“Did you?” Mr. Aldrich tosses the accusation like a foul curse. “Because from where I’m standing, you seem awfully concerned about my other son.”
He may as well have slapped me across the face.
But he’s not wrong. That’s the worst part of it. And I can’t say a damn word, because what is there to say?
I came in here desperate to see Knox. To confirm that connection I felt—that bond forged in those moments when we thought we’d die together. While Owen—my boyfriend, my best friend—is dead, and I’m obsessing over whether his brother felt what I felt.
What’s wrong with me?
Mr. Aldrich crosses the room and yanks the door open. “Get her out of here.” The same nurse that wheeled me in, rushes toward me while Richard continues. “I can’t even look at her.”
The nurse takes hold of the wheelchair handles. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you back to your room.”
I crane my neck as he wheels me backward, ignoring the pain it causes, trying to catch Knox’s eye one more time. Searching desperately to find some piece of the man who traced circles on my palm with his thumb, who told me random facts about honey and octopuses and sharks to keep us both sane, who promised me we’d hold on.
But he doesn’t look at me.
He just keeps staring at the wall, his profile frozen, while his mother sobs and his father paces.
And it’s all my fault.
Chapter 11
Knox
My father shuts the door the second her wheelchair crosses the threshold. It feels like there’s an entire country between us now.
I keep staring at the wall. It’s a sickly yellow shade of paint, not bright or sunny, but jaundice-like, with peeling bits hidden by metal supply racks. I’d rather stare at that than anything else. If I look at my parents, I’ll see my mother’s tear-streaked face and my father’s rage, and I’ll have to feel something about it all. About Owen. About the fact that we made it off that ride and he didn’t.
And if I look at where Sawyer just was, I’ll see the ghost of her face—that devastated, desperate expression—and I’ll want to chase after her. I’ll fall to my knees and tell her I didn’t mean it…tell her everything I said was a fucking lie.
But my parents are standing a few feet away. And Owen is gone. And whatever I might have said to her at the top of that ride died with him, because you don’t get to want your dead brother’s girlfriend. You don’t get to be the thing she reaches for when she’s bleeding out with grief. She deserves someone who isn’t the reason everything went wrong.
So I stare at the wall and count the imperfections, the scratches and dents. Thirty-seven of them. I counted them twice while she was here. It was the only thing I could do to keep from letting her see behind the mask.
“That girl has some nerve.” My father’s voice cuts through the silence. He’s pacing again, three steps to the window, three steps back. He’s been doing it since they wheeled me into this room hours ago. Or maybe it’s been days. Time doesn’t feel the same as it used to.
My mother sobs and says something unintelligible. Agreeing with what he said, maybe. Or just more grief over this whole fucked situation. Who knows anymore?
“Coming in here like that,” he continues. “Acting like she has any right. After everything her father did to this family.”
“Richard—”
“Her father is sitting in a prison cell because of choices he made. Choices that cost us everything. And she walks in here like she belongs?” He stops pacing long enough to look at me. “She doesn’t belong here, Knox. She never did. I tolerated her for your brother but I’m done.”
I shake my head, wincing.
“And what the hell is going on between you two?” he continues. “Don’t you fucking forget your responsibility to this family. Moretti sees everything.”
“Richard, please. I can’t. Not right now.”
My father scoffs, jamming his hands in his pockets. “Did you take your Valium, Vic? I can’t take the goddamn waterworks another second.”
“Dad.” I finally work up the balls to say something. He can hang the Moretti shit over my head all he wants, but he doesn’t get to speak to my mother that way, or Sawyer for that matter. “That was harsh.”
He hangs his head and mutters something under his breath. I start examining the striped pattern of the scratchy hospital blanket now, but I hear him move toward her—how his dress shoes shuffle on the linoleum. Fabric rustles and he’s probably taking her into his arms again. I don’t want to watch. Lord only knows why she wants to be anywhere near him. If I were her, I wouldn’t. Not with what I know.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry, Vicki. I can’t stop picturing his face. How scared he must have been…”
