by Jody Holford
“Hello?” he said quietly.
“Hello. This is Trina. I’m looking for Lucy,” a woman’s crisp voice said. Apparently, Trina didn’t care what time it was.
“She’s sleeping. Can I take a message?”
Alex moved back into the kitchen to find a pen and a scrap of paper.
“Yes. I’m Kael Makhai’s assistant. I’m in charge of making the necessary travel arrangements for Lucy’s upcoming trip to New York. I have an itinerary I need to send to her, so I’ll need an email address. I also have a hotel booked and the list of apartments she requested Kael look in to,” Trina prattled.
Alex went perfectly still. All he heard was a heavy buzzing in his ear. He squeezed the phone so tight his fingertips almost touched his palms. He accidently pressed a button, making Trina’s voice come through the speaker.
“Hello? Sir, are you there?” she asked shrilly. He quickly pressed the speakerphone button to silence her back to the earpiece.
“Shit. Sorry. What?” Alex asked, his heart hammering and a bead of sweat weaving its way down his back. He heard a heavy, put-upon sigh from the phone.
“Lucy is scheduled to be here next week for a job she accepted with my boss. Can you just have her phone me please?” Trina snapped. She then hung up, leaving Alex with nothing more than a phone in one hand, a pair of boxers in the other, and his heart in shreds on his kitchen floor.
Chapter 22
When Lucy woke, she had that moment of foggy sadness but couldn’t remember why. When her eyes landed on Alex, sitting on his window seat, watching her, she forgot everything but him.
“Hi,” she said, smiling sleepily and stretching. “Why are you way over there?”
He said nothing. Just continued to watch her, his face blank. He looked like he needed to shave, his hair was messy, and his clothes were rumpled. She felt a little spurt of unease as she sat herself up.
“Are you okay? Did you just get home?”
Still nothing. Her heart beat faster, making all of her senses come alert. She was no longer sleepy, no longer sad—just scared.
“Alex? What’s wrong?” She threw the covers off and moved to the side of the bed, ignoring the wave of nausea. She urged her stomach to settle down. Everything is fine.
“You are so fucking beautiful,” he said in a voice she barely recognized. Why did it sound like more of an accusation than a compliment? She felt the urge to pull the blanket back over her.
“Alex?”
“Part of the draw has always been how gorgeous you are. The thing is, you’re every bit as beautiful on the inside as you are out. So when you get pulled in, you get all the way sucked in. Or at least I did. But you’ve never pretended to be anything you weren’t, so I don’t know why I let myself fall so far.”
He was talking like he wasn’t actually talking to her. It was making her physically ill. She held her stomach.
“You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You told me upfront that you weren’t a forever kind of girl. It’s my own fault, really,” he said more casually, standing. “You told me you wouldn’t stay. You also told me you loved me. I guess I wanted to believe that more than the truth.”
The fog cleared from Lucy’s brain. She clenched her hands and stood.
“What are you talking about? I do love you.”
“Really?” He asked in such a caustic tone that it felt like he’d knocked the wind out of her.
“Yes, really,” she whispered. “I’ve never said that to anyone outside of my family and closest friends. I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“What’s going on is our time is done. I thought I could handle you picking up and leaving, but I can’t. As your family pointed out, I am, pathetically, a forever kind of guy and you’re … for now.”
Lucy’s stomach twisted and heaved. She covered her mouth and ran for the washroom. Too angry to be embarrassed, she dry-heaved until her stomach ached. Splashing water on her face, she tried to cool both her skin and her temper.
Alex regarded her carefully from the doorway to his bedroom. He had a glass of water in his hand, which he passed to her. She accepted it only because her mouth felt like sandpaper.
“So to recap, I lied about loving you, we’re over, and I’m leaving?”
Alex winced but said nothing. She sipped, resisting the urge to toss the water in his face.
“You’ll excuse me if I ask for just one detail. Where is this coming from?” she said, hoping that the anger in her voice covered the soul-searing pain.
“Trina called,” Alex said. He looked at her as if he’d just summed everything up perfectly.
“Who the hell is Trina?”
She saw his face blanch slightly, but he recovered and switched back to a sarcastic sneer.
“That would be Kael’s assistant. Did you forget? She has all of your travel arrangements. She just needs your email,” he said, yanking at the buttons on his shirt.
He wadded the shirt into a ball and hurled it toward his laundry hamper, then whirled back to face her. “And good ol’ Trina, she also got together that list of apartments you wanted.” His hands were on his hips, and his chest was heaving with each breath.
Everything unraveled. Like those rolls of stickers she used to get as a kid. She would unroll it, just a little, to get to the one she wanted, but then the whole thing would come undone. She couldn’t catch it and in seconds, she’d be standing with a pile of stickers at her feet, and she had to wind it all back up again.
“You’re an idiot,” she whispered through clenched teeth. Her feet were rooted to their spot.
He stood straighter. “Excuse me?”
“You believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. When the people who knew me best didn’t believe in me, you did,” she said softly, her fingers tight on the half-empty glass.
“A lot of good it did me,” he said, but the earlier venom he’d had in his tone was gone.
Lucy laughed without humor and the motion made her chest ache. Not him too. Unclenching her jaw, she shook her head. “They had their reasons not to believe in me. But I’ve never given you one. I expected more from you. A lot of good that did me. You’re so wrapped up in being right, you can’t see how wrong you are.”
To his credit, he looked stricken by her words. His voice was hoarse. “I was wrong to let myself fall so hard for a woman I knew, on some level, would never be satisfied with me and this nothing town.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way. About yourself, the town. And mostly about us.” She couldn’t defend herself to anyone else right now. Especially to Alex. The one person she never thought would doubt her. She put the water down, as gently as possible for fear of revealing how badly her hands were shaking. She grabbed her T-shirt to yank over her tank top. Her yoga pants were on his window seat. She pulled them on over her boy-short underwear, her movements jerky.
“Running away?” he taunted. It surprised her how much she wanted to slap him.
She embraced the anger. It felt better than the sickening hurt spreading through her. “No. I’m going home. I’ve clearly overstayed my welcome here,” she replied.
“Be sure to say good-bye before you head for New York,” he said. Tears welled in her eyes. The empty sickness in her stomach was returning. She would not break down in front of him.
“That won’t be necessary. I can say good-bye right now,” Lucy said, standing quickly. Alex blurred in her vision, the sickness winding its way up her throat. She stepped toward him, but it was dark and she couldn’t see. She didn’t know why he was yelling her name or why she felt like she was falling. She didn’t know why everything hurt so badly, and then, when her eyes drifted shut, when her face hit the soft carpet and she let them close, she didn’t know anything at all.
Alex paced the corridor of the hospital. He wanted to punch something. He’d already flashed his badge unprofessionally and scared more than one nurse in his attempt to get some goddamn answers. What is taking so
long? She’d collapsed in front of him. All that fury that she tried to keep hidden with her precise movements and clipped words had gone out like a light when she’d stood, blinked several times, and crumpled. He didn’t even catch her, his shock was so great. He’d called her name when he realized what was happening. He’d grabbed his phone immediately, calling 9-1-1 and then her parents.
Mark had come raging through the door and picked up his daughter like she weighed nothing, even though Alex had advised him to leave her where she was. Mark had silenced him with a look and held her in his arms as she’d come to. Her speech was slightly slurred, but she was mumbling when the EMT arrived. Mark had ridden with her to the hospital. Alex should have been the one beside her, holding her hand, telling her everything was okay. Instead, he was the one who had made her collapse.
Char came barreling through the automatic doors.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” she demanded, grabbing his arms.
“She collapsed. I don’t know anything yet. Your dad and Kate are in the waiting room,” Alex answered. His throat felt like he’d swallowed nails.
Anger flashed in Char’s eyes. “Not my mother,” Char said, shaking her head.
“No.”
“She just collapsed?” Char repeated.
“We were arguing. She got up and then she just … went down.”
His hands were shaking. He shoved them into his pockets. Mark cleared his throat, catching Char and Alex’s attention.
“She’s okay. We’re going in to see her. We can only go in two at a time, and Kate’s already in there,” Mark said. Alex clenched his fists in his pockets.
“We’ll go in next,” Alex said. Mark nodded and walked away.
Alex sat with Char for the next ten, agonizing minutes. Kate came out first and walked straight to Alex. She sat down in the chair next to him. Char stood, expecting him to stand as well, but Kate stopped him with her hand.
“She doesn’t want to see you,” Kate said, not looking at him. He closed his eyes. He hadn’t cried since he was eight, but at that moment, he had to bite his tongue to refocus his emotions.
“What are you talking about?” Char asked impatiently. She looked back and forth between Kate and Alex. Alex stared at his feet.
“He broke up with her,” Kate said. Rather than anger, he heard utter devastation in her voice. He didn’t think he could be more broken.
“You what?” Char yelled, earning looks from the nurses and others waiting on the cold, plastic chairs.
“She’s leaving,” he whispered pitifully.
“What?” Char said again, this time a bit more hushed but still surprised.
“Yes. She is,” Kate said. She shook her head and finally looked at Alex. It took everything in him to find the strength to meet her eyes. She waited until he did before she continued.
“Lucy agreed to take a one-week photo shoot in New York. Kind of a trade-off for her friend taking me on as an intern. It works out perfectly. She’ll come with me. Do the shoot. Help me get settled. Turns out that Kael even found some apartments for me to take a look at.”
Kate stood, took Char’s hand, and leaned her head on her sister’s shoulder. Alex looked back and forth between them.
Char’s face registered understanding. “You thought she was leaving for good. You thought she was running.”
Alex didn’t move. He couldn’t.
“You should go,” Kate said. He started to protest, but she stopped him. “The doctor said she’s going to be fine. Just a dizzy spell. They’ll run some tests to rule things out. You have to let her go. If she wants to contact you, she will.”
With that, both women turned and walked past the nurses’ station. The doors slid open when they approached and then shut behind them. Alex sat, staring through the glass at their disappearing backs, wondering how—when Lucy was all that he had wanted for as long as he could remember—he had managed to chase her away when she’d been willing to stay.
Lucy was curled on her side, Kate holding one hand, Char tucked in behind her. Char had crawled right into the bed, bossy as ever, and wrapped herself around Lucy and cried. All three of them had cried. They’d washed their dad out of the small, curtained room with their tears. He’d left to get Charlotte’s car and bring it around to the emergency room exit.
“Lucy?” Kate said. Lucy stared at a tiny fleck on the washed-out wall. Her body felt numb, and her mind refused to focus. Her heart was still beating, but she was certain that it was an entirely useless organ now. What would she do with it? She thought of all of the photographs she had taken that hadn’t turned out just as she’d wanted. She’d shredded them. It’s not like she could travel with boxes of unusable photographs. How do you do that with a heart? Especially one that’s already shredded. She wished she could box it up. Drop it off on Alex’s doorstep. Here. You broke it, you keep it.
“I want to go home,” Lucy whispered.
“Dad’s getting the car. Damn. We haven’t even talked about that yet,” Char said, rubbing her hand up and down Lucy’s chilled arm.
“Can you sit up? What did the doc say about your dizzy spells?” Kate asked.
Lucy closed her eyes. Too much. She opened them as Char eased herself carefully off of the bed.
“Just a combination of heat, running around too much, and emotional stress,” Lucy said, looking away from Kate’s assessing gaze. It was partially the truth. He had said those things.
“You’re used to temperatures in South America, and this heat bothered you?” Char asked.
Lucy sat carefully. Kate put her hand on Lucy’s gown-covered thigh. Lucy pushed it away.
“I’m fine,” Lucy snapped. There was a razor edge to her voice that she knew didn’t hide the tears, but at least it shut her sisters up, for now. Mark pushed the pale blue curtain aside, making the little chain links on the top bar rattle. Lucy picked up the tepid water they had brought earlier and sipped.
“Car is out front. I didn’t see Alex,” Mark said. He looked at all three girls. No one said a word. Lucy stood, waving both of her sisters away.
“I’ll wait in the car,” Mark said.
Once the dizzy spell had passed and the nausea had abated, she felt fine. The hospital had been more of a precaution, and it made her feel stupid. She sat in the front seat of Char’s car, staring out the window, wrecked. Char pulled up to the house and Lucy noted that Alex’s car was nowhere to be seen. Kate’s gasp of surprise redirected her attention. Luke stood on the porch with Mia in his arms and Carmen by his side. Carmen was holding her grandmother’s hand. Lucy got out of the car, oblivious to everything else, and walked to her mom. She stood in front of her and looked down at Carmen.
“I brought Grandma outside because she was worried. But she needs to hold my hand,” Carmen said in her no-nonsense tone.
“That makes sense,” Lucy said quietly, her throat raw but not nearly so much as her heart. She looked at her mom, who tilted her head slightly before reaching out and touching Lucy’s cheek. Lucy’s tears fell without warning, and she stepped into her mom, who pulled her tightly into a one-armed hug. Carmen kept a hold on her grandmother’s hand, but Lucy felt the other touch Lucy’s back, making them a circle. The hug, the moment, made Lucy think that maybe, one day, she might be okay. But it wouldn’t be today.
Chapter 23
Alex lived off of coffee, anger, and self-pity for the next forty-eight hours. He didn’t go home after the hospital. He’d driven to the station, poured through the vandalism pictures, growled at anyone who spoke to him, and did everything humanly possible to avoid thinking about Lucy. Nothing worked. He kept seeing her face in the moment she’d realized what he’d been saying. He saw her falling to the floor. He saw her lying lifeless on his bedroom floor. Laying full of life in his bed. Laying underneath him … over him. He saw her lips moving, telling him she loved him. He saw her tears. Tears he caused. He saw her on the gurney as they put her in the ambulance, and he saw Kate’s profile when she told him that L
ucy didn’t want to see him. What he couldn’t see, was how he would get over this. Over her. Past this. He couldn’t fucking breathe without her.
“Hey,” Sam said, startling Alex from his brooding at his office window. Sam looked normal. Happy. How were people still functioning when he couldn’t breathe, and how the hell could this hurt so bad?
“Hey. Thanks for coming by,” Alex said.
“You look like shit,” Sam said, opening Alex’s mini fridge and pulling out a coke. He cracked it open and took a long drink. Alex didn’t know where to start. So he told him about the phone call, the fight, and the hospital. Sam whistled, shook his head, and sat down in Alex’s chair while Alex stayed where he was at the window.
“No wonder you look like hell. Is she okay?” Sam asked, feet up on Alex’s desk.
“Yes, as far as I know. She was released from the hospital. Doc wouldn’t tell me much; he said she was released because I used my badge.” Alex sighed and scraped his fingers along his scalp. He went to the fridge and got his own drink.
“You want her back?” Sam asked. Alex gave him a nasty look that revealed the stupidity of the question. Sam laughed it off with the ease of a long-time friend and lowered his feet. “Okay. Just checking. Want my advice?”
“Will it be any good?” Alex asked, taking a drink and wishing he had a bottle of scotch in his drawer.
“Which one of us is getting married?”
“Right,” Alex scoffed, “that makes you an expert.” But he waited and listened when Sam spoke.
“Get some knee pads,” Sam said gravely.
“What?”
“You’re going to be on your knees groveling for a while, so it’s best to be comfortable,” Sam said. At the huge grin on his face, Alex slammed his drink down, making bits of it splash and fizz out of the opening.
