“Okay…” She waits.
He nods. “Your organs began to shut down as of result of your injuries, a blood transfusion was necessary…”
I jump to my feet unable to sit still any longer. “Dr. Brian, with all due respect, can you spit it out already, because I’m starting to freak the fuck out over here and I know you’re getting at something.”
“Noah, come on, man,” Mason mumbles.
“Don’t. You got a full break down and that” —I jab a finger in Dr. Brian’s direction— “is not what you told us. You made it sound like she bumped her fucking head! I had no idea all that other shit was happening.”
“Please Noah,” Nurse Becky tries to soothe. “This is a lot for everyone to take in. Maybe now is not the time?”
I look back at Ari, who is frowning at her lap, and I instantly feel like a dick. I nod, lowering into the chair once more.
“You know what, actually…” Mason jumps up just then. “I think we should go out while you talk to her.” His voice ticks nervously. “You know, give her some privacy.”
“Are you fu—” I’m about to lose my shit when my girl speaks up, cutting me off.
“No, don’t go,” she pleads, holding his gaze for a few seconds.
Finally his features cave, defeat building across him. His eyes flick to me before he drops them to the floor, his arms coming up to fold around the back of his head.
“Dr. Brian,” she prompts.
He nods his head. “Mrs. Johnson?”
“Miss,” I correct automatically.
“Miss?” The doc looks from me to his file. “Becky?” He turns to his nurse in confusion.
She flicks her gaze to Mason. “Mr. Johnson? Are you or are you not Arianna’s husband?” she asks him in a very motherly tone.
The others chuckle at her mistake, but my glare would cut through him, if possible, especially when he refuses to lift his eyes from the ground. “No, ma’am, I’m her twin brother.”
“What the fuck is going on?” I step around the bed, eyeing him.
“Oh dear,” Becky whispers, her eyes sliding my way. “I guess I assumed the situation was a little unconventional.”
“Mason,” I snap.
“Noah please.” Cameron grabs onto my arm and turns back to the doctor. “It’s just a misunderstanding.”
I frown, turning so my body is facing Ari’s, the doctor standing to her right.
“It’s fine. Please, say what you need to say,” Ari urges.
“I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but by the time we were aware, it was too late—”
“Too late for what?” she cuts him off, tension enveloping her as she clutches the blanket in her hands.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Johnson, I’m afraid you lost the baby.”
Chapter 38
Noah
* * *
I jolt, my muscles spasming as a sheet of ice falls over me, immobilizing me from the inside out. Gasps fill the room, and my body becomes too heavy to hold, someone beside me now, holding mine up. The doctor’s lips continue to move, but his words don’t reach my ears.
A wave of nausea hits me, and I sway.
A hand falls on my shoulder.
Confusion, hurt, anger, rage, sadness, loss.
I feel everything.
Agony, true and complete.
I can’t breathe.
Baby. My baby.
Our little baby…
Gone?
“I… what?” My beautiful angel’s voice cuts through the haze and my eyes lift. “I was pregnant?” Her shattered whisper cuts through, me and my hands ball to fists.
It takes all my might to push myself up, and even then, someone helps me to my feet.
The doctor says something else, and then he’s gone.
I swallow the bile threatening to spill from my throat. “I’m so sorry, Juliet. No one told me. I didn’t know.”
“Oh my god,” she cries, tears spilling down her cheeks before she buries them in her hands.
“Baby,” I crack, anger and sadness stinging my eyes in the form of tears, and I snap out of it, making my way to her bedside.
Her head finally lifts, and my heart breaks at the sight.
She opens her eyes, but they don’t shift my way.
She reaches out, but not in my direction.
And then she whispers, but it’s not my name she cries.
She calls for him and every orifice in my body tightens, twists, and tears.
She calls to him, and my world goes up in flames. Lava, pure, hot, obliterating lava boils within me, bringing beads of sweat to my skin. I force my eyes to his.
Chase stays rooted in place, not daring to move an inch, the entire room now a cell of silence.
“Chase,” she cries for him. “We were going to have a baby?”
I choke on air, my pulse flatlining.
“Oh shit,” someone rushes out, and then a body is in front of me, arms caging me in and then there’s another.
I don’t realize I’m fighting my way to the wide-eyed asshole across the room until there’s one arm around my neck from behind, and another around my back from the front.
“Noah, don’t,” Mason hisses in my ear. “Please, not now. Let’s… fuck, just hold on.”
Cameron rushes to Ari’s side, wrapping her arms around her.
“Noah, man… ” Chase shakes his head. “No. Something’s wrong.” He looks to Mason. “Mason, I swear. I… she—” He shakes his head again, peeking at Ari from the corner of his eye.
“Fuck me,” Brady croaks under his breath.
And then it hits, like a ten-ton truck down a straight slope.
“Hm-mm.” My head shakes frantically as I tear myself free of Mason’s hold. “No.”
I rush to her bedside, falling to my knees beside it.
“No,” I repeat on a whisper, unwilling to believe what’s happening.
“Look at me.” My words are a soft demand.
The room falls quiet, and when her shoulders draw up in hesitation, my blood pressure spikes, my heart beating against my rib cage like an animal trying to escape.
“Ari?” Cameron whispers, but she makes no move.
Gently placing my knuckle beneath her chin, I life it from Cameron’s shoulder.
I bring her gaze to mine, searching, praying I find what I’m looking for.
“Juliet…” I whisper, so only she can hear.
She looks deep into my eyes, tears in her own, and her body shudders as that one word from me travels through her entire being, the way it always does. The way it has since the moment we met, even when she didn’t realize it.
But I see beyond the response she can’t control.
I see the unsure, curious flicker behind her big brown eyes, the one she had all those months ago, before she let her first love go.
Before she opened up to us.
Before she became mine.
My hand goes limp, dropping to my thigh with a loud smack. Cameron weeps beside her, having just realized what I’ve already figured out.
I stagger backward, falling onto my ass, quickly crawling back to my feet. Stumbling over nothing before I reach the door and trip again on my way through it.
I hustle from the room before I lose it completely.
I hear them as they shout my name, but I don’t stop. I keep moving.
Away from the hospital.
Away from the place my unborn child died.
Away from the man who hid it from me.
Away from the bastard in love with my girl.
And away from the girl I love… who has no idea she loves me back.
Chapter 39
Arianna
* * *
The repetitive beep grows longer and louder, piercingly so.
It gets faster and faster, creating a sharp echo in the back of my mind, and then someone is shouting.
My body is burning up, the heat making me nauseous, and when I try to fill my lungs, I’m denied.
It’s so blurry.
The face, my mind… my life.
It’s all blurry… but then I close my eyes, and suddenly everything it’s clear.
The haze is gone.
I can see.
My stomach is swollen.
My smile is wide.
A hand slides into my hair, large and strong, yet gentle. And then his eyes open, and a calm settles over me.
His eyes, they’re the most gorgeous shade of—
Voices creep in and steal the dream away.
“What did you give her?”
“It’s a sedative. We need to get her heart rate down.”
The beeping is back, and then everything goes black.
Noah
* * *
It’s been a couple hours since I left the hospital, and not five minutes after my ass hit the seat of my truck, Mason called. And then he called again and again, but I didn’t pick up.
While he was calling, Brady set up a new message thread in GroupMe, the app the football team uses for group chats and sharing information. He created it with a handful of guys he must assume I talk to the most, Trey being one of them, asking if anyone has seen me and if not, where they think they can find me. A couple guys name the obvious places like the gym, field, and my house, but the people I’ve been living at the hospital with know better than that, and minutes after that, my phone starts ringing again. Both Mason and Brady try call after call, text after text.
I should appreciate their concern and the fact that they give a damn where I am and what I’m doing, but my mind can’t hold any other thoughts right now, so I turn off my notifications, hit the corner store and drive a few miles outside of town without a destination in mind. The first turn after the city limits sign is the one I take, and I bury my truck in the middle of an orchard. Hiding my keys in the glovebox, I drop the tailgate and climb up.
I’m not a drinker, never have been, but tonight, I’ll drink like a pro.
Some bottom shelf vodka is the liquor of choice. It’s disgusting, burns like a bitch, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk toward the whiskey, not when I would have done nothing but picture drowning in a certain set of eyes, so I drown in clear liquor instead.
I drink until the last drop, the need to get trashed high.
I want to black out , to shut down fully and completely, because if my girl doesn’t remember us, I don’t want to remember anything.
Not even my own fucking name.
For the first time in my life, I wish I were someone else.
I wish I were him.
Chapter 40
Arianna
* * *
A flash of blue jolts me awake, and when I open my eyes, Cameron is there.
“Hey, girlfriend.” She yawns, her upper body bent over in her chair, her head lying on my legs. She folds her arms under her cheek and smiles. “How’s the head?”
“Heavy, but not excruciating anymore. My ribs are an entirely different story.”
“I bet.”
Glancing around the room, I spot Mason draped over the corner chair, the rest of the space clear.
“Brady and Chase went home a couple hours ago to shower and get some sleep. Mase wouldn’t budge, of course.”
The corner of my mouth lifts, but I look away when moisture builds in my eyes and I don’t even know why. “What day is it?”
She’s quiet a moment before she whispers, “It’s still December twenty-ninth. You were only asleep for a couple hours.” Her tone is thick with worry.
I nod, but my lips begin to quiver, and she sits up, Mason quickly coming to my side. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why this keeps happening.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since you woke up. Of course you’re going to emotional, we understand, and we’re just happy you’re okay.”
“Am I?”
Mase reaches out, but I shake my head, wiping the tears away before they fall. My chest aches with my full inhale, but I suffer through it, trying to force away the millions of emotions dizzying up my mind.
“Ari—”
“I wish Mom and Dad were here.” I cry, my shoulders shaking, and Mason shifts, sitting at the edge beside me on the bed now.
“I know you do. Me too.” He hugs me to him, his voice cracking. “I’ve tried everything, but they’ll call us as soon as they’re back on land. Should only be two more days, tops.”
Two more days until I’ll get to hear my mom’s voice, until my dad is here promising everything will be okay and begs for instructions on what he can do to make it better.
I don’t know what can be made better, if anything.
I’m too afraid to think past what I know, and apparently, I don’t know shit. Nothing recent, anyway.
The doctor said this happens more than people realize, that memory loss, while less common than not, isn’t abnormal in concussion-related injuries. He said as soon as my brain has had time to heal, things will slowly come back to me, that they’re hopeful, and I should be too.
I want to be, but there’s this helplessness I can’t shake, and I think my twin senses it.
Sniffling, I look up, and he wipes my tears with the pads of his thumbs, attempting a smile, but it never quite breaks free.
“If you do get a hold of them, I don’t think we should tell them until they’re home.” I try to busy his mind with something a little less about me. “They’ll just stress the whole way back.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” He nods, rubbing his eyes like he used to do when we were little.
I reach out, gripping his hand. “Go home, Mase.”
His head jerks my way, and he sits up straight. “What, no, I’m good.”
“No, I’m good, I promise.” When it’s obvious he doesn’t agree, I add, “Plus, I want to try and take a shower. Nurse Becky said I can, with help. I just have to work around my IV.”
“I can help,” he argues.
“Mase, your sister will be naked in said shower,” Cameron teases, knowing he didn’t think it through. “Just go, I went home for a few hours last night, and we both know Ari will be bored of hearing us and ready to pass out again in another hour anyway.” She pokes fun.
Mason scoffs a laugh, aware of what she’s doing, but he’s exhausted, and he knows I’m in good hands. The risks are gone, so if there’s a perfect time for him to go, it’s now.
“Yeah, all right. I’ve got something to do anyway.”
“Yeah, like sleep.”
His smirk is small as he presses his lips to my hair. “Be back soon, okay? Have Cam call me if you need me. I’ll come right back.”
“I know and I will.”
He grabs some things off the chair, and with one last look back, he walks out.
My shoulders fall instantly, and when I turn to Cameron, her eyes begin to water.
“Come on, girlfriend,” she whispers as she stands. “Let’s get you all fresh.”
It takes several minutes for me to get up on my feet, but it’s faster than it was the day before when the nurse asked me to walk across the room and back.
Everything still aches, but I’ve got some of my movements down to know which ways sting a little less.
Cameron pulls my IV bag as close as she, allowing for the most stretch possible, and I slip under the spray, Cameron not a foot from me the entire time.
Once I’ve washed my body the best I can manage, I gently apply shampoo in my hair, careful not to touch the scrapes now scabbing over on the left side of my head, in fear of it stinging.
Cameron pokes her head in to help squeeze some conditioner into my palms, and the minute I lather it into the ends of my hair, my eyes decide to close, a strange flicker of something bringing a frown to my face.
I lean against the wall, lift the tips of my hair to my nose and inhale again.
The soap, it has an almost piney, eucalyp
tus scent, but fresh and clean and… familiar.
An unexpected warmth washes over me, but it brings tears of confusion with it, and suddenly, I’m gasping for air I didn’t know I was denying myself.
“You okay?” Cameron asks from the other side of the curtain.
“Mm-hm.” My closed-mouthed response gives me away.
Cam pokes her head in, a shadow falling over her eyes as they meet mine. “Ari…”
“Can you, um, help rinse with conditioner really fast?” I ask, letting her know I don’t want to talk about it, without saying it. “I can’t stand here any longer.”
She pushes the curtain back with a nod, unfazed by the water splashing all over her sweat suit, and gently spins me, grabbing my hair in her hands. “Let’s just wash this out. I brought leave-in for you days ago, just in case, so we can work some of that in once you’re sitting.”
I nod again, and she gets to work. As she’s turning off the water and passing me a towel, I whisper her name.
“Cam?”
“Honey bunny.”
“Thank you.” I don’t mean to cry. “For this. For being here. For all things I can’t remember, but I’m sure you were there for the last few months.”
“I’ll always be here, Ari, you know that.” Cameron sniffles as she ties my gown back into place, gently moving my hair to one side. She slips in front of me, tears wobbling in her eyes. “No matter what.”
I nod again, stepping into my best friend, who hugs me to her.
No matter what, she said.
That’s the scary part about all of this, isn’t it? The reality behind it all.
That this could be the beginning.
How things could get worse.
If that’s the case, where the hell does that leave me?
Stuck in the past… or lost in the future?
Noah
* * *
The crisp California air wakes me, and with the cold comes a hangover I didn’t think through. I can’t even roll myself over without wincing, but I manage to make it to my feet and stumble to the cab of my truck. It takes all my might to climb inside, but the sloshing around has my stomach turning as beads of sweat form along my hairline. Spinning, I quickly lean my upper body out the door, just in time to keep from throwing up in my lap.
Say You Swear Page 36