Another lifetime later, Peter turned the corner, and everyone gathered around him.
"They have his oxygen levels back to normal. He's getting a breathing treatment now, but they're going to keep him overnight. They'll be moving him to a room upstairs soon."
Weston's teammates' departures were staggered, and then it was just Sam, Julianne, Coach Langdon, and I. Peter came back in, followed by Veronica and a couple of nurses pushing a hospital bed down the hall.
I tried to glance past Peter but couldn't get a good look.
"Thank God," Julianne said.
"Thanks for your help today," Peter said to my parents. "If you hadn't helped, I don't know that he would have made it to the hospital."
Julianne glanced back at me when I gasped.
"But he's okay now, right?" I asked.
Peter nodded, touching my shoulder. "He needs to rest. We'll call you tomorrow."
I nodded, and Peter left us for the hall.
Sam and Julianne breathed out a simultaneous breath of relief.
"I feel like I should have caught it earlier," Coach Langdon said.
"Don't blame yourself," Julianne said.
The coach rubbed the back of his neck. "Ask Peter to keep me updated."
Sam nodded, and the coach pulled his keys from his pocket and pushed the glass door, walking in quick steps to his car.
"You ready, honey?" Sam said to me, holding out his hand.
"He stayed out there because he wanted to win," I said. "He probably knew what was happening, and he didn't tell anyone because he wanted to finish the game."
Sam offered a sympathetic smile. "It was his last game, Erin."
"No, I agreed. He said if he lost his game today, then I wouldn't have to go to prom with him."
Julianne frowned.
Tears filled my eyes. "He didn't want to go to Duke. He wanted to go to the Art Institute of Dallas. I gave him my word that if he told Peter, I would go to prom with him. He told Peter, but I couldn't go. Not after...Weston offered a double or nothing. He asked me to come to game today, and said if he didn't win, then he wouldn't bother me about prom."
Julianne's lip trembled. "This isn't your fault, sweetheart."
"I was going to go anyway. I didn't care what they did to me, I was going to go, but I've been torturing him the last two weeks, making him feel like I hated him. I know exactly how it feels to be hated, and I did it to him. That's so much worse than what anyone has ever done to me."
"Erin, honey," Sam began, but I shook my head and took a step back from him.
"Everyone's been saying how he was the awful one, and I was the victim. Even him. But you're all wrong. I'm the terrible one. I know how hurtful it is, and I...I love him. I know what it's like to feel rejection from someone who's supposed to love you. I had no excuse to treat him that way, and he nearly died today over the stupid prom. Just so I would go with him."
Those still seated in the waiting room watched the scene I was making, half of them curious, half of them making judgments.
"You're exhausted," Sam said. "Let's go home, and we'll bring you back first thing in the morning. As soon as you wake up."
I shook my head. "I can't leave him. I should be here."
"I know you want to--" Sam said.
"No, I should. It's a should, Sam, not just a want."
"Okay," Julianne said, taking my hand. "Sam, you have an early case. I'll stay here with our daughter."
Sam nodded. "Of course. Of course," he said, taking Julianne's keys when she extended them. He hugged us both and pushed the door open, disappearing into the dark parking lot.
Julianne spoke with one of the women behind the admissions desk, and then she gestured for me to follow her. We walked to the elevator and rode it to the second floor.
The waiting room was dark and empty. Julianne switched on the light, and we took a seat on a bench seat. She pulled me to lie down in her lap, and I did, letting the tears fall from my eyes, across my nose, and onto her jeans. She ran her fingers through my hair but didn't speak.
"I was scared," I whispered. "I didn't know how to forgive him. I didn't know how to be in love with him. I didn't know how to make it work. I feel like I've been waiting for my life to begin, and Blackwell was the holding pattern. I thought Weston was part of that. I couldn't see anyone from here fitting into my new life."
"You were hurt by what you read in those journals. On top of the years of hurt you've already endured. No one blames you. Not even Weston. It's obvious by his behavior. Did he say why he agreed to help Alder?"
"Just that she offered him a way to do something he already wanted."
"Oh," she said, but it was more of an aw. She placed her palm gently on my forehead.
"He makes me feel too much. I've spent my entire life not letting people get to me. The way I feel about him scares me."
"Rest, my love. It will all be different in the morning."
I lay there, trying to relax, but as tired as my body felt, I couldn't close my eyes, afraid of waking up to bad news. Hours went by, and I felt Julianne's hand relax, and her breathing leveled off.
Footsteps shuffled from the tiled hallway to the carpeted waiting room, and I looked up to see Veronica standing in the doorway.
"Guess who's awake," she whispered with a smile.
I sat up, waking Julianne.
"Is he better?" I asked.
"He's asking for you. He won't go back to sleep. I was hoping you were still here."
"Can I see him?" I asked, leaning forward.
Veronica stepped to the side. "He's in two ten."
I shot up from my seat and tried not to run down the hall, searching every plaque on the wall with numbers until I reached Weston's room. It was dark, and I walked in slowly.
He was sitting up, his dark form stiffening when he recognized me.
"Erin," he said, his voice weak. He patted the thin blue blanket, wanting me to sit in the empty spot next to him.
His hand was taped, with IV tubing leading to a bag of saline. A cannula was in his nose and hooked over the back of his ears, the oxygen flowing from an apparatus on the wall.
He was still pale and seemed frail in the baby-blue hospital gown he wore. His feet reached all the way to the end of the bed.
I sat next to him, just like I'd wanted to since we'd arrived, but now that I was there, the words didn't come.
He kept his head back, resting against several pillows that were used to prop him up.
"Did we win?" he asked.
I laughed once. "Who cares?"
"I do. I really don't want to miss taking you to prom."
I shook my head. "It doesn't matter. I'll go with you if you still want me to."
He frowned. "Well, hell. If I'd known all I had to do was have an asthma attack to get you to go with me, I would have had one weeks ago." He winked.
"That's not funny."
His face crumpled. "I would have never let them embarrass you at prom, Erin. I agreed to try to get you to like me and to try to get you to prom. I never agreed to let them humiliate you."
"Not now," I said. "Wait until you're feeling better."
"I need to know that you understand. No, more than that. I need you to believe me. I agreed to get closer to you, but it was just an excuse, Erin. Alder was willing to hand me something I'd wanted for a long time...without harassing you about it. She wanted to get you to prom, so she was going to back off. They all were."
"What about what happened on the corner that day with the Erins and Brady? What about her stopping by my work?"
"If she completely backed off, she was afraid you'd figure out what they were up to."
"What you were up to. You keep talking like you weren't in on it."
"It was the only way to be with you without making you even more of a target. What kind of chance would I have then?"
"It wasn't just to keep me from catching hell."
"Okay, I admit it. I wanted to be with you and just enjoy it. I k
new they wouldn't leave us alone. At the time I thought it was the perfect solution. If you want to get home, sometimes you gotta steal a base once in a while."
"It's not a game, Weston. If it hadn't gone the way you wanted--"
"If I really thought there was no way to avoid what they were going to try to pull at prom, we would have had our own, at our overpass, just you and me. I wouldn't have risked it. You're right, I was sneaky about it, and it's not a game. But at the end of the day, there was no way to break up with Alder to be with you and make that work. It would have been miserable. I would have lost you. You would decide it wasn't worth it. You would have avoided me like the plague until you left for college, and that would be it."
I looked up at him. He looked as if he were physically in pain at the thought.
"But everything's changed. You should have told me."
"I couldn't risk it, Erin. I thought I was crazy about you before, planning all that out just for a chance with you. I didn't think it was possible to love you more, but it's happened. I panicked. I didn't know what to do."
"Tell the truth. Even when it sucks. Even when it's not about me anymore. Like the Erins being half sisters."
His chin nearly touched his chest when he looked down at me. "You know about that too?"
"I read all of them. I know everything."
He thought about that for a moment, shaking his head in awe. "Crazy to think how different things would have been if they had somehow found out without the accident."
"I don't want to. It would make me crazy thinking about the what-ifs when there are already so many what-happeneds to deal with. I just want to know the whole truth about what happened, Weston. If I know, I feel like then we can all move forward."
"Even us?" he asked.
I shrugged against his chest with a small smile. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I could see his thoughts spinning behind his eyes.
"Okay, here's the whole truth: I've thought about how to be with you since middle school," he said. "It was our senior year. I didn't have much time left, and I was getting desperate. You think Sonny was smart enough to come up with that plan on her own? Who do you think planted the seed in that warped brain of hers?"
"So humiliating me at prom was your idea?" I said, trying to keep my voice calm.
He frowned, disappointed that I'd come to that conclusion. "No, of course not. I played into their jealousy. I antagonized Alder sometimes about it. I made sure she saw me steal glances at you. We got into a big fight one night. She said I'd never have a chance with you because you wouldn't cross her. That's when it hit me. So the next time you came up in conversation--which was often--I teased them. I said I could totally get you to date me."
I raised an eyebrow.
His expression pleaded for me to let him finish explaining. "Sonny said the same thing that Alder did, that you wouldn't have the nerve. That was all I needed. That one moment.
"I bet her that I could get you to go to prom with me. After one discussion with Brady, the Carrie movie came up. That's when they tried to talk me into it. That's when I said yes, but it was always my way of getting close to you without being harassed. Just so we could enjoy it."
"What about after prom?" I asked.
"I was going to ask you the same question. What about after summer?" he said, intertwining his fingers in mine. "I'll drive to Oklahoma every weekend if I have to. I know you have this idea of what life after Blackwell was going to be. But you can still be what you wanted to be when we started. I just want to be with you. I wanna leave Blackwell behind with you. I want to watch you become whatever you want."
"We'll figure it out," I said. "Neither one of us has a clue what we want to be."
He squeezed my hand. "All I am is all we are."
My bottom lip trembled. I'd been so awful to him, and now he was in a hospital bed, trying to make things right. "You shouldn't be nice to me. I don't deserve special treatment from you anymore."
"Do you have any idea how long I've loved you, Erin?"
I smiled, tears burning my eyes. "As long as I've loved you."
He pulled me to him, and I lay next to him in his hospital bed, seeing the silhouettes of Veronica and Julianne in the doorway.
Weston wrapped both arms around me and took in a deep breath, resting his head on mine. Soon he relaxed, and the quiet beeping of his heart monitor slowed to an even rhythm.
Veronica hugged Julianne to her side, and they left the doorway, walking down the hall.
I rested my cheek against Weston's chest. The next weekend was prom, and two weeks after that was graduation. The only thing to worry about was the conversation I needed to have with Gina. Everything else felt like clean PJs and warm sheets straight out of the dryer. Weston and I would have the entire summer to spend together before we left for college, and for the first time, he felt like part of my beginning instead of a happy ending.
Always a big thank-you to my husband, Jeff, and my children for their understanding and patience. Writing is not a nine-to-five, and often my creative juices are flowing on evenings, nights, weekends, and holidays. I have the most amazing support at home, and without that, for sure there would not be future Jamie McGuire books.
Thank you to Cecil and Patty Stuever not only for their permission to set part of this story in their Dairy Queen, but also for answering some important questions.
Thank you to author Teresa Mummert for reminding me that even though the things that inspire us are not always pretty, that shouldn't stop us from writing them down and sharing them with others.
Thank you to Autumn Hull for her incredible, never-ending support, and her company, Wordsmith Publicity, for the professional and seamless marketing.
Thanks to Dan Bringham, my former principal, for answering some tough questions about the high school. It was seventeen years ago for me, and although he's retired, he was eager to help and patient with my questions.
Thank you to Jerry Mann. I remember very vividly the day I sat in front of his desk, and he made me a friendly five-dollar bet that I would look back on my high school years and wish I had them back. He has since passed away. He is one of the only things about high school that I wish we could have back.
Jamie McGuire was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She attended Northern Oklahoma College, the University of Central Oklahoma, and Autry Technology Center, where she graduated with a degree in radiography.
Her 2012 novel, Walking Disaster, debuted at number one on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal best-seller lists. She has also written the internationally best-selling contemporary romance Beautiful Disaster, and the Providence trilogy, a young adult paranormal romance. Her latest books include Red Hill, an apocalyptic thriller; A Beautiful Wedding, a novella; and Beautiful Oblivion, the first book in the Maddox Brothers series.
Happenstance: A Novella Series (Part One) is a USA Today best-seller. Please be on the lookout for the third and final installment, Happenstance: A Novella Series (Part Three), and the completed series in a single printed version in January 2015.
Upcoming works include Apolonia, a new adult sci-fi romance, on October 1, 2014, and Beautiful Redemption, book two in the Maddox Brothers series, due in winter 2014.
Jamie lives on a ranch just outside Enid, Oklahoma, with her three children and husband, Jeff, who is a real, live cowboy. They share their thirty acres with six horses, three dogs, and Rooster the cat.
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