by Keary Taylor
“Drake, what’s going on?” I stand up and go to the window, looking down over the waking city.
I hear Drake give a hard sniff and it takes him a second to reply. “Kale hasn’t been himself the last few days. He’s seemed angry, upset. Which is understandable right now. But last night he told Mom that he was going to see this friend from high school.”
And something twists in my stomach. The only friend I’ve heard him talk about from high school is Collin, and he’s not a good one.
“They’re still trying to puzzle out everything that happened last night,” Drake says, his voice getting rough. “But they’re pretty sure drugs were involved and…” He takes another hard sniff, and it takes him a minute to reply. I just want to grab him round the throat and shake the rest of the story out of him.
“There was a fire,” he finally continues. “It was pretty bad. It looks like Kale’s friend accidentally started it, but he was burned really, really bad. Right now they’re not sure if he’s going to survive or not.”
“Damn it, Drake,” I hiss as my free hand raises to my forehead, and I slowly pace in front of the window. “Is Kale okay or not?” And finally, after keeping it together for so long, my voice cracks.
I hear him take a deep breath on the other line. “No,” he says. “He’s not.”
I sink to the floor, right there. My limbs go numb.
“He tried pulling his friend out of the house,” he continues. “The guy would have died in the house if not for Kale. But Kale caught fire himself. They think he rolled as soon as they got outside and got out most of the flames, but not before he got burned pretty badly himself.”
Tears start rolling down my eyes. I imagine Kale, trying to be the hero to someone who maybe shouldn’t have been saved. I imagine the flames and how he must have screamed.
A sob works its way out of my chest, and I press a hand to my mouth.
“He was in surgery last night,” Drake says, emotion heavy in his own voice. “They’re keeping him asleep for most of the day today while they keep cleaning him up.”
“How severe were the burns?” I manage to get out. My parents worked with burns once in their research. Not much bothers them, but even they had a hard time dealing with the pain the patients were experiencing.
“Eighty percent of them are second degree, non-thickness. But it looks like the fire kept burning by his hip, stretching up toward his stomach. There’s some second degree, full-thickness. And one small spot that is third degree.”
Slowly, my brain, my body, goes back into action and function. I start gathering things. Throwing them into a bag. “Which hospital is he in?”
And I hear him give a relieved sigh. “Harborview.”
“I’m on my way,” I say. “Thank you so much for calling me.”
“Of course,” he says. “Should I send Sage or Julian to pick you up from the airport?”
“That’d be great, thank you,” I say as I finish packing and head out into the hall. “I’ll let you know when I’m getting in.”
We say our goodbyes, and I pound on Tony’s door, so grateful that he lives next door. “Tony!” I shout. “We’ve got to go!”
We hopped on the first flight that was leaving with seats available, which was twenty minutes after Tony and I arrived at the airport. I wore sunglasses and a fedora, a plain gray long-sleeved T-shirt and black jeans. As non-descript as I could manage. Tony looked like a twitchy-nervous tweeker, watching for recognition and crowds. Cause we were flying a general, every day coach flight on Southwest.
But we boarded, and no eyes turned toward us. It was still early, only seven a.m. Everyone is bleary eyed and already asking for pillows so they can go back to sleep.
But I’m wide-eyed and awake.
I stare out my window as we fly over the west coast. I tear my napkin to shreds. I’m not thinking about the repercussions of taking off without telling a single soul. I’m not thinking about the interview I’m going to miss at eleven-thirty, or the meeting I’m supposed to have about the tour at two. How I’m supposed to meet my road crew today. Any of that.
All I can imagine is Kale, lying in a hospital bed, and how much pain he must be in.
A few stray tears roll down my face. Tony reaches over and laces his fingers through mine. I look over at him, into his strong, always tough face. And there’s support in his warm eyes. “You’re going to get through this.”
But his words aren’t reassuring. Cause he doesn’t say Kale and I will get through this. He doesn’t say everything is going to be okay.
Just that I will get through this.
And that finally breaks me. After keeping it together, I crumble into his strong arms and loose it.
Two hours and fifty minutes later, we land. The sky is gray and covered in clouds. It’s raining lightly. I text Sage that we’re in, and she replies back that she’ll be to the pick-up area in just a few minutes.
My shades go back on, despite how dim the day is. I always walk close to Tony, hanging just slightly behind him. But miracle of all miracles, we make it through the airport without being recognized.
Neither of us checked a bag, we each only carry a backpack, and we head straight for the pick-up area. And there Sage is, waiting at the curb. She jumps out when she sees us and pops the trunk.
“I’m glad you came,” Sage says, embracing me in a hug. Before it would have felt weird, coming from her. Sage isn’t the hugging type. But now, after everything that’s happened to her family in the past week and a half, she’s a little softer. “Thank you for bouncing back and forth so much for us.”
“Of course,” I say as I slip into the passenger seat and Tony is relegated to the back. It feels weird. “How’s he doing? Is he still asleep?”
My phone starts buzzing. I look down at it. It’s Hadley. Again. I’ve already got seven voicemails and ten missed calls. Twenty-eight text messages. I hand it back to Tony, who slides it into his pocket.
“They thought it best if they kept him unconscious for a few more hours. They’re saying most of the burns aren’t as bad as they originally thought they’d be, so that’s a positive side, I guess.” She shakes her head as she pulls back onto the road and we head out of the airport.
“How has he been, since I left?” I ask even as my internal organs do a transformation from pink and squishy to steel and hard.
Sage glances over at me and there’s hesitance in her eyes. “He’s not been good. For the first day or so, he was just quiet, like before. But then he was just annoyed and angry, about everything. I didn’t want Mom to have to deal with him acting like that, so I made him come stay with us. Even Julian couldn’t get him out of his funk. I was worried about him, but I never thought he’d do something so idiotic.”
Her words are harsh, but these times are dire. “He hasn’t answered any of my calls this whole week.”
Sage nods again. “I kind of figured. Any time I’d bring you up, he’d try to change the subject.”
And that is like a thousand needles to the heart.
“The burns to his upper chest, neck, and face should start to heal pretty fast,” the doctor explains to me. “There will be scaring, but nothing disfiguring. The burns to his hip and lower abdomen though are going to take some time. The skin graft may or may not take, so it will be a bit before we know if we’ll have to redo it.”
It’s both worse and better than I was expecting.
Kale lies there, medically asleep, in the hospital bed. He’s got a cannula in his nose, feeding him extra oxygen. He wears a gown, but only barely. Most of his body is exposed. Showing the angry burns.
They stretch from his right hip, up his lower stomach, mostly off to the side. This is where the burn is the worst. And apparently where the fire kept burning after he collapsed. There’s a five by four inch skin graft there, and that’s where there are white, leathered edges of third-degree burns. From there, the burn stretches up, licking up over his right breast. It claws its way up the side of his ne
ck. And it creeps up just over the edge of his jaw, barely onto his lower cheek.
The burns aren’t as extensive as I expected them to be. I had imagined his whole body covered in angry, wet, red skin. Hair burned, melted skin oozing everywhere. But it’s just that one strip. That one, painful-looking strip.
“I just need a relationship status to put on his visitor records,” the doctor says as he flips a chart open and starts writing my name down. “You’re his girlfriend, correct?”
“Yes,” I reply with every confidence in my voice. Because he hasn’t told me otherwise, and damn him if I’m just going to let him ignore me into a breakup.
“Okay, thank you,” he says with a nod as he dismisses himself.
I want to cry. I want to be angry with him. I want to yell at him and to hold him and to just…just…make it all better.
But only two tears make their way out. I sink into the chair at his side. I pull his hand into mine, careful not to disturb the thermometer on his finger or the IV going into his arm. I rest my head on my arm and just look at him.
He’s burned, and swollen. But he’s still beautiful. He’s still the man I love. The one I love so much that it’s making my heart break.
It was a bittersweet reunion with Kale’s family when I got to the hospital. Everyone was there, except for Drake’s kids, who were with Kaylee’s friend named Armando. I hugged them all, and they all tearfully hugged me back. They were all glad to see me. I wasn’t sure if they would be or not. I keep butting into their family personal lives. But none of them seem to mind.
I appreciate them giving us this time alone. Just me and him. I don’t think or feel much. I’m a numb ball of pain and worry. So I just hold his hand for a few hours.
At one fifty-six, Calvin walks into the hospital room.
“Shit,” he breathes the second he sees Kale. He crosses over to the bed without looking at me. He sits on the chair on the other side of the bed and stares hard at Kale.
“I told him to stay away from that punk,” Calvin says, anger and fear in his eyes. “I told him that lowlife was going to cause Kale nothing but trouble and drag him down. And now look at him.”
And to my greatest shock, Calvin’s voice cracks.
He takes Kale’s other hand and presses it hard against his mouth. He just stares at Kale. And I stare at Calvin.
Kale’s agent has always been business and acted the hard, uncaring manager. He’s bossed Kale around and controlled his life for the past three and a half years.
But that’s three and a half years that they’ve been a major part of each other’s life. Calvin has been there since the beginning, when Kale was just doing catalog shoots and romance book covers for fifty bucks at a time.
Calvin has been there as Kale grew. He guided Kale, gave him direction, and showed him what paths to take.
In a way, Calvin has been like a father to Kale. And Kale his son.
Of course it would break Calvin when Kale was broken.
So, without saying anything, the two of us just sit there, holding his hands, and praying that Kale will be okay.
The family may have said they all wanted me here, but in the end, it is me out in the hall and them in there when it’s time to wake him up.
The three of us sit in the chairs down the hall from his room. Me, Calvin, and Tony. I gather my knees up to my chest, resting my arms across them, and stare at a blank spot on the wall across from me.
“Hey, you’re Whitney Ford,” a young voice says. My eyes shift over to find an eighteen-year-old-looking girl on crutches making her way down the hall.
Tony stands, instantly putting himself between me and her. He mutters something quiet and low that I can’t hear. The girl glances once back at me as she hobbles away, concern and a hint of offense in her eyes.
I feel bad. I don’t want to be rude. I don’t want to be mean. But I just don’t have it in me right now to be anything but scared and worried.
How long is this going to take? How long is it going to be before I can see him? Before I can talk to him? Before I can touch him and tell him that I love him and that I’m still here?
But I know, I’ll let him take as long as he needs to take. His family is his family, and he is their baby brother. They had him long before I did.
What feels like an eternity later, Sage opens the door. Everyone starts filing out. And then Sage waves me forward.
I feel my heart beating faster and faster as I walk down the hall toward that door. And just before I’m about to go in, Sage grabs my arm, stopping me.
“He’s not good right now,” she warns. “Just…be patient.”
I press my lips into a tight line, and nod.
When I walk in, Kale is staring up at the ceiling. I walk quietly, on eggshells. My heartbeat is rocketing, threatening to launch right out of my chest, hitting someone with blood and squish.
I try to pretend my eyes aren’t welling. I don’t want to cry in front of him. I need to be strong and supportive right now. Not a blubbering mess. But I just can’t right now. My eyes burn, despite my telling them not to.
Kale doesn’t look at me as I sit very carefully on the edge of his bed. He only takes a slightly deeper breath when I take his hand in mine and press it to my cheek.
We sit there in silence for far too long, and every second that passes kills me.
“It’s good to see you,” I finally say. Because it is. And my heart is breaking in a million complicated ways.
Still, the silence stretches on. Ten, twenty, forty, sixty seconds too long.
“Please say something,” I whisper, my voice shaking.
Kale takes a shaky breath. And his eyes stay glued to the ceiling tiles. “I can’t.”
The sound of his voice chips off a big piece of my heart. “Why not?”
He presses his lips together tightly. His eyes grow red and they well. He shakes his head. What the shake is for, I’m not exactly sure. But the motion causes a tear to leak out onto his cheek.
“I’m here, Kale,” I say. I turn my head and press a kiss into his palm.
And his face crumples. More tears roll out onto his face. That’s all it takes for my own to emerge.
I hold him as carefully as I can while he sobs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I thought that Kale finally letting me hold him, him finally crying with me, would be a turning point. That once he got it all out, he’d open back up and let me in.
It was the opposite. Kale wouldn’t talk to me more than one or two words. It was similar with everyone else. But it felt especially harsh to me. Cause it was just as cold as he’d been the last week.
Saturday is a very long day.
On Sunday, the phone calls won’t stop. My phone is constantly ringing. Tony’s is constantly ringing. People even start calling Julian, and Sage, and Lake, and Drake. How they get all their numbers, I have no idea.
But I refuse all the calls. I’m already facing Kale’s rejection. I can’t face the labels wrath right now, too.
I am, after all, only human. And there’s only so much I can process at a time.
But the longer I sit in this chair, the longer it is that Kale is in that room, the more terrified I get. Bad thoughts are rolling around in my head. Thoughts that are insensitive and angry, considering what Kale is going through.
But I’m only human. I have emotions. I have feelings.
My phone rings again and I look down at it. Hadley.
I shove it back in my pocket. I stand from my chair. And before I can give them permission to do so, my legs are moving me down the sterile halls to his room.
I walk into the room just as a nurse is leaving. She gives me a small smile as we slip around each other. There’s no one else inside Kale’s room. I close the door behind me. It’s just me. It’s just him.
His eyes dart to me and then back to the ceiling. “I’m tired,” he says flatly. “They said I should probably get some sleep. They just gave me a lot of drugs for the pain.”
“Okay,” I say as I stand to the side of his bed. “But first, I need to know something.”
“What?” he says without looking over in my direction.
I hate this. I hate crying and the fact that my eyes keep welling up every hour on the hour lately. But I can’t help it. When your heart is breaking, you break.
“Do you still love me?” I ask with a tremor in my voice.
And this does bring his eyes to mine.
Except that I can’t read his emotions. Usually they are quite clear. As he once said, he’s either sad or happy. He’s up or down. And right now, I have no idea what is going on behind those eyes.
“What kind of question is that?” he asks, a hard edge to his voice.
My lower lip threatens to tremble, so I bite it, and take a moment to compose myself. “The kind I need answered. Cause I don’t know the answer to it.”
Now his eyes do grow hard. His fingers roll into fists. “I just lost everything, Whitney. Everything. And you come in here demanding answers about love. This isn’t about you, doll face.”
“No, this isn’t about me,” I say, my voice rising an octave. “This is about us, Kale. And no, you haven’t lost everything. I’m here, your family’s here. Even Calvin and Tony are here.”
“Calvin just told me that Shurrock has fired me, Whit!” Kale yells. He winces, holding his hands over the worst of the burn. “I’m done! I’m done modeling. Just look at me! Hell, you think anyone will ever want me in front of their camera again? It’s over for me.”
That knocks me back a step.
I hadn’t thought about that. But, of course. Kale has a career because he has flawless skin. Because he’s beautiful. And to me, he still is. But those burns? They’re going to leave scars. For the rest of his life.
“So don’t come in here, demanding affection while I’m lying here looking and feeling like a monster,” he says. His eyes burn. And it kills me that they’re pointed in my direction. “This isn’t about you, and right now, how could I ever think about an us?”
