Forgiven (Ruined)

by Rachel Hanna

  He tilts his head slightly and narrows his eyes. "By car?"

  "Funny. I mean, how did you know to get here?"

  He starts to answer, undoubtedly meaning to explain the directions, and I finally manage movement, shoving myself up in the bed, then holding a hand up to forestall him. "I mean, how did you know I was here?"

  He nods. "Emmy told me."

  Yeah, that's about right. Why, though? But I don't ask. If Kellan and I are really going to get somewhere, it's time I'm unapologetic with Reed about being with Kellan and time Kellan understands that not all my friends will be female.

  Or maybe that's just the drugs talking.

  Reed sits down in the chair next to the bed and studies me. Because of course what I really want after I've hurried along hot city streets at sundown, run along the sidewalk, gotten shoved into traffic and hit by a car, and spent the night in hospital without benefit of toothbrush, hairbrush or makeup, is somebody to sit there and –

  "You're beautiful in the morning," Reed says.

  And render me speechless.

  "Right," I say finally. "Should journalists lie?"

  He smiles, faintly. "I came back to make sure you're all right. Willow, I know you're with Kellan." Only the slightest hesitation there. Just enough time I can confirm or deny without being obvious he's waiting.

  I relax back onto the now inclined bed and that seems to be enough to convince him.

  "Right. I get it. I'd say I'm happy for you, but I'm not quite ready for that. Instead, can I say I hope you'll be happy?"

  I laugh. Just a little. "Not if you want to sound sincere."

  He considers. "I'll work on it. In the meantime, the station looks great. Your team is carrying on just fine."

  I squint at him. "I haven't been in a coma or anything? It has only been one night? During which they often get by without me?"

  "Sarcastic little cat."

  I smile benignly.

  "What happened?"

  He stands beside the bed, as solid and intractable as the police had been. I have the feeling he won't go away until I tell him everything.

  "Emmy told you what?"

  "Emmy told me you got hit by a car and broke your leg."

  I nod, making a moue with my mouth. "No, I got hit by a car and getting hit by the car broke my leg."

  He seems to be losing patience with that one.

  "Someone has been stalking Kellan," I say, and as his eyes widen, I explain about the fallout I never expected from the forgiveness series.

  When I finish, he's pacing, alternately staring out the window, staring nervously at the door as if he hopes very much to avoid anyone else coming to see me.

  I agree. I'd like to get through everything before the doctors or my family return.

  The story strikes different listeners different ways. Not just because they're different people but because they've been involved in the story in their own individual ways.

  For Reed, guilt isn't a second language like it is for me and Kellan.

  "Man, Willow, I never saw that one coming." He slaps a hand against his leg, climbing out of the arm chair he'd fallen into moments earlier. Runs a hand through his dark hair, turns to the window and then back to me. "Did you?"

  I grin goofily at him and then at my own leg where it lies in the cast. "Not so much."

  Reed rubs his hands over his eyes. "It's just going to fire up the violent games mean violent crimes folks."

  Squinting, I say, "Um. What?"

  He waves his hands. "Freedom of speech. Journalistic integrity. Making a positive difference." Long look at me. "Versus somebody getting hurt."

  "I'd do it again."

  "She tried to kill you."

  "She would have tried to kill Kellan otherwise."

  "You don't know that." He's staring out the window at that stellar view.

  "I don't not know what, either. She was hurt, angry, not the forgiving type. Even if I'd never even thought to do this she'd have known who Kellan was and what he did. She'd have known when he was getting out. And she might have decided to kill Bruce. Or Carmelita. Her message was eye for an eye."

  "Meaning not literally," Reed says.

  "No, meaning literally. Meaning, you took someone I love. Now I'm taking someone you love."

  That shifts our relationship. I'd told him earlier. He'd wished me well, or at least wished that he could. But this one thing, one statement that wasn't about convincing him about Kellan, is the thing that's finally convinced him about Kellan.

  I see his face change as he makes a decision.

  "Willow, I met someone."

  And that does surprise me. "The blond from the club?"

  He looks almost like he doesn't remember who I'm talking about, convincing me more than ever that she was a cover that night, that he had come hoping we could somehow end up together.

  Wow! That sounds vain.

  "No. Not the blond from the club. Her name was Vivian."

  "No one is named Vivian in the twenty-first century," I tell him.

  "Um," he says to that non sequitur. "Anyway, the girl I met, I haven't met yet."

  Did they give him opiates? "Come again?" If he were Emmy he'd get a double entendre out of that one.

  Reed blushes. The way he did the day he stole my keys in math class so he'd have an excuse to meet me. I want him in my life. As my friend. Kellan will have to deal. So will Reed.

  "I met her online. Friend of a friend of a friend, through social media."

  A few warning bells clang in my head, but no one would try to hurt Kellan through Reed, right? New resolution: Get hold of the rampaging paranoia.

  As if in answer, my leg gives a good throb. Maybe not so paranoid after all.

  Before I can ask him anything else, there's a sound from the hall outside my room. Not the squish of nurse shoes or the tap of visitor shoes, not voices or a metal cart or bed wheels, but the irritating whine/click of a camera.

  Our heads jerk around in time to see the man from the apartment building behind my house, the one who'd been standing with his camera the day Reed went back to Boston after he'd come down for the DCTV meeting at the station and stayed the weekend.

  "What the hell!" Reed's on his feet instantly, dashing out into the hall. I actually jerk my body sideways as if following before the fact my right leg doesn't come with but stays heavily on the bed reminds me I won't be dashing much for a few weeks.

  I almost call out. Last minute I realize this is a hospital.

  I sit fuming until he comes back.

  "Did you catch him?"

  "Does it look like I caught him?"

  "You could have left him with the police."

  Reed looks at me like I'm crazy. "What police?"

  Good point. He'd still be waiting for them. That's if he'd caught and then restrained the guy. Citizen's arrests still exist, right? But for felonies. Even with all the privacy laws surrounding healthcare, probably doesn't count as a felony to take pictures of someone in a hospital bed.

  He's pacing again, frustrated. "Man! Was that part of it?"

  "Part of what? You're making me dizzy."

  He stops pacing, but still keeps shifting his weight from one leg to the other. "Part of the thing with the woman hunting Kellan?"

  My shoulders drop. I never wanted to be the one to tell him. Clearly he's doing well at the new job, but I never wanted to explain how he got it.

  "No. It's not. Reed."

  He just looks curious. "What?"

  "That guy. We saw him before. Remember?"

  Reed looks back over his shoulder into the hall, as if the scruffy beach bum with the camera is going to reappear. Then he looks at me. "No. Where did we see him?"

  "In the lane. Behind my house. Taking pictures."

  He squints, wrinkles his forehead. "No?"

  "He was taking pictures. You'd come down from Boston for the meeting."

  "The meeting. Right."

  Yeah, that's not what I'd thought brought you either
, dude.

  "He was taking pictures."

  Nodding, he says, "You said that."

  "And the following Wednesday I got a letter with some of the photos in it."

  Reed stops and watches me. Maybe Henry Tate Miller has never done anything like this before. Or, worse, maybe he has, and Reed just can't believe it's happening again.

  "Yeah?" he asks slowly. He doesn't take his eyes off me.

  "Yeah." Confirming it. "There was a note. One word. Slut."

  He shuts his eyes. Waits for it.

  "It was from your father."

  Reed swears. His eyes open and he punches one hand into the other. He paces the confines of the hospital room.

  "He can't let anything go! It's like he doesn't even allow for me to be a separate person. That I'm not him. I don't want what he wants. I don't want what he has. He acts like if he just lets the leash out far enough, I'll come back to him. Like I'll come back and because I want back in, I'll agree to law school, the works."

  I'm not saying much. Just watching him let off steam. It wasn't something I wanted to get stuck telling him. He's still ranting, still pacing, when he starts waving his arms as if making a point and says, "I'm not even with you. I'm all the way off in – "

  He stops and meets my eyes.

  "Boston." He looks horrified at me, then shakes his head. "No. No! Come on. Something has to be about me."

  "It is," I say. Without the cast I'd be able to get up and hobble over to him. Only a complete dick would try to escape a girl in a cast who really needs to talk to him. "Listen, will you? Because you got the job because you're good."

  "I got the job because Henry Tate Miller wanted me out of Charleston and away from you."

  I nod, holding his gaze. The fact that I'm not disagreeing forces him to listen.

  "Yes. He found the job because he wanted you away from me. He'd already warned me off."

  Anger again, frustrated pacing. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "Because he said he'd tell all of Charleston society about me and my mother. I couldn't do that to her. Not after."

  I stop. I'd started automatically to say Not after what I did to her in Seattle.

  But I didn't do anything to my mother in Seattle. What happened to her in Seattle was fallout. I couldn't do anything about that.

  "Not after what she went through there."

  Reed doesn't notice me faltering and starting over. He's still glaring around the room like a trapped tiger.

  "It was after that he got the job for you. But Reed?"

  When he looks at me I go on.

  "He only found it. They hired you. They've kept you on. You're the one working there and you're doing what you want. I thought you loved it."

  He nods, slowly. "I do love it." He meets my gaze. "I love it and I'm good at it and even if he found it for me, I'm keeping it."

  "Probably annoy him more," I said.

  That just makes him smile. "I'm keeping it, I'm enrolling in night classes in Boston. I'm going to learn everything I can and I'm going to have one hell of a career in broadcast journalism."

  "Go, you black sheep you."

  "Willow?"

  He's still again. Watching me.

  "What?"

  "I'm not losing you as a friend. My father can't do anything to me now. I've got the job. Even if I got hired because of him, now I've got the job on my own merits. But I don't want to mess up anything for you."

  I'd go hug him if I could get out of this damn bed. Stupid leg.

  "People know, Reed. I think my mother's coming to terms with that. I never went to trial. Kellan did. If she can weather that storm in Charleston society, she can weather this one. If it comes. Maybe if we ignore your dad, he'll back down."

  "Ignore. Confront. It's such a fine line."

  "Besides, in no time you'll have actually met this new girl of yours…"

  "Wow, you don't mind hitting below the belt, do you?"

  "Never laid a hand on you, sir."

  "Now that I beg to differ about. I seem to remember the television station and some piano music."

  "Not as long as Kellan's around you don't remember that."

  "Amnesia's my middle name."

  "Not Tate?"

  "Not Tate."

  "Well, that's something. So anyway, once you've met this girl of yours face to face in real life, your father won't have to worry about me."

  "Exactly. He can commence hating her." He sounds idiotically pleased.

  So we talk about other things. About the station. About his job. About how much his father will hate Reed knowing what he did and keeping the job. About the girl he's "met" and why I won't stop picking on him about that.

  "Because you blush," I tell him.

  We talk about futures. And Emmy and her guy who isn't her guy. About the station and the next series of documentaries, which we're thinking might include some shows on the fallout from the forgiveness series.

  "When Forgiveness Isn't," Reed says in movie announcer voice.

  "When Forgiveness Breeds – " I stumbled. "Breeds what?"

  "I think if you leave it like that people will be freaked out sufficiently."

  "When forgiveness breeds? It doesn't even make sense."

  "Using Forgiveness for Fun and Profit."

  "The Art of Not Really Forgiving Anybody Ever."

  "How to bring the Crazies Out of the Woodwork."

  "How to convince some people not to hog the patient," Emmy says from the door. "They're releasing you, Will. Kellan's on his way up from parking. You ready?"

  Very.

  Chapter 16

  The weather cooled down overnight. From daytime highs two days earlier that scorched into the 90s to the mid-70s.

  The inside of the taxi is ice cold. I think about asking the driver to turn down the AC but snuggling up to Kellan is a better choice. Not easy with a cast though. Before I ended up getting hit by a car, I would have said for sure by now medical science is more advanced than using casts. Then there was the whole getting hit by a car and I wind up in a cast, with promises I might "graduate" to a walking cast in a couple weeks. (I'd also thought medical science used more concrete terms, but "couple weeks" was actually what they said. When I tried to schedule the appointment then and there for the change of casts, they said no, because I had to wait and see.)

  Crutches will make going to school across the beach a challenge. I tell that to Kellan, who doesn't even bother looking at me like I'm crazy.

  "Your mother or Bruce will drive you to school. Or Mama Lita," he adds, probably just to hear me squeak.

  I've come to love the Blake's Guatemalan maid but I've seen how she drives. So yay! For silent drives with Bruce who told me to back off Kellan, or my mother, who's busy with her committees and arguing nearly nonstop with Bruce. Or with Mama Lita, the death trap driver.

  But it works out. My mother's driving me and for whatever reasons, she's taken the whole daughter-hit-by-car thing as a sign that she should have put me ahead of Bruce and told me where Kellan was.

  "That doesn't make any sense," I tell her, adding that Kellan wasn't answering his phone so likely he wasn't going to invite me over. "If you'd told me, I still would have ended up sitting on that wall."

  It's Kellan who could have stopped it. Or Bruce, by locking his office, but I'd never say so.

  When I step into the station after my first Monday back at classes, they clap. I'd bow, but my not-being-a-klutz powers do not extend to bowing while on crutches. "Thank you, thank you, would you like a speech?"

  "Are you supposed to be back, boss?" Zach asks, taking my elbow like I'm 80 rather than wounded. When I meet his eyes, he's grinning with sanctimonious glee, and actively acting like I'm infirm.

  "Get off," I tell him, laughing. "And yes. I tried to come back last week. But my mother is my ride and she's called my doctor and found out he hadn't cleared me after all. The rat."

  "The mother or the doctor?" Ashley asks.

  "Yes," I say. "Now,
where are we?"

  "Celebrating." That's Dexter, arriving out of the production room with a bottle of champagne and a separate bottle of fizzing grape juice.

  I look around at the others. "Celebrating what? Did something good happen?" The awards! The awards aren't yet, are they? I didn't miss them! "Did we – it's not yet is it?"

  "Relax," Dexter says. "The awards are in November and we're still looking good for them. Nope, we're celebrating three things. First, we got a budget!" He whoops and points at Zach and Tyler who'd taken over the budget procuring proposal project, which I'd totally forgotten about. Quick mental date and time math, performed better than almost any other Willow math, shows I missed the budget meeting.

  We already had a budget, but I'm not going to say so. Instead, I'm grinning at the others who are grinning at me. "How much?"

  Dex makes wild gestures at Zach and Ashley who look at each other, trying to decide who gets to announce, and finally start talking together, tumbling over each other.

  "Enough to stipend the engineering students so maybe some of them will stay."

  "Enough to pay our anchors."

  "Enough for our illustrious leader to not be contemplating working at Taco Hell in her spare time." Zach grins at me. "We could use you here instead, Willow."

  I blink a couple times and clear my throat. Never was good at the mushy stuff, even before – even before the first of my changes.

  After a few very loud minutes, Dexter gets the floor again. "The second thing we're celebrating is that Tabitha staged a coup while you were gone."

  I look around wildly, my smile freezing. She's not here, no sign of her, and what are they saying? Did they replace me while I was gone? They said they could use the "illustrious leader," not me, but then they said "We could use you here Willow," not, "It will be great to be able to pay for Tabby."

  "I don't understand."

  "What's to understand?" Ashley has missed the look of panic on my face. "She tried to take your place. stomped on over to the admin building on campus and made a nuisance of herself, finally demanding they replace you with her or she'd leave."

  "And?" My pounding heart is nearly choking me.

  Ash grins. "You see her anywhere?"

  That's when it finally hits me. They chose me. I'm here, I'm good to go, I'm staying. I have a place, a job that pays, friends who would have gone to bat for me, and people who act as if I've delegated even when I can't bring myself to yet.