“Calm down, Nancy. It’s not our wedding. We’re both going anyway, and in any case, I have to be there before everyone else. I’m suggesting we hang out at the reception and maybe after I could give you a private fashion show. No cameras, just me and my lewd thoughts and your roving hands.”
“Well, since you put it like that, how could I possibly refuse?”
I expel my breath slowly. This is the worst idea, but at the same time I have to admit I need it. Like an addict with delusions, I promise myself I’ll only have one last hit of Madison. After Dean’s wedding, she’ll go back to her life in South Africa and I’ll never see her again. Right now I need this. Just one more taste of Maddie. One more moment of peace until I set her free before the poison that surrounds me infects her too.
Seventeen – Implosion
Keller
The closer I get to Bronson’s home, the tighter the knot twisting in my stomach gets and the more dilapidated the homes become. I wish Jeana would let me buy them a house in a better neighborhood, but she’s too proud for that. I get it, the only thing she has left is her pride, but the truth of the matter is, it would ease a lot of my burden if she would. Not that I deserve to have any of my burden relieved.
“Syd, I’ve gotta go. I’ve just pulled up to the Cavells’.” The strain is as evident in my tone as if there was a flashing beacon over my head.
“When are you going to stop with this self-flagellation, Kel?”
“It’s not self-flagellation. It’s the least I can do.”
“Kel, you remodeled their house. Bought all the equipment Bronson needs, pay for his medication and his live-in nurse, put his brother through school. I get the bills every month. What do you mean it’s the least you can do? You have to stop beating yourself up about this. If you’d left Bronson there, he’d have burnt to death. Being a quadriplegic is better than being dead. You saved his life.”
This is what I get for having my sister as my accountant. My family know I pulled Bronson from the fire, resulting in him being paralyzed, but they don’t know I’m the reason he got hit by the rafter in the first place. If he hadn’t been concussed, he’d have been able to get himself out in time. They don’t know because even though I made it out with only mild injuries, my life irrevocably changed, and as selfish as it is, I need one thing in my life to remain unscathed—the love of my family.
“What do you want, Syd, me to throw money at them and change my fucking number?” I snap, irritated with my sister, but more than that, I’m mad at myself because I can’t work up the courage to tell her I need this as much as they do. Coming to see Bronson whenever I'm able to is a repentance. I can barely live with myself, and this at least allows me to look at myself in the mirror.
She sighs. “Call me when you’re done, Okay? Maybe we can go catch a movie.”
I scrub a hand over my face. “I love you.”
“I love you too, grumpy bear.”
That almost gets a smile out of me. Almost.
I get out my car and pocket my keys as I make my way up the pathway. The house is painted a cheerful yellow with a white door and window frames. I had someone come out a couple of weeks ago to give the place a fresh coat of paint. But the lawn is overgrown and the flowerbeds are full of weeds, which I can’t understand since I give Jeana money to get a gardener in once a week.
I raise my fist to knock on the door, but it opens before I get the chance and Jeana’s—Bronson’s mother—cheerful face, worn and tired, greets me. “Keller, it’s so good to see you.”
She steps closer and wraps her arms around me, enveloping me in a hug that is gentle and kind, but guilt has it feeling like her arms are made of razor wire. I’ve gotta bank this shit down. Today isn’t about me.
“How you doing, beautiful?”
She swats my arm, blushing a pretty pink as she tucks her dark hair streaked with flecks of gray behind her ears. “Don’t think I don’t know you’re flattering me just to get some of my chocolate muffins.”
I place a hand on my heart. “I’m hurt you’d question my motivation, Jeana.”
She laughs and it’s husky from all the cigarettes she smokes out in the back shed. I think she does it to get away and regroup, and I don’t blame her.
“You gonna invite me inside?”
“As if you even need to ask.” She steps aside, and I walk across the threshold.
Damien, Bronson’s twelve-year-old brother, is sitting on the couch watching a YouTube video on his phone. Jeana was pregnant with Damien when Bronson got injured. Bronson’s dad is a fucking deadbeat and took off when Jeana found out she was pregnant. On the night of the accident, she went into preterm labor, but Damien is a little fighter and also full of shit at times.
He looks over the couch at me. “Hey, Kel. How’s it going?”
“Don’t you have a midterm you should be studying for?”
“I’ve been on him all morning,” Jeana admits.
I walk over to the couch and snatch the phone from his hands.
“Hey!” His indignant cries extract a smile from Jeana.
“Listen to your mother and hit the books. You’ll get this later.”
Damien scowls at me, grumbling as he heads for his bedroom.
I hand Jeana the phone. “Guess I’m not getting a Christmas card this year.”
She laughs. Why does her laugh make me feel worse instead of better? “You’re not the only one. Want something to drink before you head in to see Bronson?”
I shove my hands in my pockets, all the levity gone. “Nah, I’m good.
Her face turns serious. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you come by last week. He wasn’t in a good way, and we couldn’t risk him catching any infections.”
I nod. “I get it. Really.”
We make our way down the hall to Bronson’s room. I’m nervous. I’m always nervous, so I do what I don’t usually do. I make small talk. “What’s happening with the gardener? I see things look a little overrun.”
Jeana looks at her nails, the red nail polish peeling at the corners.
I bend to look in her eyes. “Hey, what is it?”
“Damien broke the iPad he uses for school, and I needed to replace it. I asked the gardener not to come for a few weeks.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You know I would’ve given you the money for it.”
“For that exact reason. Keller, you do enough. The new standing chair you bought Bronson must’ve cost a fortune.”
“Jeana—”
“Keller, the new job pays twice as much as the old one. Please, it’s important for me to do this. You do so much,” she repeats.
“Is that Keller I hear?” Bronson’s frail voice comes through the door, cutting me off before I speak.
I inhale a steady breath and hope Jeana didn’t see it, then slowly push open the door. “You better be decent in here. I’m still traumatized from the last time,” I quip.
I step into the room and fuck, it never gets easier. It takes all I have to keep the smile on my face when I see Bronson lying on his special hospital bed. Did he get fucking thinner? My eyes flick to Laura, Bronson’s pretty nurse I poached from the hospital when I started making enough money to help out. She’s sitting in the La-Z-Boy by the window reading what looks to be a romance novel. Her brown eyes speak volumes as she silently acknowledges what I’ve been thinking. Fuck, things must’ve been bad for him to lose this much weight in two weeks.
“You’re just sore because I’m packing way more than you.”
I try to laugh at his joke—hell, I try to fucking smile—but nothing happens. Bronson looks to his nurse.
“Laura, will you give us a minute?”
“Sure, I’ll go make us all some tea.” Smiling at both of us, she makes her way to the door, her brown wavy ponytail swinging as she walks.
I pull up a chair and turn it around. Straddling it, I rest my arms on the back and do my utmost to smile at Bronson.
“I need to talk to you about something.” Bronson uses the fi
nger on his left hand—the only one not affected by the accident—to move the bed upright.
Something in his tone fills me with trepidation. “What’s up?”
“You’ve got to stop coming here.”
I pale. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the time that Bronson finally lashes out at me for what I did. God knows I deserve his anger. Fucking need it if truth be told.
“I mean you have to stop blaming yourself for what happened. None of it was your fault.”
I’m going to be fucking sick.
I scrub a hand over my head.
“I like coming here.”
I like coming here? Not “I fucking ruined your life.” Not “I deserve to be where you are in that bed instead of living the life you wanted.” Not “I’m fucking sorry I’m killing you slowly instead of the quick painless death you could’ve had.”
No, all I have to say is I like coming here.
“No you don’t. You do it out of obligation, but I’m telling you not to do it anymore.”
I stand and pace. Usually when I come here, I try to be as still as I can. I come in, I sit down, I rest my hands in my lap or over the chair while we watch Nitro Circus on repeat and talk about the fucking weather. I don’t rub in his face all the things I can do that he can’t.
Today, though, is different. I step to his standing chair next to the closet and back to the window. The chair is designed so that Bronson can be in a standing position. It has padded knee straps to hold him in place and a lever he can use to go anywhere in the house. It has every gadget and all the bells and whistles. It just can’t make him walk again.
I shove my hands in my pocket and keep pacing the whole time Bronson just watches me. “Why don’t you hate me?” I finally ask the question that’s been gnawing at me for twelve years.
“I did once.”
My eyebrows shoot up.
“When I woke up and the doctor said I’d never walk again, I hated you with everything I had. I was still badly burned then, and they weren’t letting any visitors in, but Laura would sit with me every damn day, hours after her shift ended, and talk to me. She drove me fucking crazy with that incessant chatter, and I tried every goddamn thing to get her to leave, but she wouldn’t. Eventually, I started looking forward to her stopping by. Especially on the days she wasn’t working.
“One day, my mom came in and said you’d been there every single day, sleeping on the chairs in the waiting room. I was so pissed at you. I wanted you to fucking die. Worse, I wanted you to be the one in the bed I was in. I lost it. I wanted to throw something at the wall, but I couldn’t move.”
I push the bile down as I listen, remembering what it was like sitting in the hospital day in and day out, knowing I’d done that to him and there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it.
“Laura asked everyone to leave, and when I calmed down, she asked me a question that put everything into perspective for me.” He smiles at me. “Wanna hear what it was?”
It doesn’t matter what it was, but I nod.
“She asked me if there was no fire and if I hadn’t got hurt, would I have forgiven you for decking me. I thought about the answer to that question for fucking weeks. It was all I could think of. Laura would come in every goddamn day and chatter on about the current novel she was reading, and all I could think about was her question. Then one day a couple of brothers were fucking around outside my room. Their father was in the burn room next to me, and they’d been in every day for six months apparently. I didn’t hear much of the conversation, but from the sounds of things, one of the brothers made out with the other’s girlfriend. Fists started swinging, and the older brother went down. When he got up, he held his hand out to his brother. I swear, Kel, the guy was vibrating, and it took him for fucking ever, but eventually he shook his brother’s hand. And that’s when it hit me. It wasn’t you that put me in a hospital bed and made me a quad. It was me. We weren’t brothers and we weren’t ever really friends, but I should never have antagonized you with Shannon that way. If the roles had been reversed, I would’ve killed you right there on the spot.”
He turns his head and looks out the window. “You’ve been coming here every damn weekend you could manage for the last twelve years. But you have to stop. This is fucking killing you, man, when it shouldn’t because I did this to us. Not the other way around.”
I shake my head. No, this can’t be happening. Doesn’t he see I need this?
“I overstepped with your girl. And if she’d given me the green light, believe me, I would’ve been balls-deep in her.” He smiles. “She was fucking gorgeous, man. You can’t blame me. But that’s ancient history now. I hardly have any testosterone left in my body—nature’s way of giving back, I guess.”
Bronson laughs and then starts choking. I go over to him and pat him on the back, but the whole time I’m terrified I’m going to crack a rib he’s so thin. Laura comes in and shoos me to the side, and somehow her magic hands work. They smile at each other, and I gape at them. How did I not see this? He’s in love with her, and I’m sure she is with him.
When Bronson stops coughing, he looks at me. “Kel, I’m happy. I’m at peace. But every time I see you, I relive that night.”
Laura squeezes his hand in encouragement. “I think I’m going to fucking miss you, man, but it’s time for us to part ways. You need to live your life, and I need to live mine. We can’t keep being trapped in this forever.”
I don’t know how I get through the next ten minutes. How I tell Jeana what Bronson wants or how I get into my car, but I do.
I’m almost three blocks away when I have to pull over to the side of the road. Swinging the car door open, I lean over and vomit all over the pavement. I can’t fucking do this.
How am I gonna do this? How, when I need days with Bronson to live with myself, am I going to do exactly what I ranted to Sydney about earlier—hand over a fucking check and write them off.
My phone dings and I reach for it, hoping it’s Laura or Jeana telling me that this was all a fucking twisted joke. Maddie’s name pops up on-screen. A fresh bout of nausea overwhelms me, and I throw my phone on the seat. I can’t talk to Maddie now. Not when I’m this fucked-up. If she were here I’d bury myself in her until I couldn’t even remember my name much less the pain ripping through me.
But she’s not, and as much as I fucking need her, I know it’s good that she’s ten thousand miles away from me right now. She doesn’t deserve to drown in my fucked-up life.
Eighteen – Coming to America
Maddie
It’s been a long flight despite Blair paying for a first-class ticket. I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know if it was the stress of catering Blair’s wedding or if it’s because I haven’t heard from Keller in over a week—since I asked him to be my plus-one for the wedding, to be exact.
Okay, so if I’m honest, I know it has more to do with inviting Keller to the wedding than the catering stress. I know my way around a kitchen and I have a plan, so the food really isn’t an issue. It’s the unknown I’m not great with. And things with Keller Cannon are a giant unknown at the moment.
Did I ruin a perfectly good thing, even if I didn’t know exactly what that thing was?
Ugh, these questions have been driving me crazy all week. Everything was going great. Keller and I were really getting to know each other—well, as much as one can online—but I felt like something was happening. Then I all but put him on the spot to come to the wedding with me, and now he’s probably having second thoughts.
I disembark from the airplane and head through customs. I’m really freaking mad at myself right now. I can’t believe that I’m letting all this get to me the way it is. It was a weekend fling. That’s it. And everything that came after that was a bonus, so why can’t I just be happy to go with the flow and let it go?
I’m so distracted I don’t see Blair until she’s running straight for me. Her arms engulf me, and I
release the handle of my suitcase to wrap my arms around her. “Oh my God, Blair!” I screech. “I’ve missed you.”
“Shhh,” she says, glancing around quickly, but when she sees we haven’t attracted any attention, she relaxes.
I scrunch my face up in apology, my troubles all forgotten by the excitement of seeing my best friend again for the first time in a month. “I’m sorry; I keep forgetting you’re famous now.” I look around the airport in surprise. “How come there isn’t a giant crowd all trying to get a piece of you?”
She taps the bill of her cap and grins. “It’s amazing what a cap and a pair of sunglasses can do.”
“Damn, I was kinda looking forward to my fifteen seconds of fame,” I tease.
“Trust me, it’s great and all, but it gets old quick. Especially when I’m trying to have a quiet meal with Dean and we get mobbed by fans.”
“Yeah, I get that can be quite intrusive. Speaking of Dean, where is he?”
“Oh, he’s at home. Working on a surprise for you actually.”
“A surprise for me?”
“Yes, but I’m not saying anything, so don’t even try getting it out of me.”
“Fine,” I huff playfully while I tug her to me again. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too. Wait till you see what I picked out for your bridesmaid dress.”
“I can’t wait to see it.” My stupid eyes sting with tears, and suddenly I’m really emotional. All it takes is talk of the wedding to get me going again.
Blair takes a step back. “Hey, are you okay?”
“I’m good, I’m just tired.”
“Nausea bad?”
“Yes, I didn’t have you to take my mind off things,” I lie.
We spend the next twenty minutes it takes to get to her home in Rancho Palos Verdes catching up. Blair tells me she needs to pop to the studio tomorrow to put the finishing touches on a song she recorded a couple of days ago and invites me to go along with her. I don’t want to get in the way when I know she needs to concentrate, so I suggest chilling at the house while she takes care of things. She looks a little relieved which tells me Blair is more stressed than she’s letting on. I make a mental note to try ease as much of her load as I can while I’m here. I knew her schedule was going to be tight with all the kerfuffle from winning the Grammy and having to finalize her album before the wedding, but I didn’t realize until now just how tight it would be.
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