The scrunching of Raquel’s noseamplifies.
“Boxers, butt huggers, nut huts, Calvin Kleins, whatever you want to call them. I don’twearthem.”
Raquel’s brow cocks. “You go commando withthat?” she queries, gesturing her head to mycrotch.
I don’t have a chance in hell of stopping the shit-eating grin stretching across my face. Come on, I’m a guy. You never turn down a compliment to your manhood, woeful moodornot.
A ragged gasp expels Raquel’s lips when I nod my head. Swinging her bulging eyes back to my suitcase, she yanks out a pair of cotton blue-striped pajama pants, straightens her spine and saunterstowardsme.
“These will ensure there are no zipper incidents,” she chides in awittytone.
Igulp.
Noticing my panicked expression, a broad grin etches on Raquel’s face. “Can you manage? Or do you need me toshoweranddressyou?” she quips, holding out thetrousers.
I roll my eyes before snatching the pants out of her hands. “I’ve got this,” I assure her, standing from mychair.
My abrupt movements send a rush of dizziness to my head, causing me to sway like a leaf in the hot summer breeze. Raquel grabs the tops of my arms, steadying my uncontrollable sways. Through gritted teeth, I use her and the IV stand as a brace as I slip my legs into my pants and yank them up my waist while internally grumbling at how pathetic I am since I can’t even dress myself. I got shot in the chest for fuck sake, notmylegs.
“You had a class four hemorrhage, Hugo. That’s well over four pints of blood lost. Your muscles not only need time to recoup from that, you also chased a car for nearly five miles,” Raquel explains, her tone sincere yet stern. “Even the best marathon runners in the world would need help getting dressed after thateffort.”
Once she secures the drawstrings on my pants, she wraps her arms around my waist and guides me back to my bed. Any agitation about my inability to care for myself dampens when I notice the strain hampering Raquel’s face. The heavy crease in the middle of her eyes, and the way her lips are pursed, reminds me so much of a face Ava pulledyearsago.
The groove crinkling Raquel’s usually smooth forehead disappears when I flop onto the hospital bed. “There you go,” she says, hauling my legs, which seem the weight of concrete, ontothebed.
“What happened to my personal belongings?” I ask. I try to keep my tone neutral, but my attempts areborderline.
Raquel’s brows scrunch as her eyes shoot around the room. “Your clothing was given to a local detective, but your wallet should be heresomewhere.”
The heaviness weighing down my chest lightens. I have a very important item in my wallet I'd hatetolose.
Suddenly, Raquel’s face lights up. “The triage nurse said she locked it in yourdrawer.”
She ambles to the stack of drawers next to the double hospital bed. I release the breath I'm holding in when her hand plunges into the top drawer and she produces my black leatherwallet.
“There you go,” she says, handing it to me before walking to thebathroom.
Once she slips out of my view, I crack open the wallet. I inwardly sigh when the edge of a faded and cracked polaroid photo confronts me. I close my wallet and place it onto the side table. I don’t need to see the photo to know what it looks like. I’ve studied it many times the past eleven years; I can recall it in photographic detail. It is a picture my mom snapped of Jorgie, Ava, and me on our last family vacation at Lake George before Ava and Jorgie left for college. In the photo, Ava has a crazy mess of ringlet hair; she is wearing a teeny yellow bikini under a hideous Rochdale Village T-shirt she stole from my suitcase, and she has a knock-your-socks-off smile plastered on her face. The smile she was wearing is the reason I carry the picture with me everywhere I go. That was the first time in the eight years I’d known Ava that I’d seen her smile like that. As if it wasn’t rewarding enough being in the presence of such a beautiful smile, it was even more special because it was directedatme.
I’d spent a majority of the summer vacation hanging around Michael Scoller. Michael was a local boy who lived by the lake with his parents. He was four years older than Ava and Jorgie, but that didn’t stop them slack-jawing in his presence. Jorgie nicknamed him Junior because she swore he was an exact replica of Freddie Prince, Jr. from Jorgie’s favorite movie at the time,I Know What You Did Last Summer.Much to Jorgie’s dismay, Michael only had eyes for Ava. Unable to dampen the inane jealously that always swamped me when men paid attention to Ava, I spent the entire month of my summer vacation acting as if I was Michael’s new best friend. Putting it bluntly: it was a fucking hard month. Being slapped with a cold fish would have been more entertaining than hanging out with Michael. But I did it. I gritted my teeth and spent the entire month talking about how dragonflies mate and the difference between the Harry Potter books and their motion pictures. It nearly killed me, but I would have done anything to stop him from getting close to Ava. My dedication paid off the final night at thecabin.
Every year, a bunch of local teens and a small handful of college visitors held a final hoorah to summer down by the water’s edge. It was generally held in a tiny pocket away from the prying eyes of gawking locals and the parents of the underage teens. Afterpretendingto celebrate a little harder than I actually did, Ava aided me in returning to the cabin. Cackling like the teenage boy I was over the excited gleam in her eyes when we made it up the two flights of stairs without incident, I stumbled on my monstrous feet right outside my bedroom door. In slow motion, I tumbled to the floor. Since Ava had her arms wrapped around my waist, she came crashing down with me. I was frantic, certain I’d crushed her to death. After rolling off her, I raked my eyes over her face and every inch ofherbody.
She remained silent, staring up at me wide-eyed and slack-jawed. When she spotted the mortified expression etched on my face, she laughed hysterically. Not the dainty, girly laugh I was used to hearing, a belly-crunching, full-hearted chuckle. Like every time I heard her laugh, any hang-up I had about her being my little sister’s best friend unraveled. Before I could blurt out that I’d been crushing on her for years, Ava leaped forward and planted her lips on mine. Fuck she tasted good. She was the perfect combination of sweetness and the watermelon punch she’d been drinking. Unlike our first kiss, I let Ava control the pace of our exchange. That kiss was just like Ava: sweet andtender.
We sat on the floor kissing for hours, like we were never going to get the opportunity to do it again. We didn’t. Only a few short weeks later, Ava walked out of my life with a stream of tears flooding her cheeks and a one way ticket to San Diego. That was by far one of the hardest days ofmylife.
My attention reverts to the present when my hospital door unexpectedly swings open. I inhale a quick, sharp breath as my eyes roam over the man standing in the doorway. Even though nearly five years have passed since I last saw him, time has been kind to him. He’s barely agedaday.
“Anyone would swear you just saw a ghost,” Rhys mutters, pacing further into my hospital room. “I can understand your surprise. The only difference is, I have seen a ghost. A man who vanished without a trace five years ago. Missing,presumeddead.”
Rhys walks to the end of my bed as he roams his vibrant hazel eyes over my body. “Imagine the shock of arriving in surgery to discover the patient you are there to save is already dead. Has been foryears.”
A smirk curls on his lips. “Well, dead on paperanyway.”
“You’re the surgeon who saved my life?” My voice comes out heavily drawled as fragments of my past crash into mypresent.
Although the full extent of my injuries hasn’t been shared with Izzy, the bullet that entered my chest and exited through my left shoulder blade managed to not only nick my left lung on the way past, it also rocketed through a vital artery. From what Dr. Jae has informed me, it was the combination of the medical treatment received at the scene and the hands of a gifted surgeon that saved my life. I remember the events leading up to being shot, but everything after being knocked onto my ass is acompleteblur.
