“What’s the prognosis?”
“We’re very fortunate James is with us,” Dr. Liu says, as if he wants to start with the good news. “He’s a very, very lucky man.”
The weight of JJ’s luck is too heavy for any of us to smile.
“Beyond that,” the doctor continues, “it’s too early to say. The surgery was a success, but we’ll need to wait for the swelling to reduce before we can say more than that.”
“Will he walk?” There’s an edge of tension in Bob’s voice which in another man would be shouting.
“At the moment we don’t see a mechanical reason why not,” Dr. Liu says carefully. “But this is still very, very early in James’s recovery. We’ll know very soon.”
So this is it. The thing we were always so afraid of. The thing that JJ thought mattered less than his sport.
Here we are, at very almost the worst of things.
My mouth feels full of ash. I have to work a swallow through my throat before I can speak.
“What about boarding?”
They all look at me, but I don’t regret saying it. It’s what JJ would ask.
If there’s one thing he made clear, it’s that he would always choose this.
Dr. Liu’s mouth tugs down to an unhappy slant.
“With an injury of this scale… I think James should be grateful with how lucky he’s been.”
Black laughter wells up in me, bitter as bile. I hold it down. “JJ is not going to be happy with just walking.”
I regret saying it immediately. Not because it’s untrue. But because beside me JJ’s mom crumples, a sound of sadness seeping out of her as if she’s too tired even to form it into a proper cry.
JJ’s father finally looks back from the window, and the blank mask he’s trying to keep over his face is slipping. He’s sixty-five years old; he’s not a man to show emotion easily.
“So long as he’s here,” he grunts, the words thick with the tears he’s holding back. “So long as we still have our boy.”
But from the way he says it, even I know he’s thinking the same thing I am.
I don’t want to go and see JJ with his parents. It was one thing to support them while they heard his prognosis. I was such an important part of their lives for so long, I couldn’t say no.
But to walk into my ex-fiancé’s room with his parents, as one of the family?
I can’t bring myself to do that.
Robin squeezes me close before they leave for his room. She’s clearly been building up to this question, turning it over in her mind. Her voice wavers with hope.
“Raquel, tell me… Why did you come? Did he call you?”
I swallow over the lump in my throat. “The hospital called me,” I correct—but I know that’s not the real question, the answer Robin looks for with such hope as she draws back to watch my face.
I don’t know the answer to that question myself. It’s too big. It’s too much.
“Don’t talk to him about it,” I say suddenly. It’s too personal. It’s too close. I love Robin, but I feel threatened by anyone seeing this private, vulnerable thing. “Just—let me see him first. Don’t tell him I’m here unless he asks.”
Robin is still excited, and I can’t bear to hurt her even more in this time. I can’t make myself say: it’s still over. I’m never coming back.
When Robin finally texts me to say that JJ is ready for visitors, I’m too cowardly to ask her if he mentioned me. If he knows that I’m here.
I don’t know what I would want to hear.
That JJ still loves me, and that he needs me?
My exhausted heart twists in my chest at that idea.
I don’t want JJ to want me now that he can’t have what he really loves. I don’t want to be his second choice.
Walking to his room feels like walking to the gallows, and yet I have to go. All the fluorescent lights in the hospital seem to guide me to him, and like a sleepwalker I can only follow my feet.
I’ve come all the way from Paris. I have to go this step further.
I have to see that he’s awake, that he’s—not well. Not happy. Just… coping.
I have to see him and then, I promise myself, I’ll go.
I’ll hold it together. I’ll make it through this. I truly believe I can stay in control—until someone’s shouting my name, and the past comes crashing back to me.
“Raquel!”
Hanne’s holding me before I work out it’s her. I collapse into her arms, wrapping her in my own, and begin to sob into the tangles of her blonde-and-pink hair.
“You came. You came. Oh my god.” Hanne sounds surprised and relieved. She might be the strongest woman I know but her voice is breaking.
All the memories mix together, crushing the air around us.
Hanne and I laughing together on a girls’ trip to a spa when we all visited Verbier together. Dancing together in a bar at Whistler. Cooking Christmas dinner for the crew in the Jackson house.
And worst of all, the final one, the hardest: Hanne squaring off against me in the hall at High Performance HQ, shouting so loud that the whole complex must hear it.
“You can’t ask him to give up who he is! You have no right to ask him that.”
But in this moment, that shouting doesn’t matter. Hanne holds on to me like she’s never going to let go, and for now we’re together. Standing in the face of all this pain and supporting each other.
Hanne has JJ’s athlete’s muscles and his athlete’s grip. Holding on. Reaching. Never letting go.
In her arms, for this moment, I feel supported and safe.
Hanne and I haven’t spoken since that argument, but none of it seems important anymore. All that matters is that we’re here, together, and in the moment before I see JJ we hold each other, united by our love for him.
JJ
If it were just me, I don’t know what would happen.
But sometimes, the people we love save us.
Not because it’s good to see them—even if it is.
But because I have to hold it together for them. I can’t let my mom see me broken. I’d never forgive myself if I let her see her only son like this. I swallow down all my bitterness and my terror, and I force the best smile I can for her and Dad. She hugs me, as if her love were hot enough to bring life back to the frozen statue of my body.
The chunk of ice in my chest is too big for her warmth to reach, but she doesn’t have to know that. I tell her I love her, that it’s okay.
“We’re going to get you the best treatment money can buy,” she says around her tears. “We’re going to make it through this. And you never know—” her voice goes funny—“maybe you’re going to have some good luck, soon.”
I love her enough to smile, no matter how much it hurts.
Short of waking up and finding out this was a bad dream, I can’t imagine any good luck coming my way.
Somehow seeing my friends is even worse than my parents. I love them. I want them here.
Just as much as I can’t bear to see them. These people who represent what I used to be. What I might have lost.
The life that might be dead to me.
There’s nothing I’ve ever done that’s harder than seeing Hanne and Brooke, one of my oldest friends and one of my newest, and forcing myself to smile for them. Brooke with her arm in a cast, tear-streaked and trembling. Hanne seeming to quiver with barely held tension, close to shattering with sisterly love.
And Chase isn’t with them.
I don’t ask about it. I know Brooke will be struggling with this enough already, devastated by the fact that the man she’s in love with isn’t by her side when she needs him most. It’s only been a couple months for them; she doesn’t know his story. I know why Chase hasn’t come. I know his phobia of hospitals goes deep. They’ve held too much trauma for him already.
The knowing doesn’t do much to help with the feeling of my chest being crushed.
The second Hanne and Brooke are out of the room, I let
myself cry all these stupid, pointless tears.
Because I’m broken.
Because my best friend isn’t here.
Because I can’t stop seeing her face—Raquel. The woman I love. The woman who worried this would happen, and now it has.
And if I can’t ride—if this is it for me—why would she have me back?
She was worried I’d get broken, and now I am.
I lie here in my hospital bed and I’m everything she was frightened of. Everything she didn’t want for her life.
If I ever had a chance of getting her back…
I try to raise my hands to cover my face, and even with all of these meds it hurts, and I’m reminded of the new metal in my spine.
What has happened to my life?
This can’t be real. This can’t—
“Wait.” I croak it out before the knock on the door is even finished. I can’t let anyone see me like this. Fuck. I wipe my hand furiously over my face, wincing as the IV tugs at my skin. “Just—give me a moment.”
Get it together, JJ.
If there’s a mirror in this room, I couldn’t reach it, anyway. I must look like a mess.
I don’t want my parents to see me like this. I don’t want Hanne to come back and find me upset. Not after I worked so hard to cheer her up.
The knock comes again, and all I can do is surrender to it. “Yeah?”
And then reality turns upside down.
Raquel stands in the doorway, the tiniest adult woman I’ve ever known, and the biggest person in my life.
She opens her mouth as if she’ll say something, and I can feel that I’ve done the same, and neither of us can form a word. Instead the air crackles between us, like an electrical storm about to break. Like all of our feelings and all of these unspoken things might suddenly break and come together as a downpour.
Wet. Heavy. Overwhelming.
She’s here. All the space between us is erased, and the world shakes on its axis. Time forgets to pass. My heart stops beating.
There’s only her, tiny and perfect and beautiful, all of my dreams and all of my fears in one fragile, fierce form.
“JJ,” she whispers, so quietly she might not have said it at all.
The woman I love—the woman who left—is here.
With me.
It’s the good luck I didn’t dare to dream of. The blessing I don’t know what I did to deserve.
When my heart starts to beat again my blood burns in my veins, a prickling heat beneath my skin. It takes forever to get her name over my clumsy tongue and past my parched lips.
“Raquel?”
My world lurches as she steps forward. Even hesitant she’s still graceful. She holds her sweater over stomach, as if it’s some sort of shield, and her fingers worry at the gray wool as if she needs the support.
She is so beautiful. She’s tried so hard to be tidy. Her hair is perfectly waved, her clothes neat: skinny jeans, a white blouse, heeled boots.
But her makeup is smudged, and her eyes are bloodshot and shining.
“I came,” she says, finally, like she doesn’t know what that means. “JJ…”
She did. She came, and I’m as shattered as if I’ve seen a miracle. Awestruck. Emphasis on the struck.
She came here to see me.
She heard that I was injured, and she came.
After all these months, she wanted to be near me.
I don’t want her to see me like this. I wanted to win her back by being better. And here I am, broken and vulnerable. But in this moment there’s no denying it: I need her.
I need Raquel so much.
My heart is battered and bruised, and still it raises itself to hope.
“You’re here,” I say, stupidly.
Raquel steps forward, and with every step toward my bed the tension between us grows. A sound beyond hearing that rises to a fever pitch. Everything is so much, so real, all of reality glowing with this moment.
She takes a deep breath, and closer now I can see how near she is to crying. How desperately she holds onto control.
The hand that reaches toward me is trembling.
“Are you okay?”
I’ve been better. I’d make that joke to anyone else. Put up a smiling front.
But I can’t lie to Raquel. I’m laid bare, bleeding and bruised, honest and hurting.
“I didn’t mean…” I don’t know how I’m going to finish that. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean to lose you.
“It’s okay,” she says, fighting to keep her voice under control. “I understand you wanted to see me.”
The first thread of uncertainty winds its way through my gut. “I wanted to…?”
“When you asked them to call me. It’s okay.” She takes a breath and sets her shoulders straighter. “I still care about you, James. It might be over, but I never wanted you hurt.”
Reality suckerpunches me, and this moment—those words—hurt more than anything that’s happened in the last thirty-six hours. If I were on my feet, I’d fall.
Over. The word impacts around my solar plexus and I can see Greg Whittaker’s stupid face on her Instagram and I can imagine her kissing him and it’s too much for me to say anything at all. If I open my mouth, I’ll be sick.
Raquel flinches, her arms coming to cross over her chest again as if she could protect herself. “You asked them to call me?” she says, not meaning for it to sound like a question.
How was I so stupid as to think she’d come of her own free will? That she’d hear I’d been hurt and want to be with me? That somewhere, deep down, she still loved me as much as I love her?
I am such a fool.
She’s moved on. She has someone else. Of course she wouldn’t choose to come see her stupid ex.
I know suddenly: she came because of that stupid next-of-kin card in my wallet. The one I could never bring myself to change, because changing it—like selling the house—would be admitting that it’s over between us. That the best thing that ever happened to me is done.
I let my eyes close and take the deepest breath that I can. Beneath the painkillers I can feel the pain still there, lurking.
“Sorry. I hadn’t updated—the stuff in my wallet. It was like before.”
The only thing that’s still like before.
Raquel draws a breath. When I open my eyes she has one of her hands in front of her face, and I can’t read the expression hidden behind her perfect manicure. The slim arcs of her shoulders rise and fall, trembling.
For one moment—
But no. I’m not being that stupid again.
I’m broken enough. I can’t survive any more of me shattering.
When she lowers her hand, she’s drawn herself together. The way she always does. The way that leaves her smooth and efficient and cool. The way that closes off the warm, tender woman I loved and leaves the professional in her place.
“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have come if I knew. You probably want to see whoever you’re dating now.”
The sound that comes out of me is too broken for a laugh. “I’m not dating anyone. I haven’t even kissed anyone since you left.” How could she think I would? Does she really not know that she broke me for anyone else?
Raquel is off-footed. She pauses before she replies. “You must have Hanne and Chase…”
I can’t keep down the bitterness. “Chase isn’t here.”
I hate the way her face falls. I hate being pitied.
“Oh,” she manages to say, smoothing down the sweater in her hands. “Okay. I… I hope he comes soon.”
“Me too,” I croak, blinking as fast as I can.
I’ve lost everything. I can’t let her see me broken. I’ll never have her again. I can’t deal with her being sorry for me, too.
Does she think I got what I deserved?
We stand there, and beneath the weight of everything that happened and everything we can’t say, both of us can hardly breathe.
F
inally Raquel jerks to movement. She takes careful steps backward, her heels clipping over the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “JJ—I really am.”
“I’m going to board again,” I tell her. Because she needs to know. “They don’t know anything.”
Disbelief makes her smile all wrong. “Okay.”
“I’m being serious.”
“I know you are,” she doesn’t agree.
Somehow, it hurts the most from her.
Even though she left me.
Even though she made it clear that she wanted none of me—especially if this happened.
Somehow, I guess I still imagined that she’d believe in me. Raquel, out of everyone. Because in all the world, she knows me best. She knows who I really am.
And now she looks at me, and she believes I’ll never be able to snowboard ever again.
To be myself again.
She looks at me like I’m a dead man not-even walking.
After everything, I’m floored by how much I still need her to believe in me.
I would give anything for her to tell me it’s going to be okay.
Instead she turns toward the doorway, and when she speaks it’s with her hand on the knob and her face turned over her shoulder, as if she’s already checked out in every way but the physical.
“I’m sorry to be here. When you don’t want me. But unless you tell me to go, I’m going to stay. Just for a couple days. I don’t want to leave your mom alone when your dad has to go back to work.”
I should tell her to go.
I should tell her if she’s only here because of a call that was a mistake, she shouldn’t give up her new, safer life to come back into the craziness of mine. Right when the risk she was afraid of has come to get me, and all my consequences are knocking at the door.
But even after everything, I find that I can’t tell Raquel to go.
I love her too much.
“Sure,” I grunt.
Raquel nods and leaves without saying another word.
Crash (The Wild Sequence Book 2) Page 5