Fragmented (32 page)

Mr. Henderson’s hand clamped around my elbow. “Come on, Harper,” he said with a gentle tug. “We need to go.”

I jerked my arm away. “No!” I yelled. I took a few steps backwards to put more space between myself and Mr. Henderson. “Her aunt is lying. Something’s happened to Raleigh. We have to go find her.” I was so angry and confused, I couldn’t hear anything.

Another police officer appeared on my other side, and he grabbed my elbow in the same fashion as Mr. Henderson had. Together, the second police officer and Mr. Henderson dragged me out of Raleigh’s bedroom and into the hallway where I found myself face-to-face with Raleigh’s aunt.

“Why are you doing this?” I yelled. I struggled against the tight hold at either elbow. “Did Ruby put you up to this?”

Raleigh’s aunt looked puzzled. “Ruby? Who’s Ruby?”

I let my legs go limp, and the two police officers struggled to handle my dead weight.

“Let me go!” I howled.

Memphis police had dragged my mother away from our house in the very same way.

I shot up in bed, gasping and choking for air. I tried to orient myself to this place, but the sights and smells were unfamiliar. The only thing I recognized was my Aunt Olive and Uncle Jerret who stood huddled around my bed.

“What’s going on?” I choked out. “Where am I? What is this place?”

Olive’s hand rested on my shoulder, and she gently guided me back into a reclined position on the bed. “You’re in a hospital in Memphis, Harper. There’s been an accident.”

It was then when I noticed the ugly black stitches that crept up the length of my forearm. Everything came flooding back to me like a tidal wave of memories. Thanksgiving. The voicemail from August Moreland. My brother’s confession. The letter opener.

“It wasn’t an accident. I stabbed him.” I tried to sit up again, but Olive ushered me back down.

“Where’s Damien?” I needed to know.

“He’s in the ICU. The letter opener punctured his lung, but the doctors say he’s going to be fine.”

“I-I didn’t have a choice,” I choked out.

Olive stroked her hand over my matted hair. “We know, sweetie. Don’t you worry.”

“The answering machine. August Moreland called Damien.”

I saw my uncle and aunt share a look. I was sure I wasn’t making any sense to them. They had no idea who August Moreland was or why it was so notable that he’d called my brother.

“I’ll go find a doctor and let the hospital staff know you’re awake,” Olive gently stated. “I’m sure the police will want to talk to you, too.”

“It’s too soon,” Jerret interjected. “She doesn’t need them in here.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted. I sensed that Jerret was as uneasy about police as I usually was, but I needed to tell them what had happened in Damien’s kitchen. I needed to call Mr. Henderson, too, but I had no idea where my phone was.

The door closed softly with Olive’s departure.

“Harper.” My Uncle Jerret’s face was stonily serious. “You need to get your story straight before the police come in here, asking a whole lot of questions and trying to confuse you. It doesn’t look good.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t.”

“What happened?”

“I told you that my dad died. But I didn’t tell you that he left Damien and me money. A lot of money,” I said, licking my chapped lips. “Damien wanted all of it for himself. He attacked me, so I fought back.”

“Jesus,” Jerret muttered. “What kind of animal—”

His words were cut short by a quiet knock. The door slowly swung open, and I readied myself for more doctors or maybe the police. Either option made me equally uncomfortable. But instead of white doctor’s coats or blue police uniforms, two legs and the silver flash of wheels entered my vision first.

“R-Raleigh?” I stuttered out, not understanding. “What are you doing here?”

My Uncle Jerret cleared his throat. “I called her.”

“He told me you were in the hospital,” Raleigh said, “so I took the next available flight.”

“But why?”

Jerret ran a hand through his heavily palm-oiled hair. “The hospital staff gave me your personal affects. You had a bunch of texts and missed calls from her. I thought maybe she was your mystery—uh—girlfriend.”

“You were right to call me,” Raleigh cut in.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. If I blinked, if I looked away, I was sure she’d vanish. This had to be another dream. “Uncle Jerret, can you give us a minute?”

My uncle ducked his head, still looking uneasy. “Yeah. I’ll be in the hallway if you need something.”

The needle stung and tore the flesh of my inner arm when I pulled out my IV drip.

“That was probably in there for a reason,” Raleigh sagely observed.

“I’m fine,” I insisted for the umpteenth time since I’d woken up. “How are you here?”

“Your uncle called me.”

“I know that part already.”

“I took the Red Eye. Your uncle picked me up from the airport and brought me here to the hospital.”

“What did you tell your parents?”

“That my girlfriend was in the hospital and that I needed to go see her.”

“Your parents know you’re gay?”

“Of course. They’re not my aunt.”

“You’re fearless,” I admired.

“No, I’m not. When your uncle called, I was terrified.”

“He’s not that bad.” The look on her face had me trying to lighten the mood.

She frowned. “You know that’s not what I mean. I’m at a tree farm in suburban Boston getting a phone call that you’re in the hospital because you’ve been stabbed.”

I absently ran my palm over the heavy black stitches on my forearm. The skin was understandably tender and bruised.

“Wouldn’t you have come to Boston if you thought I was seriously injured?” she posed.

“I would.” I didn’t have to think about it.

“Then don’t act so surprised,” she challenged. “Scoot over.”

“Why?”

“So I can get into bed with you.”

“But—”

“I’m an expert at getting in and out of these beds. Stop being difficult, Harper.”

I wiggled over to make room. Within seconds she’d maneuvered out of her chair and into the bed beside me. She leaned back against the propped up pillows. “This brings me back,” she sighed.

“I still can’t believe you’re here.”

Raleigh pinched my leg.

“Hey! What was that for?” I complained.

“So you know you’re not dreaming,” she smiled adorably.

“Can you blame me?” I rubbed at my sore thigh. “I can’t imagine why you’d still be interested after all of this drama.”

She shrugged. “No one’s perfect.”

“Some less than others.”

She picked at the thin blue blanket beneath us. “I think I’m going to re-evaluate Thanksgiving being my favorite holiday.”

“Don’t let this little thing with me ruin it for you.”

“It’s the anniversary of my accident.”

“It is?”

“The Wednesday before, yeah.”

My breath stilled in my throat as though my body was refusing me the opportunity to speak.

“I had been dating this girl at Smith—my very first girlfriend, actually. I’d only been back in Boston for a few hours on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. My mom asked me to drive to the grocery store and pick up a few things she still needed for dinner the next day. It happened so fast.” She shook her head. “One minute I was looking at my phone, texting with Claire, and the next moment I heard the most awful sound: glass and metal and bones breaking.”

I dropped my hand to her knee and kneaded the flesh even though I knew she couldn’t feel it.

“I was so scared,” she stated quietly. “I knew the adrenalin was masking my injuries, but I didn’t see any blood, so I thought I’d be okay. But then I heard the helicopter, and I knew it was serious.”

“They transported you to the hospital in a helicopter?”

She nodded. “To this day I still don’t know who called 911.”

I was scared enough of airplanes, let alone a helicopter. “I would have probably refused treatment,” I joked, wanting to lighten the somber mood.

She didn’t laugh. “They put me in the tail of the helicopter. It was like a coffin, only I knew I wasn’t underground because of the way it moved. It wasn’t much easier at the hospital. All of it was surreal. I’d just been airlifted, and now I was on a gurney, surrounded by people in white lab coats that fluttered as they rushed me down one corridor after another. When the dust finally settled, I had a lacerated spleen and broken ribs, I was bleeding internally, and I was paralyzed from the waist down.”

The stitches on my forearm didn’t seem so dire anymore.

“My aunt would probably say it was God’s way of punishing my sin.”

“What would
you
say?” I countered.

Her mouth twitched. “That I have some pretty crappy luck.”

I grabbed her hand and pulled it to my mouth. “I think both of our lucks are changing,” I breathed against her knuckles.

“Are you going to tell me what happened to you?” she pressed. “Without censorship or keeping things from me?”

I licked at my lips. “My brother tried to kill me.” The last words caught in my throat, so I tried again. “My brother tried to kill me. But I hurt him before he could.”

Raleigh was silent beside me, letting me tell the story at my own pace and without interruption just as I had with hers.

“Damien and I were never close, probably because he and I were a decade apart in age,” I began. “My birth wasn’t planned, and not long after I was born, my father left us. The timing could have been a coincidence, but for a long time I believed that I was the reason he’d left. But it was also around the time that my mom had started to get sick.” I let out a deep breath. “I recently found out that my dad died, and he left Damien and me a good sum of money. Damien wanted it all for himself. That message Mr. Henderson left with you about having a lead…” I paused and worked the muscles in my jaw. “My brother hired a career criminal named August Moreland to harass me. Damien didn’t want to hurt me, but he wanted me to think I was getting sick like my mom.”

“If you were declared insane, you wouldn’t get the inheritance from your father,” she guessed.

I nodded. “When I confronted Damien about it, he attacked me.” I swallowed and tried to erase the memory of the way it had felt to stab my own brother—how the silver letter opener had felt in my hand and the sound that it had made when it penetrated his flesh. “I fought back.”

Raleigh was quiet for a long moment, but she continued to hold my hand. “Thank you for telling me,” she finally said. “I know that couldn’t have been easy.”

“That’s an understatement,” I said thickly.

“No more secrets, okay?” She rested her head against my shoulder. “Teamwork makes the dream work, remember?”

I touched my finger to her chin and tilted her beautiful face towards me. “No more secrets,” I agreed before erasing the distance between our mouths.

There was another knock at my hospital room door, but I couldn’t focus on what that meant when Raleigh’s tongue slipped between my parted lips and she ran her tongue against mine.

“My bad,” I heard my uncle say.

Instead of jerking away or tumbling out of the bed to put distance between us, I continued kissing my girlfriend, fully aware of us having an audience. But I didn’t care. I’d been through Hell. I deserved this kiss.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Over the rhythmic click-clack of steel wheels against the train tracks, I could just make out Raleigh’s even breaths. Her head was tipped back and her mouth was slightly agape in sleep. Because of congested holiday travel we’d been unable to procure a sleeper car, so we were both stuck in the reserved coach area, but at least we’d been able to get two seats together.

I wet my lips as I admired the plump, parted lips and just the tip of her pink tongue. My gaze traveled down the long column of her unblemished neck. I wanted to spend countless hours sucking and kissing and biting the area as if only to reassure myself that Raleigh was mine and no one else’s. Neck gave way to collarbone that was on display in the opening of her v-neck top. She’d abandoned her usual dress and cardigan ensemble for a more casual T-shirt and jeans. The carved collarbones created an almost directional arrow, urging my attention lower to the swell of well-proportioned breasts that rose and fell beneath her top.