Fractured Love

by Ella James

  I’ve watched her cry, recoil, and mumble in her sleep all night, and half the time, I’ve barely kept myself from shoving my fist through a wall. But she wants me here. For some reason, she said she wanted me to stay.

  When her father had to go get Emmaline, Evie’s mom seconded the idea that I stick around, so someone would be here if she got called into surgery. Which she did—about an hour ago.

  I fold Evie’s hand in both of mine. I think of rubbing it, but I’m not sure that would feel good. My hands are rough, a lot rougher than hers.

  “Don’t be embarrassed, Ev. You’re tough as fuck. Just keep hanging in there.” My words sound hollow and stupid. I wish I knew what to say.

  “I want to go home,” she whispers.

  “I know.” I exhale slowly. Don’t I know.

  “Why do I feel weird?” she whimpers.

  “It’s probably what the nurse said. You had morphine earlier.”

  “I don’t like it.” Her voice is soft and sad and sweet. I rub my thumb over the top of her hand.

  “I’ll be sure you don’t get any more, then. Think of me as your guard dog.”

  “I always thought…you looked a little like a gray-eyed dog.” She giggles, and I think the morphine is still working. Then she sighs. “I feel…wired. But not sleepy. I want to go home.” She moves her IV’d hand off her face and smooths her blanket with her fingers. “I was watching you…earlier.”

  “You were?”

  She nods, her eyes on my face for just a second before dipping back down. “You got hit by Pax’s elbow.”

  “Ah. You saw that?” Pax’s elbow didn’t hit me; I ran into him. I haven’t slept in half of forever, and it really threw me off out on the field today.

  “Did it hurt?” Her voice is soft and kind. It makes something tighten in my chest.

  “Is that what made you fall? You got distracted by that?” Her wide eyes tell me “yes.” I blow my breath out. “It was no broken ankle.”

  I want to pick her hand back up, but it’s on her lap. Instead, I touch her forearm with my fingertip. “I broke a bone before, you know.”

  “You did?” She wipes her eyes. “Which one?”

  “My arm. The distal radius.”

  “Which bone is— wait, I know.” She smiles a little. “It’s the one on the thumb side.”

  “It is.”

  “How did you break it?”

  “I was running through a house. Wiped out. Slipped on a car or Lego or some shit.” I shrug.

  “And then what?”

  “Then it healed.” I swallow.

  “Can I see it?”

  I stretch out my left arm. Evie holds her palm up, and I rest my hand on hers. Using her IV’d hand, she turns my hand over, so she can see the inside of the wrist.

  “Oh no,” she murmurs. Her finger trails over the six-inch scar. “How old were you?”

  “Seven.”

  “Oh, that’s even sadder. You’re a righty,” she says, her voice rising in inflection, like she’s asking.

  “Yep.”

  She nods, like she approves of this, as if she’s glad it wasn’t my right arm that got hurt. “Does this hand ever hurt?”

  I shake my head.

  She traces the scar again, and I can see her finger shaking. “Were you here a long time?”

  I stop breathing, then I notice that I’ve done it, and I take a long, slow breath. “Not really.” It takes focus to keep my voice steady and nonchalant.

  “That’s good, then. I hope who you were staying with was super nice to you.”

  I grit my molars, breathing deep and slow as I nod.

  “Good. I’m glad. I don’t like to think about you…in those different places.” She sounds sleepy. Her eyelids are closing when I look back at her.

  That’s a good thing, because I don’t have anything to say.

  Evie

  I open my eyes in time to see him lift his cheek up off the side of my mattress. In an echo of a memory, or a dream, I think I hear him gasp. Landon gasped; I feel sure that’s what woke me up. He stands so fast, the chair beside my bed wobbles. Then he makes a beeline for the door.

  “Landon?”

  He turns to me. I can’t see his face, because it’s so dark.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere. To get water.”

  His voice sounds casual, but I can see his shoulders rise and fall, as if he’s breathing hard.

  “Will you come here?”

  He’s at my bedside in two long strides, rubbing the back of his neck as he looks down at me. Now that my eyes have adjusted to the dark, I can see his face, and it looks strangely blank.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “What? No.”

  But…I don’t know if I believe him. His eyes are abnormally wide, his torso too upright and tense. He blinks, and in the green light of my IV pole, I see something shiny.

  “Landon…” My stomach clenches. “Are you crying?”

  He drags a hand over his eyes and gives a laugh. “I’m allergic to lemons.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. It’s probably the cleaning shit. I’m going to get water, Evie. Do you want some water?”

  “Sure. Yeah…thanks.”

  After he leaves, I notice that there’s water on the cart beside my bed.

  He comes back with two big cups of water from the nurse station. He must have filled them both up with a lot of ice, because it’s clinking together kind of loudly.

  He holds a cup out to me, and I take it with both hands. Landon carries his own to the window. He peeks out the blinds, and I see yellow light from streetlamps.

  “What time is it now?” I ask him.

  “One-thirty.” I’m frowning at his shoulders, trying to decide what still seems off, when I notice that I still hear ice clinking.

  I watch as he sets his drink down on a table and takes a seat on the vinyl couch beside the window. He pulls his phone out and leans over it.

  “What game are you playing?” I ask after a minute.

  “Nothing.”

  His voice sounds weird, but I can’t put my finger on exactly how.

  “Will you come sit beside me?”

  “I’m cool here for now.” He sounds casual, but—again—my Spidey sense is screaming. Then I realize why. My mom and dad cook asparagus in the pan, with olive oil and lemon juice, and he ate that just fine. His eyes were wet just now…and that’s not why.

  “Please?” I say in my most injured voice.

  After a long second, Landon gets up, a shadow moving through the darkened room. As soon as he sinks down into the chair beside my bed, I notice his shoulders pumping: up and down, and up and down, as if he’s breathing hard. He looks down at his knees, then wipes his palms on them.

  “Landon…look at me.”

  “What?” The word is sharp. Then he looks up, and I can tell something is wrong.

  “You’re not allergic to lemons,” I whisper.

  His face tightens, and for a second, he looks furious. Then he cups his hand around his eyes.

  “What happened?” I ask softly. “Did I… Is it me? Did I make you upset or like…mad or something?” Tears fill my eyes.

  “No, Evie.” His face and voice are hard. “I promise, you did nothing wrong today. Now, I’m going to go back to the couch.”

  I nod, and a tear streaks down my cheek. I’m just so tired, my body so strung out, I can’t help it. “Sure.”

  He sighs roughly.

  “I said okay.” My voice is reedy, and I hate myself for it.

  “It’s not you, Evie. I said it isn’t you. Just let it go.”

  “Okay.” I bite my lower lip, willing my tears to stop. “Go back to the couch. I can’t make you talk to me.”

  Landon stalks over to the couch. Instead of sitting down, he opens up the blinds fully, revealing a dimly lit view of another wing, and a parking lot below.

  “You don’t leave shit alone, do you?” His voice is hard. His
back is to me.

  “I don’t,” I snap. “If I like someone, I don’t leave ‘shit’ alone. I try to see if they’re okay. Does that bother you? If it does, I think that says more about you than me.”

  Now his shoulders are really heaving.

  Tears streak down my cheeks. “I’m sorry I’m so annoying to you. I’ll just shut my mouth now.”

  I lie back against my inclined bed and shut my eyes. My ankle throbs. I’m thinking about that, not Landon, when I crack my eyes open to find him standing by the bed.

  “I don’t like hospitals.”

  He sinks down into the seat beside my bed and puts his head in both his hands.

  “I’m sorry.” I feel a swell of empathy for him. I just can’t help myself.

  His shoulders start to rise and fall again. His hands sink into his hair. “Why do you care, Evie?”

  “Because I care.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “So what? But that’s not even true. I do know you.”

  “You just met me.” His voice sounds hoarse.

  “Well—so what? I can still know you. Honestly, it doesn’t take that much. I know that when you cut your tenderloin, you like all the pieces to be straight, like some kind of freaking surgeon,” I say, slicing the air with my finger. “You finished all your math homework for the semester early, but you don’t want anyone to know you did, because it’s not the image you want people to have of you. I think you downplay how smart you are, because you say that you hate pop music, but you know all the words to almost every song that’s gotten air play recently, meaning you must know them as soon as you hear them.” He hasn’t looked up at me, so I keep going.

  “You’ll play that cricket game on Xbox with Em for longer than half an hour, which says you’re nice when you don’t have to be. You’re polite; you do the dishes all the time.”

  Landon lifts his head, a smirk-smile on his lips, and I keep going for the win.

  “You’ve had a life so far that most people would not envy, but it hasn’t made you a jerk. For example, you held back on Pax that first day in the lunchroom. We all thought you didn’t hear him come behind you, because you had on ear buds. But you must have, because you didn’t have an iPod or an iPhone in your pocket.”

  His brows arch. I arch mine too, as I continue. “I know you were really nice to me today. So I do know you. At least some. And I thought we were friends.”

  He drops his head back down and heaves a long breath. “I’m an asshole.”

  “No you’re not.”

  I watch his shoulders as they rise and fall. Then his hard, gray gaze lifts up to mine.

  “When I was two,” he says softly, “someone left me at a hospital. This hospital.”

  Seven

  Evie

  The words are quiet and flat. As he says them, he moves a hand over his face—fingertips clutching at his forehead, like he has a headache.

  “WHAT?”

  He lowers his hand. His face is hard and tight. “That’s how I became a ward of the state, Evie.”

  My stomach twists up. Someone left Landon at the hospital when he was two? Why? Was he sick? Was it on purpose? I remember how this conversation started, and I feel a heavy pit in my stomach. “God…Landon. I didn’t know.”

  “Of course not.” The words are growled.

  “When you were two?” I whisper.

  “About.”

  “Do you know why?” The words are wobbly—because my throat is tight.

  “What’s your favorite memory when you were two?”

  “Umm…I don’t—oh. So you don’t know.” I sink my teeth into my lower lip, trying to picture Landon as a two-year-old, left in an ER. “I can’t even imagine.”

  “Neither can I,” he says dryly.

  “Do you know anything about it? Would you rather me not ask?”

  He shrugs, his face carefully neutral. “Probably my mother. On the admission papers, she put ‘Ash Ville.’”

  I try to envision a woman with Landon’s gray eyes checking into an ER here with him, and then leaving him behind. I truly can’t imagine.

  “God, Landon. So you have no idea.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Was she…was your mother sick?”

  He shakes his head again.

  “Do you know for sure that she—you know, that she meant to leave?”

  “Ash Ville.” He arches his brows. “She didn’t leave her real name, Evie. It’s not hard to put the pieces together.” He doesn’t even sound upset about it; just resigned.

  I swallow. Who would do that? What kind of mother leaves their kid and never looks back? Fury simmers in me. I feel this itchy sense of wanting to do something, but I’m fourteen years too late.

  “I wish I could do something. I’m so sorry, Landon. That’s so crappy.” And my words are so inadequate. I exhale slowly, but my stomach won’t unclench.

  Landon shrugs, and then sighs, rubbing his hair. “I can’t sleep here, apparently.”

  “Of course not,” I murmur. “Can you sleep at home?”

  His mouth flattens, curving slightly. “No.”

  “So…you can’t go to sleep—or can’t stay asleep?”

  “I didn’t know you’d gotten your M.D. already.” When I arch a brow at him, he sighs and rubs his face. “Neither.”

  “I didn’t mean to play doctor. Sorry. I just want to fix things for you. Have you had trouble sleeping for a long time?”

  “Off and on,” he says, his eyes dipping to the floor.

  “When’s the last time you were sleeping well?”

  He rubs his forehead, looking at me around his hand. “Before my last ‘family’ decided to move to Munich.”

  My chest aches at the vacant look in his eyes. “So—when you were settled.”

  He gives a bitter laugh. “Settled.”

  “More settled?”

  Closing his eyes, he shakes his head: a rueful shake. “Evie…”

  “Oh, hush. You like my doctoring.”

  He looks at me with raised brows. “If you say so.”

  “I have an idea.” I bite my lip. “But…you have to do what I say.”

  “What?”

  I try to draw a fortifying breath as my heart hammers. Then I whisper, “Come sit by me.”

  He blinks. “I am sitting by you.”

  “On the bed.” I pat the covers beside me.

  Skepticism stamps his face, and self-doubt sweeps me. I’m probably still sweaty from practice, and I embarrassed myself so much in the last twelve hours with my crying and everything else. Maybe he doesn’t want to be up close to me. With some effort, I shove the thought away.

  This is Landon. He’s just difficult.

  “Come on.” I rub the sheets. “I won’t bite if you do what I say.”

  He laughs, and it feels good to see him smile, so I laugh, too.

  “Come on,” I urge. “This bed is big enough for both of us.”

  He looks down at himself.

  “I know you’re still in soccer gear, but I don’t mind. We’ll be dirty together.”

  He gives me a smirk, and I squeeze my eyes shut. “I guess I walked right into that.” My gosh, my cheeks are burning.

  “Now you have to come sit by me, so I can punch you in the arm.”

  He stands, looking reluctant.

  I can’t help giggling. “C’mon, Landon. I’m not that bad. Take off your shoes, cover up with one of my seven thousand blankets, and use one of these eleven pillows. Then we’ll watch TV.”

  “And?” He lifts a brow.

  “You’ll go to sleep.”

  He gives me a look that says Yeah, right, and I pat the bed again. He moves the rail and eases down gently beside me.

  I’m fairly narrow, and for reasons I now can’t remember, I’m kind of nestled into the right side of the bed, by that rail. So there’s a natural space for Landon on the left side.

  Still, it’s strange to feel his body sink into the bed beside mine
, to see how much bigger he is than me. Our hips are okay sharing space, but as soon as he sits back, his shoulders crowd mine.

  I look up at him, and it’s overwhelming, how very close he is. He smells like grass and sweat and male; his body seems so thick and hard.

  By the time he stretches his legs fully out, being careful not to bump my foot, I’m so wound up, I giggle.

  Landon glares dramatically at me. “You laughing at something?”

  “Those are really giant shoes. Attached to giant legs. What size are they?”

  He shifts a little. “Twelve.”

  “You should take them off.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m leaving them.”

  “You think you can sleep with shoes on?”

  “I don’t think that’s my problem, Evie,” he says drolly.

  “Fine, fine. But cover up.” I hand him one of my blankets, and with a brief look at the door, he spreads it over his lap.

  “No one will care that you’re in here. I’m sure my parents think you’re a national hero. And everyone probably knows I was freaking out earlier and need a friend. Did I say anything stupid?”

  He smiles down from his position a foot or so above me. “Just that I’m your favorite person. And I think you’re on track. The word ‘hero’ was used.”

  I snort. “Was it? Are you sure it wasn’t zero?”

  He leans back against the top half of my elevated bed, folding his arms in front of him. “Yep. I’m fairly positive.”

  I shrug. “Well, I’m liberal with praises when I’m on the harder drugs.”

  Maybe I’m still on harder drugs—because right then, I lean my head against his arm. Suddenly, I’m feeling sort of sleepy…and more than a little cozy.

  I can feel his muscles tense under my cheek, showing me that Landon does not.

  “Sorry.” I lift my head. “I’m still kind of funky.”

  “I can confirm that,” he says, bumping me gently with his arm.

  I swat it. “Turn on the TV.”

  He cuts his gray gaze down at me. “You’re bossy.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  He smiles, and I notice for the first time how white his teeth are.