Maybe if JJ is better, I’ll be able to move on. My consulting work would be easy enough to do remotely from Jackson. I could finally get the rest of my stuff out of that house. I could close this chapter of my life. I could move on.
“I’m not a rehab specialist,” I hear myself saying. “But I’ve worked with athletes after injuries before. I have experience. And even if—I still care about him, Robin. I’m not a stranger.”
The light of hope in her eyes as she leans back to look at me properly is almost too much for my heart to take. “He told me that he doesn’t want you there.”
I have to suppress a snort at that, and it distracts me from commenting on the fact that Robin already raised this idea with JJ—a thing that on some very deep level doesn’t surprise me, even though it should.
I don’t want to examine what she said. To try to work out why an ache has gone down the line of my chest, burrowing inside of me.
“It’s my house. I can go there whenever I want. And then I can make sure that everything is ready for JJ. That he has the support that he needs.”
Robin’s tears still glisten at the corner of her eyes. A weak smile tries to catch the edge of her lips. She finds my hand and squeezes it tight between her own.
“I would be so grateful.”
This is absolute insanity, I think as I walk back to the hospital. Robin’s gone to buy some snacks from a local store, and I head along the street on my own, my coat tucked tight against the cold, my neck bent so that I can bury my mouth in the warmth of the scarf I bought at a local store.
I can’t go back to live in a house with my old fiancé.
I can’t help him through the worst part of his recovery.
And yet…
I want this to be over with. I want it to be done. That’s all. I need to accept that moving on before wasn’t working, and I need to do it properly now. I need to go to that house. I need to finally remove my stuff from it. And I need to get JJ well enough again so that I can leave him for good.
I am good at what I do. I can keep him moving through the difficult weeks and months to come.
Other people might worry they’re not good enough at their work, but I know I am. It’s a side effect of being a perfectionist. Control freak, an echo of JJ’s loving accusation rings in my memory.
But it’s true: if you want something done well, sometimes you just have to do it yourself.
And I can do it well. I really, truly can.
Something inside of me is fluttering. I skip up the stairs on the way into the hospital without entirely knowing why.
It just feels good, I guess—the idea of working with an athlete. Of fixing him. Of—
I stop that thought.
I’m going to fix JJ, and then I’m going to go.
I couldn’t say exactly why it’s Dad, not Mom, that I call. Mom would have been easier to reach. Dad’s always in meetings. He’s head of the economics department at the university and sits on a federal advisory board, as well as the state Lebanese American association. He writes opinion pieces for national newspapers and contributes to research. It’s easy to tell where I inherited my work ethic from.
It takes three calls for him to pick up.
“Raquel? Did something happen?”
Dad’s voice makes me feel instantly better the second I hear it.
“No,” I say quickly.
“James didn’t get worse?”
I shake my head even though he can’t see it. For some reason I’m frozen where I stand before my hotel room minibar, its cool air escaping over me. I manage to force myself to pull out a bottle of water and pop it open before closing the door with my foot and going to sit in the room’s sole chair.
“No, he’s doing just the same as always. Getting better.”
“Your mom said he’s walking now.”
“Yeah.”
I do not want to think about what my mom is going to say about this. It’s weird enough saying it to my dad, and he doesn’t even comment on most of the decisions I make as an adult. Mom might be a different story.
“Well, we’re glad to hear that. So what’s happened?”
I let out a breath and take a mouthful of water before letting the words rush out. “I think I’m going to go up to the house in Jackson for a while.”
“Oh?”
“I still have some of my things there. If I take some time, I can clear them all out and then we can move on with the sale.”
Dad’s good with money—it’s his whole job. Surely he’ll understand the wisdom of getting my share of the deposit out of the house. Again I’m grateful that Mom isn’t on the line—Dad isn’t likely to remind me about the risks of buying a home with someone you’re not legally married to yet. And I’ve had plenty of time to come realize those risks on my own.
There’s a pause and the sound of rustling paper—it sounds like I’m on speakerphone now. I wish I could see Dad’s face, because his voice is too measured to read.
“And what about James?”
“He needs someone to help sort out the house for when he gets back. Organize home help, a physiotherapist. There are a lot of things I can do there.”
I can hear my dad considering this. I imagine it’s the kind of pause that intimidates his grad students as they wait for his feedback on their work.
“I’m not getting back together with him,” I say firmly. “You have to tell Mom that.”
Still nothing.
“It would mean so much to Robin. She’s going crazy.”
That my dad can answer immediately. “Of course she is. Her child almost ended up dead in an avalanche.”
Even after everything that’s happened, the word dead makes me recoil, my breath hitching in my chest.
“Well, you know what’s the right choice for you, El,” Dad says. Movement is starting again on his end of the line. I’m off speakerphone as in the distance doors are closing. “Thanks for letting us know. I’ll tell your mom. Would you like to tell Claire yourself?”
I wrinkle my nose, pausing in sliding my heels off my aching feet. “Is she with you?”
“In about twenty seconds. She’s waiting outside to pick me up for tacos. Would you like to talk to her?”
I would, and I wouldn’t. She’s going to find out, anyway. I take a deep breath, readying myself for that conversation, when Claire’s voice comes over the background of the line.
“Is that her?”
And then there’s mumbling, muffled by what I assume is Dad’s hand over the speaker.
Great. At least I won’t be telling Claire myself.
I kick my shoes away before putting the phone on speaker on the table so I can begin to wriggle out of my woolen tights. I might at least be comfortable for this.
“Raquel.” Claire’s voice is sudden on the line. “You can’t be serious.”
I frown at the wool as I wiggle it down carefully over my toes before draping the tights over the back of my chair. “I’m thirty years old, Claire. I know what I’m doing.”
“Kel, there’s a reason you two called it off…”
“I’m not calling it back on.”
Claire’s sigh seems to hides words she’d like to say, but there’s a beat of consideration before she replies properly. “I just don’t want you to get hurt again,” are the words she finally settles on. “When will you be coming back?”
“A while. I’m going to get everything out of the house and shipped back to LA. I can work with my clients remotely. And JJ needs someone around for the beginning.”
“He doesn’t need his ex-fiancée.”
“The sooner I get this done, the sooner we can sell that house and I can move on, Claire.”
I don’t mean to snap. I sigh, leaning forward and rubbing my fingertips over my aching temples.
“I’m sorry. I’d just… I’ve made a decision. I don’t want to have to defend it to everyone.”
“I just care about you—”
“He’s broken his spine. H
is parents are devastated. He’s all alone. We’re not together anymore—it doesn’t mean I can’t still care about him. What am I meant to do, leave him there on his own?”
“You’re meant to take care of yourself,” Claire corrects, a hint of heat in her voice. “Like you said, Kel. You still care about him. That’s exactly why this is a terrible idea.”
How do I tell her in a way she’ll believe? Yes, I still love him, just like she’s afraid I do. But it’s over. Whatever JJ and I had, it’s been gone a long time.
I’ve made my decision. I’m going to stick to it.
“A few weeks at most,” is all I say in the end. “I promise, Claire.”
I’m not stupid. I’m not going back to JJ. He made his choice, and I’m not giving him the chance to hurt me again. Even worse, I’m not giving him the chance to decide he’ll have me, now that he can’t have his other dreams. I’m not being his second choice.
I’m no one’s consolation prize.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Claire says.
But she knows when to give up the fight, too.
JJ
“Well done for today,” the PT says with a beam. “You did great.”
She gives me a high five. It’s about the worst high five of my life. Things you do not want to get congratulated for: putting your own sock on with the help of a rope-and-plastic combo called a “sock aid.” Especially when it’s taken you the last half-hour.
There is something worse than being congratulated for dressing yourself, though: not dressing yourself. So I pull together a smile.
“We’re getting there.”
“You’re doing great.” The PT is already bustling around, moving my reacher from the bed. “Let’s get you back up.”
Another thing that’s not great: needing your hundred-and-twenty-pound PT to help you back into bed when you’re a grown man.
Like every time, I try not to need her. Like every time, that leaves me lying on my back almost blinded with pain—and she still has to gently help my outer leg make the journey back onto the mattress.
When I’ve finished letting out my hiss of breath and open my eyes, the PT is looking down at me with pride, which is somehow even worse. I’ve become someone other people respect for their ability to put on socks.
“I’ll be back later today so we can go do another walk. Are you handling the pain okay?”
The pain feels like someone has dragged my spine out through my ass and replaced it with a burning hot poker that’s just a bit wider than my vertebrae ever were.
“Yep.” I grin at her, this angel of a woman who’s never done anything wrong to me and hopefully will never hear my internal monologue. “Thanks.”
“I heard you’re moving on to your residential rehab the day after tomorrow,” the PT says conversationally. “That’s great news.”
I am fifty percent moving on. There’s the small issue of what will happen after the rehab—my doctors aren’t exactly happy with the idea of letting me go down a path which ends up with me home alone. I don’t give it much thought, bracing my hands down to the bed and wincing as it takes all of my strengths to shift my hips to a more comfortable position. Even through the codeine everything hurts.
“Yeah. They don’t want me to go until I work out something for home, though.”
“I thought your friend was helping you?” The PT tilts her head at my confusion. “The little dark-haired lady.”
She realizes I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about when I look up at her. Confusion and the desire to take back what she said twist at her lips.
“I thought you’d agreed… I’m sorry. Your mom mentioned it.”
The PT is not who I’m angry at. It’s become like a mantra. I let myself flop back, taking a deep breath. “Oh, no, yeah. She did.”
The second the PT’s out of the room, I’m reaching for my cell from the nightstand so I can text my mom. I’m even using my new skills with the reacher.
They’re still not great skills. The phone clatters to the floor. It might as well have fallen into the Grand Canyon for all of my ability to reach it.
“Fuck,” I growl, collapsing back and closing my eyes. “Jesus—”
“Here.”
Raquel is already halfway through the door, dipping to pick up the phone and hold it out for me.
She didn’t knock. Maybe I should be angry about that. I’m angry about everything else. But despite everything—or because of everything—the idea that Raquel can’t come into my space still hasn’t found time to stick.
I grab the phone from her. “Did you know about this?”
“What?”
“That my mom thinks you’re coming back to Jackson to play nurse for me.”
Raquel’s nostrils flare very slightly as if she’s letting out a sharp breath. Her arms come up to cross over her crisply folded white blouse.
“It’s my house. You can’t stop me coming back.”
“What the actual fuck?”
Her lips thin over the thing she doesn’t say. Instead she needlessly straightens the forty metric tons of flowers my aunt sent.
“You know I can help you. I’ve had experience with athletes in recovery. I’ve had my own physiotherapy before.”
It feels like my heart is being torn in two pieces in a very real and very physical way. My chest aches. I can’t breathe around the pain of it. The idea of having Raquel around any longer is absolute torture. Not only because of how much I don’t want her to see me like this—but because of how much I do want her, how I need her, how all I want is for her to come and hold me.
I just don’t want her like this, cold and clinical and so professional it makes me want to scream and shout until she shows me something—anything.
I don’t want her to shut me out. I don’t want to be just another project to her. I don’t want her to be able to look at me and see only work.
I want her to look at me and see all of us.
She just stands there, so perfect and poised, and my eyes are burning and my throat feels rough.
“I can hire someone to come help me at home.”
“Well you haven’t, James.” Something cuts sharper in her voice. “You haven’t. And you won’t let your mom come.”
“I’m thirty-four years old. I don’t need my mom to be my nurse.”
“Then it’s a good thing I can come.”
I promised myself I wouldn’t fish for this. I promised myself I wouldn’t degrade myself to chasing after the woman who’s left me long behind. But the words are out before I can stop them. “What’s the guy you’re seeing going to think about this?”
Raquel’s eyes widen for a fraction of a second before they narrow again. “I’m not seeing anyone,” she snaps.
It’s what I dreamed of hearing. What I tried so hard not to hope for. Stupid, unstoppable hope. It flares up in my chest again, and I open my mouth to try to say—what?
I don’t get to find out. Raquel brushes imaginary lint off her pants as she straightens and steps toward the door. She doesn’t even look back at me as she says it. “And it wouldn’t matter. We don’t have a relationship anymore.”
It’s like being kicked in the chest. My mouth opens but no air will come in and no sound will come out.
Can Raquel feel it? It must hurt her. I can’t believe—still after everything I don’t want to believe that she could say that and not feel anything. Not the woman who flew here all the way from France. Not the woman who cried when she said yes to me.
Raquel pauses in the doorway, and something in her deflates. She looks back to me, but her eyes are skittish, unsettled, before she forces them to fix to me. Her face is calm in a way that somehow looks like it’s taking a lot of effort. At the handle, her knuckles are white with how tight she’s holding.
There’s something wrong in her voice—like ice that’s broken by hairline fractures almost too thin to see. A fatal flaw hidden just out of sight, but still there, ready to break at the ligh
test touch.
“I still care about you, JJ. I want you to get better.”
I still care about you.
I want that more than anything to mean that she still loves me. That she still feels this thing when she looks at me that I feel when I look at her. Like I’m angry—I’m so goddamned angry—but that the love is so much they’re both two sides of the same aching important thing. I love her. That doesn’t stop because I’m mad anymore than it did when we were together.
Raquel looks away. Maybe I imagine her shoulders shivering as she takes a breath.
“I’m going to fly out to Jackson tomorrow. I’ll get the house ready for when you’re done with rehab.”
She’s already out the door by the time I manage to find my voice again.
“Raquel!”
JJ
Not everything has gone right for me. Who can say that it has? But my whole life, at least I’ve had this: that my body does what I want it to.
Not that I haven’t had accidents. I blew out my ACL a few years back. I’ve taken my ankles and knees to hell and back. More cracked ribs than I can count, some bad concussions.
But at root, underneath it all: my body has always worked. That’s what it does.
All the ways I’ve used it cluster around me in the dark.
I’m ten years old, riding my skateboard down the street towards the jump I made out of plywood with the boys. It’s going to hurt. But I look at Chase’s already-bloody face, and know it's also gonna be awesome.
I’m fifteen, standing on my first adult podium, grinning so wide it might split my face. In my hand the medal is cold, and I can’t stop gripping it, so it cuts into my skin. Like proof I’ve arrived.
I’m twenty-one, waiting at the starting line of a snowboard cross race, feeling the other guys around me—all that testosterone, all that muscle. Feeling my own adrenaline turning me into an animal. All that training, all that thought—and now all that matters is flesh and strength of will.
Crash (The Wild Sequence Book 2) Page 7