He’d never understood me, and he never would.
Still, I hadn’t had a choice about showing up to check on him. Call it stupidity, but even if I didn’t love my father, I still cared to know that he was all right.
“If you’re not here to tell me you’re back in school and coming to the firm, then leave,” he told me. “I don’t want pity from the most pitiful.”
“I’m an actor, Dad, and I just landed a starring role in a huge film. I’m not going to be a lawyer. I was never going to be a lawyer.”
“What is it with you that makes you so content with being mediocre?” he grumbled.
“He’s not mediocre,” Shay shot in, marching up to his bedside.
“Shay, it’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. It’s not fair, and it’s not right for him to talk to you like that. Mr. Harrison, your son is talented beyond belief, and he is making something of himself. Just because he’s not growing into what you think he should be doesn’t mean he’s not achieving greatness, and the moment he found out about this, he put all his feelings aside and came rushing to see you because he cares for you that much. It’s cruel for you to treat him this way when he showed up in your time of need.”
“Little girl, I don’t know who you think you are, but you are stepping into the wrong territory,” Dad warned.
“As are you,” Shay replied, standing tall. If she was nervous, she didn’t reveal it. She didn’t tremble a lick.
I cleared my throat. “Listen, you’ve been through a lot, so we’re going to get out of your hair. I’m glad you’re okay, Dad. I wish you the best.”
“Don’t call me Dad. It’s clear you have no drive to come back to your roots; therefore, you are not my son anymore. You are nothing to me. Don’t come back here. I never want to see you again.”
He turned away from me and stared out the window without offering another word.
Shay looked at him, baffled by my father’s coldness, but it was nothing new to me. The last time I’d seen him, he had said he wouldn’t be surprised if I took my own life. I wasn’t shocked that he was still harsh, even after a life-threatening issue.
My father’s heart had been damaged long before his heart attack.
We turned around to walk away, and my father spoke once more as we made our way out.
“He’s going to hurt you, and then you’ll be left a fool.”
The words were obviously directed toward Shay, a last-ditch effort to get in a dig at me.
I took Shay’s hand into mine, and I saw the fire still burning in her eyes indicating that she was still ready to fight, but it wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth it.
As we left the room, April was standing there with worried eyes. “You didn’t stress him out, did you? His heart has already been through so much. He doesn’t need any added stress.”
I didn’t say a word to her.
I was still replaying Dad’s digs at me inside my head.
Don’t let those remarks settle, Landon. Be better than him. Be stronger.
Shay gave April the dirtiest look and tilted her head with narrowed eyes. “I hope you never change because it appears Landon’s father cannot handle people who experience personal growth. Otherwise, be careful. He only holds on to things that agree with his jaded views.”
We walked off, leaving April standing there dazed and confused.
Whatever went on with my father was her problem to deal with.
As we stepped outside into the fresh air, the morning sun beamed against our skin. Shay was quick to pull me into a hug. “I’m so sorry, Landon. I had no clue what kind of monster your father was. I can’t believe he was that cruel, even after what he just went through. You would think a near-death experience would make him humbler.”
“My father does humility the same way he does love—he doesn’t.”
“Still, what he said to you was cruel
.”
“Ah, if I had a dollar for every time someone said something cruel to me, I’d be rich enough not to care,” I joked. I reached forward to open the passenger door to her car, and Shay placed her hand upon my arm to halt me.
“Landon, you know those things he said aren’t true, right?”
“It’s all right, Shay. My dad just talks. That’s all.”
“Yeah, but please tell me that you know his words don’t hold any truth to them.”
I gave her a half-hearted smile. She frowned as she took both of my hands into hers and placed them against my chest. Then she began repeating the words she’d said to me the night I first showed her my scars. “You are smart. You are talented. You are handsome. You are good, Landon Harrison. You are so good it makes me ache that anyone in this world might think differently.”
God. How did she do it? How did she help soothe my erratic thoughts?
“What are you thinking?” she asked me, staring up with those chocolate eyes. “What’s going through your mind right this second?”
I swallowed hard, pushing a hand beneath my nose. “Why do I care so much for a man who doesn’t even love me? Why do his comments always sting a little more?”
“Because you love him,” she answered. “Even when it hurts, you love him. That’s the problem with love—you can’t shut it off just because it’s not reciprocated.”
“Do you still love your father? After everything he’s done to your family?”
“Pieces of him, yes.” She nodded. “Even when I don’t want to, there are pieces of that man that I love, or memories, more so. Like how, when I was a little girl, he’d lie with me in the grass and we’d name what shapes the clouds looked like. Or how whenever he’d come home after being away for a long time, he’d come into my room, tuck me in, and kiss my forehead. Or how he’d help me with my writing or acting and critique me. I love those pieces of him, the memories—but I also love myself enough not to let him back in, to not let him close enough to affect me any more than he already has. The love I have for him stays in those memories. They rest in the past, and I refuse to let them into my future.”
“How’d you get so smart?”
She smiled, which always made me smile, too. “I’ve watched a lot of Dr. Phil with Mima.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Really, Landon, don’t let any of those things your father said settle, okay? I know it’s easier said than done, but try not to.”
I pulled her into a side hug and kissed her forehead. “Will do. Now can we go get some breakfast? I’m starving.”
She kept staring at me with narrowed eyes, almost trying to look past the words I was giving her to find the dialogue running through my head.
Don’t look too closely, Chick. It’s not too nice right now.
I smiled and nudged her. “Food,” I pleaded. “Please?”
She shifted her heavy eyes and nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
We hopped into the car, and I turned on the music. It didn’t take long for Shay to start bopping around and singing poorly, and I sang, too, because I knew she was worried about me and my thoughts.
Even though I sang and smiled, my mind was still replaying Dad’s words in my head.
You’re not my son.
You can always count on that son of mine to crumple and leave you with his mess.
Those statements played on a loop in my head as I sang the words to some top forty song. That was one of the things about anxiety and depression—every now and again, it came with masks, masks to help shield your loved ones from your suffering because you knew how much it would hurt them, masks to protect them from the pain you felt.
So, I put on my mask.
I pretended I was all right for her. I didn’t want her to worry. I didn’t want her to be concerned that the mechanics of my mind were currently jammed up and fucking with me. It was working, too. The longer we drove, the more at ease Shay became. She relaxed into her seat and stopped glancing my way to make sure I was okay.
The problem with wearing the masks was that when you wore them for too long, they would begin to crack. After the masks cracked, they eventually shattered, and when mine shattered, she’d be left with my mess.
I’d take it off soon. I’d allow myself to breathe without faking as if I were okay, but not during my time with Shay. During my time with her, I’d be okay. I’d be my happy self and not show her my scars. Our actual time together was so short, and I didn’t want to spoil it with deep talks about my flawed psyche.
She deserved a happy version of Landon, so that was what I’d give her.
Then I’d go back to Los Angeles and crumple in the rightful place: inside Dr. Smith’s office, where crumpling was not only allowed, it was encouraged. “You have to knock down some fences to get to greener pastures, Landon.” I was planning to knock them all down, too, because once I did the work on me, I could focus even more attention on Shay and me being together. Until then, I just had to keep unpacking my mind boxes one at a time, unloading them on the right people—not Shay.
We stopped for food, and I kept the mask on nicely.
When we were almost home, my phone rang, and April’s name popped up on the screen. A knot formed in my gut, I turned down the radio, and Shay’s crappy-yet-intoxicating singing came to a halt.
“Hello?” I said, answering the call. April didn’t say anything at first. All I heard was the wailing of her tears as she sobbed uncontrollably. What the hell? “What’s going on?” I asked.
“You!” she cried. “You did this. This is your fault,” she bellowed, her voice cracking as she fell apart.
Wait, what?
She kept going on and on about how after we left, he suffered another massive heart attack and went into cardiac arrest.
He was pronounced dead thirty minutes after I left the hospital.
The phone dropped from my hand and hit the floor mat.
“What is it?” Shay asked, glancing my way. “What’s going on?”
“It’s my father,” I choked out.
“Yeah? What about him? Is he all right? Should we go back?”
“No.” I shook my head as acid begun rising up my throat. “He’s dead.”
I had to call my mother to tell her the news about Dad, and when she found out, she wailed on the other end of the line as if a piece of her soul had been stolen away, the same way April had cried. Even after everything that man had put my mother through, she still found tears to mourn him.
I didn’t cry. I should’ve broken down, and should’ve fallen apart, but I didn’t.
I didn’t feel sad. I didn’t feel upset. I didn’t feel crushed.
I felt nothing.
Numbness raced through me, swallowing me whole.
Shay drove me back to her place, and I could see the worry in her eyes, but I couldn’t respond to it. I couldn’t talk. Words seemed too exhausting.
She sat in front of me on her bed as I stared forward, not looking at anything in particular.
“How can I help you?” she asked, rubbing her hands up and down my thighs. “What can I do?”
I shook my head.
Nothing. She could do nothing.
Sometimes, there was nothing to do. Sometimes, all a person could do was sit.
So we sat.
We lay.
She slept.
I didn’t.
6
Shay
He hadn’t spoken in over twenty-four hours.
When Landon’s mother called his phone to check on him, I answered because he hadn’t left the bed. She was overseas and was scrambling to get a flight home, but wouldn’t be able to make it for another twenty-four hours.
“What should we do?” Raine whispered as she, Hank, Eric, and I sat in the living room. “He has to eat something. He hasn’t left that room since you two got back.”
“I know, but he won’t move. He won’t talk. He won’t do anything. I was surprised he even got up to go use the bathroom,”
I said.
“His father was an asshole,” Hank grumbled. “He treated Landon like shit.”
“True, but he still loved him,” I replied.
Eric frowned and scratched at the back of his neck. He was in school up in Wisconsin and had driven down the second Raine informed him about what had happened. Greyson was dealing with some of his own personal issues but would be on his way as soon as possible.
“This can’t be good for him, for his mind. You know how dark that place can get for Land. He’s already been through so much shit, and he was getting better. He is getting better, but I feel like this is going to throw a big wrench into his progress,” Eric said. “He’s come so far, but fuck. This is heavy. I don’t know if he can carry the weight of it right now.”
“I’m fine.”
We all looked up to the hallway where Landon was now standing. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, and his shoulders were rounded forward.
“You all don’t have to worry about this,” he commented, tapping on the side of his head. “I’m fine.”
“Dude, you don’t have to be fine right now,” Hank told him. “Your father passed away, and that’s big.”
“Like you said, Hank, he was an asshole and treated me like shit. I’m better off without him. Not like he wanted me anyway.”
Those words pulled at my heart. I stood and walked over to him. “What can we do? How can we help?”
“For starters, you can all stop moping around,” he said, brushing his hand beneath his nose. “I’m fine. Eric, I know you drove a long way down here, but you didn’t have to. I already sent Grey a text and told him to stay where he was. He’s dealing with his own tornado—he doesn’t need to come into mine. I’m just going to nap for a bit. You can all go your own ways.”
He turned on his heels and headed back to my bedroom.
I looked back at our friends, and they all wore somber looks on their faces. “We’ll be right here,” Eric said sternly. “We’re not leaving. Now go ahead—he gestured toward the hallway—
Landon & Shay - Part Two: (The L&S Duet Book 2) Page 6