by Ella James
“Sit down,” she says. “Or you can head on to the ICU. You think I didn’t see you crying while I was working on your boy? Just because I’m cutting doesn’t mean I’m blind. Why didn’t you tell me, Evie?”
I shake my head. I’m trying not to lose it.
“It’s okay. He’s gonna be okay.” She wraps an arm around me, and I sob my brains out as she tells me all about the surgery, how well he’s doing and how fit he is. “I don’t think he’ll have any complications. I don’t know, of course, but I don’t think so. He’ll be on the other side again in just a few months.”
“Months,” I cry.
“Yeah, two or three. And he might fall into the next cohort, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Because he’s your boyfriend. He is your boyfriend? Not just your bed buddy?”
I nod, and then, because I’m such a basket case, and so riddled with guilt, I tell her everything, confessing so fully, her jaw drops.
Afterward, Eilert signs me in to the ICU as Landon’s next-of-kin, an easy move because he already listed me in the computer as his emergency contact.
Finally, I step into his little glass-walled room, and am stunned to see him extubated with his gray eyes cracked half open.
As soon as he sees me, his mouth seems to soften, and his eyes fill up with tears. I see his shoulders rise and fall, and see his mouth tug to the side in a wince—I guess from the pain of breathing.
I step slowly closer to him, my heart in my throat. When he doesn’t protest—he just looks at me with dazed eyes—I lean down and stroke his hair. His gaze lifts slowly up to mine, eyes rolling for a second as he struggles to keep them open.
“Evie,” he whispers hoarsely, “I can’t…feel them.” He inhales, then recoils from pain. My throat aches as tears fill his eyes.
I lean down, so he doesn’t have to look up to see me, and, after a moment’s hesitation, take his hand. I stroke his fingers. “You’re okay. You’re just still numb. You know, you just got out of surgery.”
He blinks, seeming half asleep. “Can you…cut me?”
“What?”
His eyes widen before they roll again. “To…see.”
My stomach flip-flops as I realize what he’s asking. “No.” I squeeze his hand between mine. “No, Landy. We don’t need to do that. It was Billard. Eilert, too. They did a good job. They were sure.”
His eyes open. “Please?” His face—dear fuck. I’ve never seen him look so anguished. Maybe earlier, in the hallway, when he told me about—
“I promise,” I whisper. “Trust me.”
His mouth tugs to the side, and his eyes shut. Two tears leak out.
I’m pretty sure my heart is broken.
Landon peeks at me once more before the morphine drags him back under. I spend the day beside him, stroking his hands and cheeks, and pouring over his labs and meds and vitals like the psycho cross-breed of a helicopter spouse and overzealous doctor.
I test his reflexes myself and spend hours analyzing every fresh scan, particularly the MRI he gets toward the afternoon to check the innervation near L1. His nerves are fine. His nerves are fine. He’s breathing fine. His chest tube’s fine.
For the next two days, he sleeps, and I work in a kind of numb, efficient stupor, stopping by his room all through the day and playing with his hair, kissing his hands, kissing the bridge of his nose.
I can tell he won’t remember any of it. He’s pale and sweaty, his eyes dazed from painkillers. He hasn’t even gotten up yet. When he does, he might tell me he hates me. How selfish that I even think about myself.
If only I’d just told him when we first talked. I’d do anything to change it now.
On the second night, his eyelids lift a little. His eyes roll around the room, and when they land on me, he croaks, “Which…ones?”
It takes me a moment to figure out what he’s asking. “It was L1. Just L1.”
He nods once, and I can see him struggle to re-focus. “Evie?”
“Yeah?”
His mouth goes sad and soft. “I’m…sorry that…I didn’t…stay.”
For just a second, he gives me this pointed look, and I know what he means.
That’s the only sign I have that hope’s not lost.
The third day, Eilert lets me know they’re going to cut back on Landon’s morphine and try to get him out of ICU. She gives me the day off, and I’m so grateful, I cry in the donut room over a strawberry cruller.
When I get to Landon’s room, his bed is elevated more than I’ve seen it since surgery. He’s sitting mostly upright, with his middle wrapped in bandages, and over those, a hard brace. He looks heavy-lidded and tight-jawed, the way people only ever look when they’re in pain and taking big-gun drugs.
I stop there in the doorway, my body freezing as his gaze finds mine. When one side of his mouth twitches in a small-smile greeting, I nearly faint with relief. The sensation is followed by a heavy wave of guilt. I step slowly inside the little glass room, folding my arms around myself.
Landon rests his head against the back of the bed and shuts his eyes. His lightly bearded face is grim. I can see pain in the tension of his shoulders, in his shallow, careful breaths.
When I murmur, “Hi,” his eyes peek open, and the misery I see there…
I swallow as tears sting my eyes.
“You had a baby.” His voice is rough and monotone, with no inflection. His eyes on mine are flat, his pale face a mask. I think of what he must be thinking—I did this to him, me with my horrible lie—and I feel like I might be sick.
I want so much to say I’m sorry—more than anything, I want to throw myself at him and beg forgiveness, not just for letting someone have our baby, but for letting years pass without telling him it happened. I’d do anything to make it right, but everything I have to say is meaningless, and much too late.
I wipe my eyes and nod slowly.
His eyes shut. “What…was it like?”
“What part?” I whisper. I step a little closer to his bed, inhaling deeply as I clench my shaking hands.
Landon looks down at his blanket-covered lap, and then back up at me. His face looks neutral. So impassive that I know he’s schooling it. “Did you hold her?”
“Yes.” I press my lips together, blink my leaking eyes. “I fed her. For the first night.” My voice wobbles.
Landon swallows, the corners of his mouth tugged sharply downward for a second.
“She was perfect, Landon. I loved her more than anything I’d ever seen…except for you.” I shake my head, breathing deeply so I don’t break down completely. “We looked for you…during the pregnancy. So I could get your take on things. We even ran an ad in the newspaper,” I say thickly.
Landon bites the inside of his cheek, tears welling in his eyes, and I can’t stay so far from him. I sit in the chair beside his bed, then stand and move the bed rail down as he blinks at me through tears.
I sit there on the edge of his mattress, wanting to touch him but not sure if I still can.
When he doesn’t recoil at my nearness, I take his hand and bring it to my throat, then tuck my chin down over it. With my sweaty fingertips, I stroke his knuckles. I can feel his guilt. It’s loud like mine, expanding in the air between us.
“It’s not your fault,” I murmur, looking at him so he can see I mean it. His lips press together. “Landon…when you got to the ER—when you first got in the other day—do you remember getting upset?”
He nods once, eyes closing. The man from the group home Landon ran away from tried to hold him down and hurt him once, when he was sleeping. Before that, the man had kicked him. One of his currently broken ribs has been broken before. So it’s no wonder the restraints on the backboard bothered him.
“I’m so glad you left. I fully understand why you left.” Had he stayed in-state, and been picked up by someone, he would have been punished for leaving the group home—maybe even sent to juvie.
I kiss his fingers.
“That was the right th
ing—what you did. It’s what I would have wanted, had you asked. But since my parents held your letters,” my voice cracks, “I didn’t know. That’s the only reason I didn’t write you back when you were still there at the group home. And since I didn’t…” I breathe deeply. “How would you have known to come to my house? How would you have known? You didn’t know.”
He shakes his head, a ghost-slight movement.
“I hate it that you had to run like that. And that I wasn’t with you,” I rasp. “But you don’t ever have to say you’re sorry. Ever.”
His face looks tired as he says, “Why, Evie?”
I search his voice for anger, but I hear none. Still, I let go of his hand and get back up so I have the distance that I need to answer honestly. Standing by his bed, I shake my head. “I couldn’t do it. I was seventeen, and my heart was in a million pieces. It wasn’t some kind of…selfishness that stopped me. I promise it wasn’t. I would have given everything up if it had felt like the right thing.”
Tears fall from my eyes, as I confess this—my deepest secret. “I knew someone else could do it better. The Deckerts—her…parents—they wanted her so badly, Landon. Their whole world was right for her, and mine just wasn’t. I feel like I should hate myself, like maybe something’s broken with me. That I didn’t…act illogical and run away to somewhere. Raise her in the woods.” I wipe my eyes, and Landon manages a small smile. “But really, I’m just grateful that it worked out like it did. I love them, the Deckerts. I love her. I still see her, Landon. That’s part of the reason I came here for school. Their family had moved here.”
He nods, tight-lipped, and I can’t read his face. Does he hate me? Does he blame me? How could he not?
After a moment, though, he reaches for me, and I sit back down on his bed with my breath held. His eyes on mine are warm and kind, not blaming. My fingers intertwine with his, and I try to give him more.
“When my heart stopped hurting for a baby right then, I knew she’d have a good life. And she does.”
He swallows, nodding. His eyes are on his legs.
“Do you hate me?” I ask, through my aching throat.
“Evie…I could never hate you.”
“Do you wish you could?” I whisper.
“No.” He shuts his eyes. His shoulders, drawn up tightly, slowly deflate. For a long time, he’s just still, his big hand limp in mine. I think he’s asleep when, in a murmured rasp, he says, “I found my mother, Evie. She has…four…other kids.” His hand twitches, as if he’s nodding off, and he pulls his eyelids open. “Sorry,” he says hoarsely. “Took something…”
“No, don’t be sorry. You need it.” I set his hand back on his lap and push the pillow by his head a little closer. I’m leaning in to place a kiss on Landon’s cheek when Billard walks in, looking so serious, it sends a shot of panic through me. He walks up to me and looks down, pushing a finger up against his horn-rimmed glasses.
“I’m sorry, next of kin,” he says in a friendly tone. “I hope you’re not too scarred from being in the OR.”
“No—I’m fine.” A necessary bluff…
He motions me out into the hallway, where he says, “You should have told me. Stuck up for yourself.”
I smile sadly, shaking my head. “I hesitate to say this out loud, but…I wanted to watch him. Over him,” I clarify. “I couldn’t have stood not being in there. I would rather have to do the entire surgery than not be there.”
He nods, and then he winks. “That’s a surgeon for you. We’re a different breed. I would do the same for my wife, no doubt. Still, though, I’m impressed you made it. Well done.”
“I don’t really feel that way,” I answer honestly.
He claps my shoulder. “Sometimes you don’t.”
Twelve
Landon
Evie must have pulled some strings with someone, because after that, she doesn’t leave my side. She’s there when Billards comes in next, giving me an update on the latest scans—which, thankfully, look good. When the respiratory therapist comes by to make me blow into the tube of a machine, to check my healing lung, Evie holds my hands and looks into my eyes as they tear up from the pain of my ribs.
When the therapist leaves, she kisses both my cheeks and helps me lie back, then encourages more pain meds. A few hours later, she has someone deliver chamomile tea. That night, she checks my four small surgical incisions from the VATS procedure herself, running a finger over the unpunctured skin around the bandages, as if to tell my chest I’m sorry.
When I sleep, she sits right by me in a chair—until I wake up with a gasp, and then she moves onto the bed beside me.
She wraps an arm around the top of my chest, and, with her warm hand on my lightly bearded cheek, she turns my face toward hers. Evie presses her forehead against my cheek, and I let out a long breath. Her fingers stroke my hair around the spot near my forehead where I have a row of stitches.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. She kisses my jaw, then looks back down, so she can’t see my face. “It must have been so scary…”
I remember coming in on the stretcher with my arms pinned down, and my heart beats a little harder.
“I wish it had been me instead of you,” she says quietly.
I press my cheek against her forehead and swallow before I speak. “When the car stopped…” I take a few small, careful breaths. “I was…sort of stuck.” I stop at that, because I don’t want to tell her how the door and steering wheel had me pinned in, and I guess the nerve in my back was pinched at that angle, because I couldn’t feel my legs at all, for those few minutes.
“I took a little bit for them to get me out…and,” my voice cracks as my throat tightens, “all I could think about was you.”
“What do you mean?” Her red-rimmed eyes peek up at mine.
“I wanted you. I wanted you with me.” My voice sounds breathless. “I tried to tell myself that you were just a kid when you…when you had her,” I rasp. “I just tried to tell myself to be calm…and shoulder through, like you did.”
I feel something tickle on my bare chest, and I realize that it’s Evie’s tears. I lift my arm from where it rests by my side and wrap it around her back.
“I thought you must have been trapped…or scared,” she whispers. “IM Ketamine was on your orders.”
I don’t fully remember, but I think after they got me out and tried to force me down onto a stretcher, I hit an EMT. That must be why they gave the ketamine.
I rub Evie’s back, my fingers dragging gently in between her shoulder-blades. “You found me when I got here.”
“You asked me to go,” she whispers.
“I didn’t want you to see me,” I say, stroking Ev’s hair.
“Never let that be your instinct.” She peeks up at me, her gorgeous eyes intense. “If you’re crying—God, Landon—if you’re crying, then I really have to be there.”
That’s what goes against the grain, for me. Reaching out and grabbing on. But sometimes, with just Evie, I can do it.
I kiss her head. “About…Ashtyn,” I say thickly. “I had no idea. I would never have left you. When you didn’t write…” I shut my eyes and try to take some careful breaths.
“You thought I had forgotten?”
“Yeah,” I mange.
I was so lost when I fled the group home. I had never felt so hopeless. I hitchhiked south with any car that stopped, not caring what happened to me. I stole food, drank from sinks in public bathrooms, and slept outside two nights on the UT campus once I found myself in Knoxville. I slept behind some bushes, up against a building, and at night, I cried for Evie. I remember it so fucking well: the smell of the dirt, and how the building’s wall felt warm against my back. I would never, ever tell her.
“Did you hate me?” she asks in a small voice.
“Ev…” I kiss her hair again. “Why do you keep asking that? I never even tried to hate you. It’s beyond my capacity.”
“It is?” Her voice is soft and sad.
“It is.” I press my face against her hair and inhale. It smells sweet, the way it always has. “Did you hate me?”
I hold my breath until she nuzzles me. “Of course not. I craved you like some kind of drug. I never forgot how good it was. I never stopped wondering.”
I inhale deeply enough to sting my chest before I shut my eyes. “Why didn’t you find me?”
“I was so scared. Once you came back to the house that time and Em saw you…I realized that you— I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “I thought you’d hate me. And I knew it wouldn’t change a thing. Once it was done, it was done. I guess I…” I feel her inhale. “I just wanted to let us stay the way we were.”
“How was that?” I murmur.
“Perfect.”
“Yeah…so tell me all about that—if you want to.”
Evie’s fingertips stroke my forearm, and it feels so good, it’s a struggle to think straight enough to answer her.
It’s the middle of the night, five nights after the surgery, and she’s sitting on the edge of my hospital bed, tracing circles on the inside of my arm after washing my hair with dry shampoo. I’m pretty sure it didn’t work, but her hands in my hair—good stuff.
I flex my wrist to wrap my fingers around Ev’s arm. She understands my wordless request; her hand clasps mine, and our fingers lace together.
I lean my head against the top of the bed and shut my eyes. I do want to tell her—or rather, I need to.
“Almost two years ago,” I say, with my eyes still closed, “I hired a PI.” My lungs start into a fortifying breath before I freeze, clenching my jaw.
Evie’s hand squeezes mine. I take a few more shallow breaths and try to think around the pain.
“The PI…it took him a while at first, but eventually…he traced her by my name.” I look at Evie, who is listening with wide eyes. “Checked around the time of my estimated birth for a baby born in the Asheville area with the name James Landon. Turns out, I was born near Fairview,” I say softly. “My real birthday is March 5…and my mother’s name is Laura Stern.”