by S. Love
With a sharp look my way, Ozzie hisses something I don’t hear, and then jogs over there, hopping up over the wooden railing.
I glance back as a younger man walks out from the bar and grips Cindy by her elbow, her head tipping back to smile drunkenly at him. I’m braced for the worst, and I dredge up all my willpower to turn away from the shitshow and carry on walking. Not my mom, not my issue. Let Ozzie deal with it since he’s so good at meddling in and rewiring my life to suit him. If he wants to fight, crunch that guy’s nose into the back of his skull, he can. I don’t care.
I talk myself out of looking back over my shoulder to see if he’s anywhere behind me when I make it to the Osbornes’ home, and the only footsteps I hear on concrete are my own.
With a shaking hand, I take my key from the pocket in my shorts. I slot it into the lock, and a hand clamps against the decorative glass, beside my head, slamming the door closed as I pull it open.
My shoulders sag, the adrenaline I’d built up like static energy fizzling out. Ozzie’s body covers my back from behind, and I give into the warmth of him, just enjoying what it feels like to still have him this close before I open my mouth and ruin it forever.
My phone sings with the ringtone I assigned to my mom, offering me a few extra minutes to myself, a little more time to construct my argument and tear Ozzie down to a level lower than where he’s dragged me.
I reach around to my back pocket and pull out my phone. I swipe to answer, greeting my mom like everything here’s fine and I am capable of running my own life, not running it into the ground.
“Lyla!” My mom’s frantic voice shoots straight to my gut, piercing my chest on the way. “Lyla, it’s Talia. She’s in the hospital.”
I pull my key out of the door and duck under Ozzie’s arm, walking down the driveway without a destination. “What? Is she okay? I’ve been calling her all day.”
“She was in an accident.” My mom’s crying, barely coherent.
“What kind of accident?” I don’t know what to ask first, everything’s rushing to me at once.
“A car accident. She was hit by a car, and—” A loud sob comes coarsely through the phone. “She’s pregnant, Lyla. And now she’s in the ICU. My baby’s in the ICU.”
The rest of the conversation is a headache-inducing blur, the words we exchange, and what my brain’s telling me it can hear, fusing into one unbelievable story that should refer to someone else’s family, because we can’t possibly be talking about my sister. She’s fine, healthy. She isn’t pregnant. She would have told me… wouldn’t she?
Wouldn’t she?
“Are you with her now?”
“No.” More sobs follow that one word. “I’m leaving now. Mitch and Barbera gave me their car. I can pick you up.”
And waste more time? “I can get to the hospital. You go, and I’ll be there as soon as I can, I promise.” My heart’s racing, my mind’s racing. My body’s trying to get places it has no way of getting to while my thought process lines itself up to sort out the swirling pandemonium.
Forgetting Ozzie’s here with me, I practically run into him. He catches me with outstretched arms, gripping me just under my shoulders. “Where do you need to go? I’ll take you.”
“The hospital.” Which hospital? I’ll need to call my mom back. What if she doesn’t answer her phone? “Talia’s in the hospital.”
Car keys are in Ozzie’s hand before I can say anything else. The rear lights to his Jeep flash twice, and the world slows down around me to an animated backdrop, my feet moving with the efficiency of treading through wet cement.
“She’s pregnant,” I say when I’m sitting in the passenger side of his Jeep feeling nothing and everything all at once. “She’s pregnant and she didn’t tell anyone.” I look over at Ozzie, my brain finally processing the seriousness of the situation. Tears clog my nose, thrusting a huge lump into my throat. “What if she loses the baby?” I don’t know how far along she is. How could I not know that?
All urgency drains from Ozzie, his demeanor drastically switching as he takes his foot off the gas and the car goes silent apart from the gentle rumble of the ignition. “She’s pregnant?”
I think I nod. I mean to nod. The tears are running down my face.
“You need to call Con.”
“Why?” I look at him and ask, my brows furrowing.
Ozzie bangs his fist against the center of the steering wheel, then he floors the gas, nearly throwing me out of my seat and through the windshield. Instead of driving away from Cape Pearl, toward the interstate, he’s driving us back to the beach, where the pier is. Where the party’s still going on.
Without thinking about what I’m doing, or the consequences of such a foolish maneuver, I grab the steering wheel for him to turn back. “This isn’t the right way!”
He steadies the wheel, knocking my hand off the leather and straightening up the Jeep on the road. “We need to pick up Con,” he says, sliding me a harsh look.
“Why?” It’s only now beginning to stick that this is the second time his name’s been brought up when my sister’s receiving medical intervention just to breathe. “Tell me now right now, Ozzie.”
He snatches my wrist as I reach for the steering wheel a second time, his bone-crushing grip noose-like around my bones. He holds me there, the fierceness in his expression turning my arm limp. “Because that’s his baby,” he says evenly, carefully, watching the road while I watch the impossible float from his mouth. “Con’s the dad.”