I punch the pedal. “Slow down, Kell...”
Next time I sight him, he is riding with the car’s right side on the shoulder.
My head feels hot. My pulse picks up. I reach for the phone in my lap, to call who? The road curves sharply right and Kellan runs again into the left lane.
Fuck.
I top out at 75 mph and press the brakes out of sheer fear. But Kellan doesn’t.
Kellan disappears around another wooded bend.
I come around it... see a bridge. The sheen of moonlight on its metal rails. The glow is blotted—for one second. The rails are blotted by his car. I hear the Escalade punch through the guardrail with an awful screech. I watch in horror as it tumbles toward the water.
Five
Cleo
I run down the shoulder, I slip, I tumble down the hill that skirts the murky swampland. I scramble up just feet from the dark water, which splays about as wide as a skating rink.
The Escalade is near the middle of the reed-laced marsh, nose-down in the water... pointed a little left, toward me. It’s still moving, sinking ever so slowly into the muck. The waterline spills over the windshield. As I gape at it, the right side of the Escalade sinks down a few feet.
“Oh Jesus, God, fuck fuck!”
I jerk my shoes off, yank my pants off, and splash into the chilly sludge. I’m screaming, waving my arms above my head. I flop forward, belly-first, and try to freestyle, but the weeds are too thick. My arched feet fumble for the muddy bottom. I kick hard, but my feet touch nothing, so I’m swimming, gasping.
I hear a low glug-glug and see the car tilt even further downward on the front end. Fear cuts like a knife. Adrenaline makes my arms and legs move faster. My thigh bumps something hard. I shriek—fuck just a log. I’m almost there. Oh fuck, Kellan—what if he went through the windshield?
Treading water, I try to look around. The night bears down around me, dark and textured. I kick my feet and surge forward.
“Buckle up for safety, Cleo...”
Please be in there!
Oh God, I can barely see the driver’s side door. The door behind it... I can open that. My throat constricts as I swim closer to the car: so large and dark. Over the stink of the water lapping at my nose, I smell burned rubber, maybe even smoke.
I shudder as I glide within reaching distance of the SUV. Focus, don’t be scared! I kick a few times, hard, and keep on kicking as I try the back door handle with my wet, trembling hand. The car gurgles, bubbles rising around me.
“Fuck!” I pull the handle up and, while I grasp at the door with my left hand, sinking slightly I press my foot against the SUV’s body. The Escalade lurches. I shriek. Fuck, it doesn’t open!
I moan and pull the handle again, and the door opens fractionally. Water rushes into the Escalade. The door pulls shut again.
“FUCK!”
I pull the fucking handle one more time, and when the door cracks open, causing water to cascade into the car, I pull harder.
There is no doubt—no doubt in my mind that I will get to Kellan—so I pull the door open with all my might and dive into the gap between the door and door frame.
My forehead smacks something. I let out a sob and then I’m in the car! Water! It’s up to my boobs, but in the front seat...
“Kellan,” I sob. Fuck, the front is underwater. Is his face submerged? I feel the car tilt and realize water’s pouring in through the cracked door. I yank the door shut. My breaths are shrieks, my limbs are clumsy as I splash between the front seats.
His face is not submerged, his head lolls leftward and there’s blood…
“Wake up!” I grab his face before I realize don’t do that; the neck, and “KELLAN.... please!” The car jolts leftward with my movements, water rising.
The seatbelt! Got to get the seatbelt! Don’t look at his face! I reach into the tarry water and I feel and... there! My fingers press against it... tiny, cool, metallic. The belt comes undone. I’m panting as I work it off of him.
I try. It’s hard. He’s big. He isn’t moving.
What if—
No.
I slap his cheek. His eyes open, blinking blood... His head is bleeding.
“Wake up! Damnit, fuckshit, wake the fuck up... Come on!” I grab his right arm, tugging violently. I jerk him toward the back of the car and realize when he doesn’t move at all that he will have to move himself.
“Come on, you have to swim!” I shriek.
There’s water to our necks now; Kellan’s head is tilted back. “Kellan, please, please!” I sob.
He blinks twice, slow and dazed. His eyes roll... his eyes find mine.
“Come on, baby... Come on, we have to swim!”
I grab his arm, clawing his bicep as I tug him toward the back seat. “MOVE YOUR LEGS!”
He groans... His body twists. I hear a splash, and then he slams against me. We drift in a tangle to the back seat.
“Cleo...” He grabs me, looking confused. “What—”
“I’m opening the door now, kick against the seat and push yourself out of the car.” The Escalade lurches leftward again. I hear water rushing.
“Right now, Kell! I’m opening the door now, come on! Get in front of me...” I push his broad back, ushering him in front of me, so I can push him from the cark. I reach around him to shove the door open. I can’t push because he’s in my way—but Kellan pushes. He pushes the door, and I push him, and together we get the thing open.
Water pours in so quickly I almost don’t catch a last breath—but I do. I shove Kellan hard, and he disappears into the murk.
The second I swim out behind him is the longest of my life. When I break the surface I find him treading water, moaning with his head tipped back.
I nudge his shoulder. He fumbles and chokes. I push his chin up. “Swim!” Rich boy—can swim. “Toward the shore!” I hit him and he gasps.
“My shoulder...” He sounds hurt. Dark water laps around his head. His face is twisted. I grab a breath of air and sink and shove his lower back with both hands. Resurface.
“Fuck...” I give his back a shove, but I can’t move him. He’s too fucking heavy.
Fuck... That slimy—duh, the ground! That’s the ground under my feet! “Kellan...”
I just barely get my arm around his neck before his eyes roll back into his head. My feet are mired in mud. I try to swim, to kick against the slimy ground. I cry as I struggle... then it’s shallow. I can stand completely but I can’t lift his limp body. I struggle to the shore with him, pulling his torso out onto the mud. He’s bleeding... from his nose? His mouth?
I look around for help, but I don’t have my phone. I start to cry. I touch his head, his bloody face.
“Oh God! What do I do?” I wrap my hand around his mouth, feeling for breath. There it is, a little bit...
I’m running toward my car when I hear sirens.
Six
Cleo
“Yes, I realize no visitors right now, but I just want an update.” I smack my fist against the front of the looming counter in the Emory University Hospital ER and bite my tongue so I don’t cuss this fucking woman out.
My hair is damp from sticking my head in the bathroom sink, the crevices of my fingernails are stained with Kellan’s blood, I’m wearing scrubs and paper shoes and my head aches—and no one will tell me shit.
“I’ve called a doctor, and we’re waiting on her, ma’am,” bitchy receptionist explains. Bitchily.
I glare at the yellow smiley faces on her hot pink scrubs and whirl around to sit back down.
The ambulance ride was awful. I mean... I’m glad one came, of course. Apparently a fisherman heard the wreck and called 9-1-1, which is a good thing, but the ride itself? Traumatic.
The EMTs pulled two Fentanyl patches off Kellan’s bare shoulder, which explained his blue lips, but after they got an oxygen mask on his busted face, they couldn’t figure out why he was bleeding so much from his nose and mouth. They wrapped his left arm against his bruise
d chest and I held his right hand until someone stole it from me to stick an IV into him.
They kept talking about overdoses and something called “narcan,” which I’ve since learned can help people who overdose on opiates. I said I was his girlfriend and they started asking me the basic questions like his age. I got his hand again, the fingers curled and cold, the wide, cool palm swathed in tape, an IV line curling around our joined hands, and as I stroked his fingers, I realized I know almost nothing about Kellan. I don’t even know his real, true, legal last name.
I explained what I do know to the EMTs and told them that I thought he might use a doctor at Emory, and someone, somehow, sometime confirmed that we were headed here.
The ride was long. My eyes swept up and down him as I folded his big hand between my warmer palms. I could see the awful, awful bruising on the left side of his ribcage as they tucked his arm against it... strapped it down and then they covered up his pretty abs, his perfect arms and shoulders.
The blanket was gray, and underneath the plastic mask his face was gray. The female ENT kept pulling the mask off and wiping blood off his face with a white cloth. His nose and mouth just kept bleeding. The few times his eyes open, he looked hurt and scared. His eyes darted around until his gaze found me, and I would touch his hair and rub his shoulder as his body shook.
There was a neck brace on him, I noticed. When did that happen? His body was hidden under blankets but I watched his feet, stripped of their Keen sandals. His toes would curl as the EMTs shown light into his eyes and pulled the blanket back to stick a needle in... his thigh? He jerked. Their voices moved too loud and fast. The crackle of the radio... my mouth kissing his fingertips.
The male EMT prodded the inside of his left elbow and nodded at the female. “Lots of marks,” he murmured, covering the arm again.
“Track marks?” I wailed.
The female EMT screwed up her face. The dude gave me a no shit look, and I started to cry. I never really stopped, just tried to keep it quiet as they labored over him, and Kellan’s eyes opened and shut and I said sweet things to him.
By the time we reached the ER drop off, Kellan’s face was snow white. The female EMTs told me to “stay put,” he was in shock and needed blood. I had to let go of his poor, cold hand and stop myself from running with them as they spirited his cot into the ER.
Someone brought me dry pants and these weird, papery shoes, and I cried some more, and talked to a cop who was nice and handed me a towel from his trunk.
Someone from the hospital—some sort of advocate woman—popped up and took her own notes as I answered questions for the accident report. And then the advocate told me she’d find out about Kellan, and she led me to a plastic chair.
That was coming up on three hours ago now. Physically, I might be the healthiest person in this room, but I can’t breathe. I can’t think straight. I feel like I’m being psychologically tortured.
Just when I think I’m going to end up wringing smiley-face receptionist’s neck, a short-haired brunette in a white coat comes through the double doors. Her eyes dart around the room as she says, “Cleo Whatley?”
I rise and she blinks at me. She seems distracted, almost skittish. She tries to smile, stops half-way, and pushes a strand of short hair out of her brown eyes.
“Cleo.” She waves me toward the mouth of the ER hallway. “Has anybody spoken with you yet?”
I shake my head. She ushers me down a short, white hall, into a small, white room with a brown table and three chairs. She sits on the side with only one chair and nods at the two in front of her, which makes me cry because if Kellan was with me there would be a chair for each of us…
The doctor plunks a tablet on the table and glances down into her lap, then up into my face.
“Hi there.” Her face is stuck somewhere between kind and gravely serious. Which makes my stomach flip.
“Can you tell me how my boyfriend is?” I manage hoarsely.
My voice breaks on the word “boyfriend,” as I remember that he’s not. He’s got a pregnant girlfriend. How fucked up is it that I still want him?
A box of Kleenex slides across the table toward me and I realize I’m crying again. I take two tissues and dab my cheeks.
“Is he okay?”
Her mouth flattens. Her face looks like no. “What do you know about Kellan’s health, Cleo?”
I look worriedly into her wide brown eyes. To see where she is leading me, so I can shelter myself. But I can’t tell. “I don’t know,” I whisper. “I... Does… He has a drug problem?”
She blinks, completely poker-faced. I watch her chest rise on an inhalation. “What makes you think that?”
My throat tightens—and I can tell I’m right. He does have a drug problem.
“I found a bunch of pills at his house... recently.” I rub my finger over a ragged cuticle. “Also, in the ambulance. They said... I saw pain patches. On his back.” My stomach twists so hard I have to swallow to be sure I don’t throw up on the table. I look at her. “Is he okay? You’re scaring me.”
“Cleo...” The doctor leans toward me. Her eyes widen. “What do you know about Kellan’s mental health?”
My throat tightens as if she’s slung a noose around it. “Nothing.” I bring a hand up to my chest. “Is there something I should know?” My voice wavers.
The doctor sits back in her chair. She looks almost relieved. “In June, he was admitted for an overdose attempt,” she says, stroking her hair out of her eyes.
I gape. “He was?”
She nods. “He spent two nights in the psychiatric unit here, but he was discharged. I’m going to tell you about that,” she says slowly, “but first you need to know he’s being transferred to another hospital.”
“He is? Why?”
“We’re moving him to New York. It will be a plane transfer, and it will happen soon. There is an option for you to go along, if you want that.”
I swallow. I blink, and tears fall down my cheeks again. “What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he stay here?”
She leans toward me, reaching across the table. Time slows as I watch her red lips move.
“Cleo—I’m sorry to have to share this news with you, but... Kellan is in the most advanced stage of leukemia.”
Seven
Cleo
Have you ever had your whole life rearranged by something someone told you? It feels like surgery in a second. Like someone reaching in and moving things around so fast you’re different before you even realize what they’ve done. Maybe they’ve removed a part, or maybe something’s added. Maybe everything’s the same, but shifted slightly leftward.
Surgery on the heart changes the way the blood is pumped to every other part.
It makes sense. I can’t deny that much. It makes so much sense now that I know the truth.
Why he would pay me so much money to stay at his house—and for just three weeks. He mentioned teaching me more of his business, so I could maybe have a larger role, because he was “leaving.”
From the second we first met, he was always holding my hand. Between the dirty talk and his pretty, perfect cock, he was always reaching for me. Needing to be near me, in me. Wrapping himself around me while he thought I was asleep.
How many sick people are getting marijuana at no cost because a bunch of college students pay for it?
Robin Hood.
I’m not even surprised he set up something like that.
And yet, I’m so surprised. I don’t believe it—any of it. I can’t fly to New York with him. When the doctor tells me what she tells me, I take a taxi back to Chattahoochee, to my car. I see the swamp, the puncture in the rail, the road muddied from where they hauled his car out, and it’s meaningless to me. Like a scene from a film I watched while half asleep.
I drive straight to Kellan’s house and find it unlocked. I go to the windowed room and go to sleep, and wake up in a ray of thick gold sunlight. Afternoon, it seems.
I reach the river as the sun
sets, pinkening the sky over the pine trees. The black cat joins me. When I start to feel ill and I know I need to move, she follows me back to my car and twines her sleek body around my legs.
“And if we catch her and we have to put her down instead?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I wish you wouldn’t say that.”
“It makes you sad to think about putting down a feral cat you’ve never even met?”
“I think pain should be reserved for something painful…”
I scoop Helen up and take her with me. I don’t know where I’m going until I realize I’m in Lora’s parking lot.
‘I’m here. Coming up,’ I text her as I look up at the third story.
I carry Helen up the stairs and knock and ring the bell. Lora’s not home, but there’s a spare key underneath the frog statue sitting by her mat. I take Helen straight to the kitchen, where I serve her water and a bowl of ham.
Then I pull a wicker chair out from the breakfast table and sit down.
Tired. I feel so—
Don’t.
I pull my phone out of the pocket of the jeans I got from the overnight bag in my car, and turn the screen face down so I can’t see the texts or missed calls.
Denial burns inside me, prickly, unsettling. I stand up and start to organize the counter. Toothpicks, Lora? Three boxes of toothpicks? I move two dirty plates, a vase of crumpled roses, and a sheer pink blouse, then spray the grimy counter down with a bleach-based cleaner.
The air in Lora’s house is cinnamon-vanilla. It feels heavy, like the pressure of the water on a scuba dive, which I did once and hated.
I’m wiping the counter slowly, letting the bleach fill up my head, when my hand bumps into a stack of mail partially obscured by the toaster oven. The thing on top is from the power company. It’s marked urgent.
Never Let Go: Top Shelf Romance Collection 6 Page 64