by Joanna Bell
"He's in critical condition," a member of staff tried to explain to me as I paced and sweated and ran my hands through my hair over and over. "There is an extremely high risk of infection. You can't see him until –"
"When can I see him?" I demanded, not hearing anything that was being said, looking wildly from one person to another. "When – when can I see him?!"
"We don't know that, sir. Are you the patient's –"
"Brother. I'm his brother. I just flew in from Montana. Where is he? When can I see him?!"
I was out of my mind. The nurses did their best, talking me down as best they could, talking me through what being burned means, repeatedly explaining why I couldn't be allowed in to see Jackson. In the end, one of them agreed to accompany me outside to the hospital grounds and point out the window to the room he was in, so I could stand in the grass in the dark and stare up at it.
"You should turn the lights off," I said at once, noticing that they were on in the room. "It's late. You should turn the lights off. He won't be able to sleep if –"
"Sir, your brother has been placed in an induced coma. You don't need to worry about the lights. He's in very good hands right n–"
"Is he going to die?" I asked, kneeling down and holding my head in my hands. "Is he? Just tell me. Just tell me if he's going to die."
"Your brother is receiving the best possible care. I promise you the doctors are doing everything we can to –"
"IS HE GOING TO DIE?!"
The nurse knelt beside me. "Sir, there are a lot of very sick people trying to sleep in those rooms. If you could keep your voice down, I think they would appreciate that."
"Yes," I nodded. "Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to – I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I'm sorry. I'm –"
I drew in a deep, gasping breath, trying to forestall the downward spiral I could feel myself drifting into. The nurse stayed with me until she was sure I wasn't going to lose my shit and then she went back inside. I stayed where I was on the grass, staring up at Jackson's window, willing him to know I was there, right outside, that I came to LA to see him, that I cared about him, that I was sorry for what I did – and that I loved him.
Two hours later I was still there. An hour after that I was sitting on a bench, my head once again in my hands.
I suffered after Astrid Walker left me. For probably the first time in my life, I actually suffered. But it was an adolescent kind of suffering, selfish and self-focused, more about me than it was about her. That's not to say I didn't care about her – I did. I cared about her more than I ever cared about any girl before. But I didn't worry about her. She was so beautiful and so smart and capable and her parents were far richer than Jack Devlin. I knew Astrid Walker would be fine without me – probably a lot more fine than she would have been with me.
It was a different kind of suffering that night in Los Angeles. A kind of suffering that is more terror than it is anything else – the terror of losing someone. Not losing them to someone else or somewhere else but losing them for good. Forever. Before you've had the chance to tell them how you feel, to tell them you're sorry.
I broke down just before dawn. I broke down like I've never broken down before, not even when my mom died and I was just a little kid who already had it in his head that breaking down wasn't something Devlins did.
And in the midst of my breakdown, the knowledge came to me that I couldn't do it. I just couldn't face what was happening. Not without her.
It was pure selfishness on my part, I know that. Pure desperation, pure instinct, a drowning man flailing in the dark for an outstretched hand.
I tracked her down through her friend Ava, finding her first on social media and then messaging her from an old account that didn't have my real name on it. Ava, kind and trusting as I would expect any friend of Astrid's to be, fell for my lie about a family emergency (which was only half a lie, really – there was a family emergency, it just wasn't the family I told her it was) and gave me what I wanted: a number.
And when Astrid took the call, it was all I could do not to cry with relief.
I don't even remember most of what I said. I just remember the desperation as I pleaded with her to come to LA She said she couldn't but I kept begging, telling her over and over I couldn't do it without her.
"Please," I implored when she still seemed reluctant. "Please, Astrid. This isn't a lie. I'm not making this up to get you to come back. This is really happening. My brother is in the hospital and they think – they think he's –" I broke off, gulping back the emotions threatening to overtake me. "They think he's going to fucking die. Please. I need you. I don't know how else to say this except I need you, Astrid. I need you. This isn't – this isn't about getting back together. It –"
"Do you promise?"
"Yes! Yes, I promise. I promise I won't lay a goddamned hand on you. I won't do anything! Please listen to me. I'm sorry for calling you like this. I don't know what to do. Please. I need you here. I can't do this. I can't fucking do this."
I didn't leave her much choice, to be fair.
Astrid is a kind person. That's why she finally agreed to come to California. She warned me that it might take a while to get to LA because apparently she was in the middle of the jungle and the one plane that could fly her out wasn't due for another 2 weeks, but it was good enough for me. Just knowing she was coming was enough. It was a lifeline. Something solid to hold onto as the cliff I was clinging to crumbled around me.
***
I hung around the hospital and drove the smoky, deserted late-night streets of Los Angeles like a wraith in the days before she arrived. Jackson still wasn't allowed to have any visitors, so there was nothing else to do but wait. Wait to see if my brother would live. Wait for Astrid Walker, who didn't owe me anything, to show up and save me from myself.
Chapter 28: Cillian
The first thing I noticed was that she was filthy. Really, noticeably dirty. So dirty that people were staring. It was under her fingernails, caked into her hairline, worked into the very fabric of a t-shirt I was only half-convinced had ever been white.
It was her, though. My girl. A wave of self-loathing came over me when I saw her standing there, doing the right thing for me after all the times I failed to do the same.
"Hey," I said, moving to hug her without even thinking.
She stepped away immediately. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"Thank you for coming," I said quietly. "I mean it – thank you. I can't – I don't think I can do this without you."
Astrid looked up at me when I said that, her eyes searching mine. "You're wrong about that, you know. I think you can probably do a lot more than you think, Cillian."
She was different. I noticed it right away. She looked stronger, for one thing. She held herself differently, too, a little more upright than I remembered. When she spoke, there was a new tone to her voice, a confidence that had not been there before. Whatever she'd been doing in the months since I last saw her, it was working.
But she was wrong about me. Because she was strong and capable of change and growth she assumed I was too. She wasn't correct, and if she'd been aware of how I spent our time apart she would have known it.
Also, she was still beautiful. If anything she was more beautiful, even covered in dirt. Her skin was tanned, there was a passel of new freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose and, when she reached up to push a tangle of hair off her face I saw that her forearm was corded with actual muscle.
Maybe it's going to be OK.
It was the first optimistic thought I had since I got the phone call from Darcy.
"Thank you," I repeated. "I mean it, Astrid. I know I fucked up. I know I'm an asshole. I know you didn't have to come here. But you did and – thank you. Did you get a room yet?"
"I'll stay at a different hotel," she replied. There was no tone, no vindictiveness. Astrid wasn't trying to hurt me. She was just being practical.
"Oh. OK, yeah. Of course."
<
br /> "How is your brother?"
I stuffed my hands in my pockets because I didn't know what else to do with them if I couldn't touch her – and I definitely couldn't do that. "Still in critical condition. Hasn't woken up. I haven't even seen him yet – no one has."
"Is your dad here?"
I nodded. "Uh-huh."
We made the kind of awkward small talk that people who were once very close but no longer are make with each other, and then Astrid said she had to go find a hotel room and take a shower.
I didn't try to hug her again before she left. She didn't want me to. There was something about the way she kept her physical distance that conveyed the message that she didn't want me anywhere near her better than any words could have. When she suggested a trip to the beach or a hike in the hills the next day, to help me get my mind off Jackson, I said I thought that would be a good idea. And then when she left I stood in the lobby, staring out at the street long after she had disappeared from view.
Back in my room, I boiled some water and poured it over a plastic bowl of instant ramen, moving slowly and methodically as I tried to figure out what I was feeling.
Grateful, obviously. I mean, she came back. She came back as a favor to me. I didn't deserve it – I knew it and so did she. But lonely, too. Lonely the way you can be when someone you've missed is suddenly standing right next to you again and you realize your loneliness was never really about the distance. Astrid Walker was still lost to me, whether there was a 1000 miles between us or 2 feet. She came to California to help me, but it didn't make her mine again.
There was pride, too. I was proud of her. Kind of a weird one, really, because the thing I was proud of her for was getting over me. Whatever was there between us when we first met was gone. The softness I used to see in her eyes when she looked at me was gone. She didn't need me anymore and like I said, I was proud of her for it. She was too good for me. I always knew it – now she did, too.
Not all my reactions were so noble.
I jerked off a lot over Astrid Walker after she left. I mean, a lot. Often when I was drunk. There were no flesh and blood women in my life – I don't know how she did it, but she killed my interest in women who weren't her stone dead.
It was different in my hotel room that night because I didn't have to rely on memories alone. I'd just seen her, just spent time with her, just experienced the way simply hearing her voice still sent the blood rushing through my veins. My senses were once again torturously full of her – and I knew I couldn't have her, which just made the ache in my balls that much worse.
After I ate my noodles on the bed with my throbbing hard-on resting against my belly, I imagined a different outcome to our stilted reunion in the lobby. I imagined that instead of leaving, Astrid agreed to come up to my room. I imagined her pulling her dirty shirt off over her head, smiling that half-shy, half-needy little smile of hers.
It was all there in my mind's eye. Her soft skin revealed, the little mole she has near the bottom of her ribcage on the left side, the pale curve of the underside of her breast – and then the nipple itself. It was soft at first. Not for long. I reached down, slid the tips of my index and middle fingers into her mouth – oh Jesus fucking Christ – and then used her own saliva to pinch and roll and tease that nipple into a state of high, erect alert.
She gave in then, unable to control how much she wanted me, unable to resist. I tightened my grip on my cock as the Astrid of my imagination turned towards me, arching her back, opening her body, sighing like an angel as I ran my hands down over her hips and around to her perfect little ass.
I tried to hold off. I wanted to lose myself in the depths of the fantasy, to enjoy the break from the real world for as long as I could. It was difficult, though. Just the thought of her offering herself up for my delectation had me on the edge of exploding.
In my mind, I slid a hand into her panties, watching her expression change from one of slightly aroused amusement to one of real need when I discovered how wet she was, how slippery and swollen her lips as I –
That was it. I couldn't even get inside her in my fantasy. Just the memory of her wetness was too much. I let out a loud groan as I shot my load, caressing and stroking the head of my cock as my toes curled in the still, quiet air of the hotel room.
Chapter 29: Astrid
I think maybe I got a little ahead of myself in Peru. I think the confidence that came from discovering just how hard I could actually work, and just how much physical discomfort I could actually endure spilled over into areas of my life where it wasn't truly warranted.
Sure, I could work hard. Sure, I could sleep on a thin cotton pad on the ground for months on end and bathe in a river and witness people going through the most difficult times of their lives without falling apart.
That didn't mean I got over Cillian Devlin. I thought it did. I thought that's what it meant when he slipped into the background of my mind – and my life – in the jungle. I thought that's what getting over someone was. You keep busy, and you stay busy, and you continue being busy until the person you're trying to forget is forgotten. Simple.
Except it wasn't simple. And as soon as I saw him again – I mean the literal second I walked into the lobby of that hotel and saw Cillian standing there – it was like I never even went to Peru. It was like no time had passed at all. My own reaction to seeing him made me want to burst into despairing laughter.
I wouldn't say I felt cocky when I flew to LA. Cocky would be the wrong word. I was wary. But I was also confident. Confident that my new life was built, my new skills acquired, my old self sloughed off. I knew I would have to watch myself around the cowboy who so thoroughly captivated the old Astrid's naive and inexperienced heart, but I thought I could handle it.
And then I saw him. Then I had to stand beside him in that hotel and literally force my body to keep its distance from his. I had to make small talk while struggling to hide just how distraught I was at discovering the difference between filling your life so full of activities that you don't have room to face a difficult issue and actually facing that difficult issue.
I almost went straight back to LAX that night. I drove away from Cillian's hotel genuinely unsure whether I was looking for a hotel or a freeway exit for the airport.
In the end, I went to a hotel. I want to say it was a noble decision. That I was just keeping a promise to a friend in need. I mean, I was doing that. Cillian was in need, I could see it in his haunted eyes. But there was more to my staying than altruism alone.
***
The next day, we went for a hike in the hills. Cillian's brother was still in an induced coma in intensive care, so there was nothing to do but help my ex-husband fill his time with distractions – an activity I excelled at.
We didn't say much during the first half of the hike. I think we were both getting used to each other again. Cillian looked the same. Same golden hair, same intensely blue eyes. He even moved the same, leaping up onto and over boulders in the path or reaching up to swing briefly from a tree branch with the same maddening, easy strength almost a year of hard labor still hadn't cultivated in my own limbs.
But he was different, too. I first noticed it in the lobby, even though I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. There was some quality about him that hadn't been there before, a quietness of presence where before there had been nothing but volume.
When we reached the summit of the hill we sat on a rock outcropping with a view of the city and gazed out towards the Pacific.
"Have you put your toes in it before?"
"Huh?"
"The ocean," I said, remembering Cillian Devlin's distinct lack of interest in travel. "The Pacific. Have you ever dipped your toes in it?"
Cillian looked at me. "No. Is that something you're supposed to do?"
I shrugged. "I don't think you're supposed to do it. I guess I just always have. When I was little I used to collect sand, too. Like wherever we went to a new body of water for the first time I would save s
ome sand from the beach and put it in a little glass jar when I got home. My mom probably still has those jars. There was a lot of them.
"I bet there was, you weirdo."
It was easy to be with him again. Too easy. I had to keep reminding myself, whenever I got to feeling too comfortable sitting there next to him, of the things he did, the ways he treated me.
"What was your favorite?"
"My favorite what?" I asked, thinking at that exact moment of the photographs I received, of Cillian with other women.
"Sand. What was your favorite sand? I think I heard there's some beach in Australia where the sand is pink."
"That's in Bermuda. Maybe there's one in Australia, too? My favorite was green, though – from this one beach in Hawaii. Exactly the same color as an olive."
"I'm sorry, Astrid. I know it's too late, and I'm not saying it to make you change your mind about me or anything like that. I'm just saying it because – well I guess I just want you to know. I'm sorry – for everything."
I didn't look at him when he said that. I kept my eyes focused on the Pacific in the distance, its particular shade of blue still hazy with smoke from the wildfire that almost killed his brother.
"Uh," I said after a long pause, because I had not been expecting an apology – and I didn't know to what exactly his "everything" referred. "OK."
We fell back into silence as I waited to see if Cillian would bring up the other women that he didn't know I knew about.
He didn't.
"I'm just sorry for how I acted," he continued a couple of minutes later. "I'm sorry for how I treated you. I was insecure and angry and I took it out on you. You know I honestly don't know what the fuck my problem is. Sometimes it feels like I do everything the opposite way to the right way. Like I wanted you to stay so bad, so my solution to that was to act like a total fucking dick. Because acting like a total dick is obviously the way to get people to stay with you, I guess? Jesus Christ."
