Crash (The Wild Sequence Book 2)

by Harper Dallas

  Raquel

  Forty-eight hours after JJ’s accident—twenty-four after I arrived in Vancouver—and the world outside has caught up with us.

  I arrive to find the waiting room full of deliveries ready to be taken to JJ. Two whole paper shopping bags of cards. More than a dozen bouquets of flowers. Someone dropped off a handmade card with messages from local fans.

  We love you JJ!

  Get better soon

  Can’t wait to see you hit the pow again

  I can’t help but snort, the sound bitter in the silence. “You’re going to be waiting for a while,” I tell the note.

  “For what?”

  Jesus. I snap around, dropping the card as if I’ve been caught red handed. A man’s coming out of JJ’s room, clicking the door shut behind him. Tall, tan skinned, Italian dark hair and eyes.

  Mike DeLuca, the Vertex Snow Team manager.

  “God, you scared me.”

  Mike grins apologetically. “Sorry. Everyone’s on edge, huh?”

  I can’t disagree, not any more than I can resist the opening of his arms. I step forward for the hug—brief, but no less warm for that. I don’t hate Mike. I just… well. Let’s just say a lot of pro riders’ spouses have complex feelings toward their partners’ team managers.

  Resentment is a complex, bitter thing.

  Mike clearly doesn’t know how to acknowledge what happened between JJ and me. He slides his hands into his jeans, rolling from the balls of his feet to the heels and back again. “France, right?”

  I nod, crossing my arms over my chest and letting my gaze flick for a moment to the door of JJ’s room. “Paris. I have work there.”

  “Yeah.” The word is an acknowledgment but somehow never reaches full agreement. Mike looks at me intently, and I’m not sure what to do under the fixity of his gaze. What he does eventually say surprises me.

  “It’s good to see you, Raquel. We’ve been missing you.”

  For a moment it all falls away, and I remember how it was.

  Mike isn’t only JJ’s team manager. He was my colleague, too. Maybe we didn’t share the office much, but then neither of us spent much time there. We spent our time on the road, with the athletes we worked with, and the same way as Mike managed contracts and appearances and signing and press and logistics, I handled the interior lives of his sportsmen and women.

  And that isn’t all, because under that, it was more than just work. Sure, there were contracts and deadlines and team meetings. But there was more, too. I remember going out for wings with Mike when we all met up in Whistler. I remember him picking Hanne up from the airport and bringing her to the Santiago dive bar we were in, Chase and JJ and me and three other Vertex Snow Team riders.

  JJ had photos of us laughing together on the wall, for God’s sake. It wasn’t just work. Mike was our friend. He stayed in our house.

  … The old house. The one that will never be mine again.

  Even if JJ hasn’t moved on—even if he’s been missing me, been just as caught up as I am—that doesn’t change the reasons I left.

  I have to force myself to think of them. Not of JJ, being as chaste and as lonely as I’ve been all this year.

  I make myself smile, my nod creaking. “I miss you all, too.” It isn’t a lie. But neither does it have the hope of I’m coming back.

  I can see Mike considering saying something before he swallows it down. Whatever it is, it can wait. I know his jovial good nature and more than that, I understood how he got the Vertex athletes to do the impossible—the one more film, the one further medal, the millionth magazine interview when they just wanted to go shred. Mike understands timing.

  “Well, it’s good to see you back here. You’re not going to disappear back to Paris in the next hour or two, are you? I need to go call HQ.” His smile tightens. “It’s good to be able to tell them he’s doing better.”

  Do I shake or nod? I do both, an awkward in-between pointlessness. It’s only as Mike’s half out the door that I manage to force out a word, stopping him in his tracks.

  “Mike—are they going to drop him?”

  As he shakes his head my stomach flips, and I realize with a horrible tug that I don’t know which answer I hoped for.

  “We’re not dropping him until he decides to go. He’s one of us.”

  One of us. It used to be that, yes. But then it became one of them.

  Because now I’m on the outside, and JJ has chosen where he belongs.

  JJ

  I’ve had plenty of visitors over the first few days in hospital, but most of them it’s easy to say goodbye to. I like Mike, but he’s hardly by my side all the time. It’s great of the director and videographer of the shoot up in Bella Coola to fly down and wish me well, but they’re hardly part of my inner circle.

  It was harder with Hunter; when he took time out of his busy competition schedule to see me, that felt like something important.

  But the worst of it is saying goodbye to Hanne and Brooke.

  Not just because they’re part of my crew. Because somehow it feels like they’re my links to how I was. The person I used to be.

  It’s four days since the accident, and I feel like them leaving is the final straw. The change that makes it real.

  Not that I’m going to show them that. I make a nurse help me get out of bed so I’m standing when they come to see me. I even let my mom fuss at my hair earlier. I take a deep breath, and I tell myself that forcing a smile isn’t half as hard as riding down a mountain.

  I can do it for the people I love.

  Brooke has to hug me at an angle, her arm in its cast awkward between us.

  “We’ll get all your stuff,” she says. Normally she’s so in control, but now her voice wavers. “You don’t have to worry about anything.”

  I can see she instantly regrets saying that, but I won’t let her feel bad for saying something totally normal for people who don’t have a broken spine.

  “You’re going to do a better job packing up than I would.” I more or less manage to make it a joke. “Thanks.”

  I feel so bad for her. She’s still only in her mid-twenties, and she’s new to this career. She hasn’t seen the toll it takes yet. She’s been unprepared for this.

  And to deal with it all while the guy she’s in love with isn’t coming to be with her…

  Or with me, his best friend. But I’m not indulging that thought.

  “Take care of yourself, JJ,” she finishes, and I can tell when she rushes out of the room it’s to hide the tears the composed, in-control Brooke would never want anyone to see.

  When she’s gone, Hanne and I are left looking at each other.

  “You’ve lost weight,” I say. I’m worried about her. She’s always been small, but now she looks gaunt and sleepless.

  I shouldn’t be stupid enough to think Hanne’s lost any of her sass just because she’s worried about me. She can hold it together on a mountain, in a blizzard, with a broken femur. She can manage to hold it together now, even though I can see how desperately sad she is.

  “I’ve lost weight?” she snorts. “Look at you. You’re withering on the vine.”

  For the first time all day, I smile for real. Hearing Hanne still being her mouthy self feels good. I prefer it to everyone treating me like I’m made out of glass.

  “Thanks. You’re a charmer.”

  “Just for my friends,” Hanne agrees. When she comes to hug me she moves up on tiptoe, squeezing her arms tight about my biceps. For one moment her cheerful disguise slips, and I can feel her trembling lightly, her chest hitching over tears she’s holding back. Her voice is rough at my chest. “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself, JJ.”

  “I can’t not,” I reassure her, holding her close. “My mom might take care of me to death.”

  There’s a pause before Hanne steps back and looks at me. Her voice is uncharacteristically soft. “And Raquel.”

  I should have a quick reply to that. I’m painfully aware that I don�
�t. It’s a long moment before I manage to smile, and this time it isn’t real at all.

  “I’ve told her to go.”

  “Not very successfully.” Hanne shrugs. “None of my business. Just—get well, okay? And you know I want to come back.”

  I know that she does, but I’m ready to lick my wounds alone. I can’t stand the way everyone looks at me anymore.

  I just want to be alone forever.

  Hanne’s halfway out the door before she stops and turns, her hand catching the door handle as if this is an accident. As if it hasn’t hung between us the whole time.

  “Hey… About Chase…”

  It’s the thing that’s always been there. The knowledge that we’re only two, when there should be three of us. Have been three since we were teenagers.

  I can see how angry she is, and how hurt.

  I hide that I feel the same way, and smile as wide as I can.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  And then she goes, and I’m finally alone.

  Or…

  I grunt as I finally let myself sit back down on the bed. I can’t even flop back. No matter how many meds they pump me with, I have to let myself down slowly.

  Even with my eyes closed, I can feel Raquel in this hospital.

  Somehow, how close she is just makes her feel even further away.

  The days blend one into another. They say I’ll have seven of them here, a whole week before they’ll even consider releasing me. At least I’m in a better room now, less dependent on machines to track my every move.

  But I am stuck here almost all the time. If I’m not being led on slow, aching walks by a physiotherapist, I’m lying in my bed. If you can’t walk for more than twenty minutes, and you can’t sit for much longer, you’re kind of fucked in the mobility department.

  Now and again I see Raquel move past my door outside. None of them would be able to see how much of a mess she is. You have to know her for a while before you get to see that. You have to love her like I do to see the cracks in how perfect she looks.

  A few wisps of hair are coming free of her high ponytail. Her French polish is chipped at the very edges. Underneath her cardigan she’s wearing the same top as yesterday, though she tries to hide it.

  She’s still perfect, though.

  Four years ago—when we first met—I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Now she’s even more jaw-dropping. Her thick, dark hair. The strong cut of her jaw. The elegant line of her body.

  Four foot eleven inches of heaven, and she’s here to see me.

  What does she want to say? I told you so?

  I couldn’t live with hearing that from her.

  Everything hurts, but none of it is as bad as knowing that I’ve blown it for good. This is what she was afraid of. The thing she never wanted.

  Raquel’s always deserved to be swept off her feet, and now I’ll never be able to do that for her.

  I wish she weren’t here. I wish she’d never go. I wish—

  There’s no pause between the knock and the huge bunch of walking flowers which enter the door.

  “These are from your aunt,” Mom’s voice says from behind the petals. “Aren’t they lovely?”

  I close my eyes and try not to be sick from the smell. “Yeah. That’s kind of her.”

  “You were always her favorite,” Mom says as she settles the flowers down—making space between the fruit and the magazines and those stupid teddy bears—and begins to fuss with them. “Now, how are you feeling?”

  Like I have nothing worth living for.

  “Great.” I open my eyes to smile at her. “There’s nothing to worry about, Mom. I just want to sleep.”

  I wish I didn’t recoil at her touch. I try not to. Her busy fingers ruffle at my hair, with so much love it’s stifling.

  “I told them that walking down the hall was too much.”

  My stomach ties itself into a knot and attempts to reach my throat where it can strangle the rest of me.

  “Mom. I’m fine. I can walk down the fucking hall.” In agony, sure. But I can.

  “James. Language.” She clucks her tongue, checking my forehead for a fever as if I’m not connected to roughly one hundred machines that display everything possible about me. “When you’re ready, we need you to talk to the rehab people.”

  Rehab.

  I’ve done it before, of course. There was the ACL tear a few years back. But rehab then was someone who came to the house now and again. That and Raquel giving me a stupid amount of back rubs.

  This rehab…

  And it’s not with Raquel, either.

  “How much talking does there need to be?”

  Mom perches herself at the edge of my bed. She’s not much taller than Raquel, though she’s comfortably plump where Raquel is bird-boned and tiny. She reaches for my hand, and I manage not to pull it away.

  She might be too much sometimes, but she is still my mom. Even if being trapped so I literally can’t get away is perhaps as much my idea of hell as it’s her idea of heaven. I know she’s been wanting to spend more time with me since I was about thirteen years old.

  “Well, we have to sort out what happens afterward. They’ll take you for a week, but then you’ll be ready to go back home. I was thinking you could fly back to Breckenridge with us. The ground floor guest room is already set up, it won’t be any trouble.”

  “Mom.” We’ve already spoken about this. I look at her as solidly as I can. “No.”

  My mom’s mouth fits an unhappy line. “You know you can’t go back to Jackson on your own. You can’t even dress yourself yet.”

  I take a deep breath and try to remember that it’s not Mom’s fault I was in an avalanche, not her fault that I’m broken.

  “I’ll be able to by the time I get back there.”

  “Sweetheart…”

  What kills me is how she looks at me as she says it. She’s sorry for me. My mom. I’m thirty-four years old. I’m meant to be looking after her, now. I’m meant to be flying her and dad on surprise trips and sending them freaking golf clubs for Christmas.

  I’m meant to be the one paying her back for everything. All the time she gave up to support my boarding when I was a kid. The way she fought for me to get on the academic athlete class despite my grades never being quite good enough—not for the school, and not for her, I know on some level.

  I’m meant to be paying her back for the way she supported Chase financially too, because he was my friend, and his parents could never quite afford everything. So she’d call and say: I’m getting JJ a room for the competition anyway, and there are two beds. Why doesn’t Chase take the spare? No, of course I won’t take anything, you put so much time into driving them…

  Guilt hits me like a sucker punch. I close my eyes tight shut and squeeze her hand.

  “I’m sorry. I’m being an asshole.”

  She doesn’t come forward, so I squeeze again. “Come on.”

  This time she comes forward, and I get a proper hug from her. I can smell her floral perfume and feel her earrings pressed against my cheek.

  It hurts to wrap my arms around her properly, but that doesn’t stop me. I pull her in close and hold her tight, and I can feel how happy it makes her.

  My mom can be about a hundred times too much, but I love her. I have a great family. It’s not their fault that they can be a bit intense.

  It’s Mom who decides when the hug is done. I let her go as she pushes up from the bed, pretending not to notice as she blinks away the glisten in her eyes.

  “You know, we should talk about the Raquel option. I know you don’t want to hear it…”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Mom’s mouth twists. “Just temporarily. She says she needs to do some things for the house, anyway…”

  I am not having my ex-fiancée move back in. I am not having her move in so she can move her remaining stuff out, I am not having her help me, I’m not torturing myself by having her so close and yet…


  “Well—all right.” Mom doesn’t sound happy about it, but she manages a smile as she reaches up to neaten my hair. “I just want you to be happy. And it’s nice that she came.”

  I make the best smile I can possibly make, because I love her so much.

  “Sure. It is.”

  Raquel

  JJ’s mom cries quietly, hunched over her cup of coffee. When I managed to coax her out to a cafe off the hospital grounds, this isn’t what I planned for.

  “Robin…”

  Her shoulders quake as I slide around to sit beside her, drawing her close. She tries to wave a hand before pinching it to the inner corners of her eyes again.

  “I’m sorry. After Bob left, I feel like I can’t handle this on my own. And the idea of James going back to an empty house…”

  “He won’t go home alone.” I squeeze her gently, as if I could press the words into her. “We won’t let him.”

  “But he won’t accept anyone. Not even his friends. Chase is in that house by James’s, but since he’s not here…”

  “Chase is coming back,” I remind her. “He’s going to regret not being here. He just can’t deal with hospitals.”

  “I don’t want him going home with just some stranger,” Robin continues, desperate care cracking her voice. “I want him to be with someone who loves him.”

  The words fall awkward. My hand stops stroking her arm.

  I can’t bear to see Robin like this. She’s just a mom who loves her son, desperately. Exactly like she should.

  “What about if I went there?”

  Robin can’t be more shocked than I am by the words. “Would you do that?”

  I’m surprised I even offered it. Would I do it?

  In all that’s happened, I’ve never wanted JJ injured. He made his choice, but I don’t want him punished for it like this.

  I want him walking, fit and healthy. It seems unlikely that will involve riding professionally again but it will be months before he has to deal with that realization properly.