Torn (56 page)

“I’m really sorry for your loss,
he was a great kid.”

“Thanks.” I stared at the
ceiling, willing him to go away. I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts for
a while. “I already told Travers that I’m not hungry, I’m not coming down to
eat.”

“I’m not here to make you. I just
thought these might help today,” he added.

“What?” I sighed.

“Those letters your girl sent.”

“What?!” I exclaimed, shooting up
so fast I was grateful the cells had high ceilings.

“You were right, she did love you
enough. Peters had them shoved in the back of his locker, he’s been suspended
pending an investigation. I counted twenty-four of them.”

“Seriously?” I leapt off the bunk
and he stretched out both hands, filled with envelopes. For the first time
since I’d been told of the accident, I smiled and my heart started beating
again.

“Good to see that look on your
face again,” he grinned as I snatched them from him.

“Thanks, Denny, I owe you.”

“I hope they help you, kid, hope
they help.” He strode off, and I was grateful my cellmate was down in the
communal hall eating. I’d refused to go down. Like I could eat on a day like
today. I put them all on my bed and climbed back up, sorting them into date
order by the postmark, then pulled out the first one with trembling fingers.

Sky

January - Four Months Later

I lay on my side, curled around my
pillow, clutching my red plush M&M toy as I stared at the turquoise painted
wall of my old bedroom and listened to my parents bickering outside of my door.
They’d only just arrived. They hadn’t woken me, as they were arguing in hushed
whispers, but I couldn’t sleep anyway. I’d slept too much during my slow
recovery, mainly zoned out on pain medication from my surgeries, but now I
didn’t want to sleep because when I tried to, the nightmares started.

“You can’t tell her. To give her
hope and then take it away again, after everything she’s been through? I won’t allow
it, Diego.”

“She needs some hope right now.
She’s barely left her room since she got home,” Pops’ voice scolded softly.

“Because she’s depressed,
understandably.”

“She’s also got fully functioning
ears,” I called. “So how about you come in and let me decide if I’m strong
enough to handle whatever you’re talking about?”

There was silence, then the sound
of them whispering over each other, before I heard my door being opened.

“Sorry, sweetheart, did we wake
you up?” Mom asked.

“No, I’ve been awake for a few
hours,” I replied.

“We’re worried about you, Sky.
We’d like you to come outside today, get some fresh air.”

“I’m sorry, I never meant to make
you worry or argue, or make you have to take care of me.” I sighed and released
my two security blankets of the pillow and toy Nate had bought me on our first
date. I pressed my palm into the mattress and levered myself up as they came
around to face me, holding hands. That’s what I adored about my parents, they
still loved each other, even when they argued.

“You
never
need to
apologize,” Pops warned in his stern voice, the one that told me that he was
being firm because he loved me.

“Maybe some fresh air will do me
good,” I agreed. To be honest, I’d rather have stayed lying here, staring at
the wall, but it had been five months. The police department had been more than
fair when Pops had called them to tell them about the accident, and they’d
deferred my start date by six months to give me time to heal. Physically
anyway, I wasn’t sure I ever would emotionally. I only had a month left to try
and pull myself back together before I was expected to start there.

“I’ll go and get your wheelchair,”
Pops offered.

“I told you I don’t need it
anymore, I haven’t needed it for a long time. Can’t we send it back to the
hospital? It’s just another reminder that I don’t want.”

“Consider it done,” he nodded.
Mom reached out her hand, so I took it and stood up, pleased to find that the pull
in my stomach and back was no longer there.

“Come on. It’s a clear day, so we’ve
set out the sun loungers and you can snuggle down under a blanket. We can read,
play board games, or talk maybe?” she suggested, looking at me hopefully.

I forced a smile and followed as
they led the way out of my room. I hadn’t really talked since I’d woken up in the
hospital. I mean, obviously I’d talked, but not about the stuff everyone wanted
me to talk about. The how-I-was-feeling stuff. It had been too painful. It was
still too painful, but part of me knew that pain would never ease unless I vocalized
it, made it real, made it solid, and then tried to move on without it weighing
me down. My therapist kept hammering that point home as I wasted hour after
hour with him, not saying anything. I hadn’t just lost my best friend that day,
I’d lost the ability to even attend his funeral because I’d been stuck in the hospital
with my legs in traction. I’d also missed seeing Nate, who’d been granted
temporary release to see his brother buried before being escorted back to
prison. I should have been there to comfort him, to tell him how sorry I was.
But I’d been robbed of that chance. I had so many “what ifs” running around in
my brain. What if I’d been driving? Would Josh be alive and I’d be dead? Would
I have been too much of a coward to pull that parking brake to try and protect
him? Or would we both have perished? What if we had turned around and asked the
dealership to check the brakes? Would they have realized that there was a fault
and sent us home in a cab instead? Because there was a fault, a
major
fault,
and it had sparked a panicked recall of all of those models.

The fact that a seriously large
amount of compensation was being negotiated by Robert Austin, a hot shot lawyer
from New York that Pops had instructed to act on both mine and Josh’s posthumous
behalf, was little consolation. It wouldn’t give me back Josh. It also wouldn’t
give me back the ability to bear any children. Waking up had been painful
enough, having to deal with my injuries, as well as to remember that I’d lived
and Josh hadn’t, but to have Mom tell me that they’d had to perform an
emergency hysterectomy to stop internal blood loss had been equally as painful.
By all accounts, my insides had suffered as much whiplash as my neck. Plus
being crushed from the engine shunting the dashboard into me meant I’d had
liver and spleen surgery and had to have my gallbladder removed, as well as my
womb and ovaries.

One tiny consolation, if it could
be considered one, was that I’d been ovulating at the time, and the fast-thinking
surgeon managed to page a specialist to harvest the two eggs I’d produced,
which had been frozen. On top of all of that, my legs had been broken in
multiple places, so they’d been put in traction and pinned. A disc had ruptured
in my back, putting pressure on my spinal cord, which is why I couldn’t feel my
legs as I’d woken up in the car, and I’d had a severe concussion and facial
lacerations from where my head had shattered the window.

Listed like that, it sounded
pretty bad, and I guessed it was, but as I’d been repeatedly told, I was lucky.
Even though it didn’t feel it sometimes. I was alive though. I was talking,
breathing, hearing, and finally walking without my crutches or the use of that
damn chair. The thing I was struggling with was feeling anything but the pain
of my injuries as I slowly got stronger over the months. I didn’t want to feel
anything else. I hadn’t cried once from the moment I’d woken up. I’d screamed from
the pain sometimes, but I hadn’t cried. The moment I let myself feel, I wasn’t
sure I’d be able to stop.

I settled back on the sun
lounger, Mom tucking the blanket over me, fussing the way that moms did. I
smiled at her and caught her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. I’d have been
lost without them. Or the guys from the diner that came to visit me frequently,
and a few of the guys from college, not to mention Saunders, Ryder, and Griffin
too. They’d all talked and I’d listened. I hadn’t exactly been a great
conversationalist. Liam had come as much as he could, but checked in on me via
FaceTime regularly. Even he couldn’t pull me out of my funk, or tempt me to try
and lose myself in some Xbox games with him. I’d been centered purely on myself
for five solid months, wallowing in my self-pity, oblivious really to how it
was affecting everyone around me. I could see it clearly now though, the pain
on my parents’ faces at the way I’d shut down. My actions, my coping mechanisms,
were hurting them too, and I hated that.

“What were you arguing about?” I
asked when they returned, Mom carrying a tray with a hot coffee and a grilled
cheese sandwich for me. She shot Pops a look and he shook his head. “I know I
might have acted like a sulky child for the last few months, but I am an adult.”

“You’ve been remarkable given …” Mom
shook her head this time. “There’s news that your father thinks will help, but I’m
not so sure.”

“It’s about Nate, isn’t it?” I
asked quietly, looking down as I tangled my fingers in my lap.

“Yes, it is,” Pops answered. “I
know you still love him. I don’t understand why you’ve refused to take his
calls or turned down my offers to come with me and see him.”

“Diego!” Mom chided.

“No, Mom, he has a right to ask
that question.”

“I just don’t understand,” Pops
huffed. “He needs you, as much as you need him. I’ve never seen two kids more
in love than the two of you. To keep fighting for each other for so long, then
to not take the chance to see him again?”

“Diego, I’m warning you to stop
this right now, you’re upsetting her. Hasn’t she been through enough?” Mom
snapped sharply.

“No!” Pops barked. “Enough,
Yvette. She needs the truth. It’s all over the news that Nate’s charges are
likely to be overturned. They can’t uphold them, not when Josh had kept his
clothing and a detailed account of what really happened as evidence. The moment
that was released by the bank from his safety deposit box on his death and
passed on to the police, it started the ball rolling. And Robert Austin has his
best man from the LA office fighting his case. I won’t let her punish him when
he gets out for not being the one to actually kill that bastard, or for having
to withhold why he couldn’t communicate that to her. He did that because he
loved her, and Josh, too much.”

“I’m not punishing him, Pops,” I
whispered, as I lifted my head to find him and Mom glowering at each other. She
sighed and flopped down into the chair next to me as he stood with his hands on
his hips, an expectant look on his face.

“Then why? Help me understand, because
it’s killing him. He calls and you don’t answer, you won’t visit him, and your
mother has refused to hand over the letters he’s been writing to you since the
accident.”

“Mom?” I exclaimed, as I shot my
eyes to meet hers. He’d written to me? She swallowed hard, her eyes filled with
remorseful tears.

“I’m sorry, you’ve been suffering
so much and I really thought you’d moved on with Josh.” She grimaced when I
winced at the sound of his name, fighting the eternal memories of how he’d
looked in those last few minutes. “There’s no guarantee that Nate will be
released. They could hold him for perjury or false confession or whatever, and
I couldn’t bear the thought of you getting your hopes up, of communicating with
him, if he wasn’t let out. I can’t stand to see you suffer any more, Sky, I
just can’t,” she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. Pops exhaled heavily
and put his arm around her shoulder to comfort her.

“I thought you should have them,
that you needed some happiness. We’ve been arguing about it for months,” he
sighed.

“See? This is why I can’t see him,”
I shouted, months of compressed anger suddenly bursting to the surface, making
Mom and Pops flinch. “It’s me, it’s all me! I’m a catalyst for pain, to
everyone around me. If it wasn’t for me, Nate’s mom, Billy, and Josh would all
still be here. You wouldn’t be arguing with each other, and Nate …
and Nate
… I know how much he loved me, yet he was prepared to sacrifice his own
happiness to protect his brother, hoping that I loved him enough in return to
wait for him. And how did we repay him? We hooked up behind his back.”