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“What’s going on? What do they know?” he asked. Again, I was admiring the shit out of this man. I never would have thought that not even twenty-four hours ago. So much had changed, and here I stood in awe of him now. He held her face. “Just breathe. Talk to me.”
She did, forcing it out through quivering lips. After a nod, she appeared to have composed herself enough to speak.
“She’d been driving back to school,” she started. “Collided with several cars. She rolled and… God, Rick. I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me much more than that. Just that it was bad, and they needed to do surgery. I’ve been filling out these papers all morning, and I…”
“That’s all right.” He took the clipboard from her, again completely calm aside from a wrinkle of worry between the eyes. My father no doubt had a fury going on inside him right now, but he’d checked himself. He nodded. “Let me do this. I’ll go find out more information.”
“Please. Dear God. My baby.”
“It’s going to be okay. I’m going to figure this out.”
She nodded, bowing her head and letting him kiss her. After that, he grabbed me. “Can you stay with her while I…”
He probably could have asked me just shy of anything in that moment. I would do anything.
Keep your shit together.
“Of course,” I said. “Yeah. Of course, fine.”
Not nearly as stable as his, my voice, but it appeared to be good enough to let him go. He squeezed Maggie’s hand, kissing it before moving off into the ED somewhere. The place basically had people falling out of the windows it was so busy.
“Do you need anything?” I managed to ask my stepmother, fighting to keep my voice as level as my dad’s. “I can get you coffee.”
They had a machine by reception. It wasn’t Starbucks, but I was sure it would help.
As if in a daze, Maggie looked at me, nodding, but before I left, she touched my shoulder.
“She’d been trying to get to campus, Jaxen,” she said, her eyes glistening. “She’d been trying to get to you. We know you didn’t send that picture.”
They did…
And she what?
Cleo was trying to get to me?
Maggie’s lips parted. “The person who did confessed to Cleo. A local boy. Lawson Richards? Said he spotted you at a club and sent the text from your phone.”
Why wasn’t I surprised? Fuck.
“Anyway, Cleo told me how she felt about you,” she stated, causing my heart to race. “I’m just so sorry that all this happened. So quickly, we believed that you could do such a thing to her. That you would take advantage of her?”
I had, in many ways I had. I’d given that girl enough reasons for a lifetime not to have anything to do with me.
“She told you about us?” I asked, my stepmom nodding. “What did she say?”
I couldn’t believe that, that she’d been trying to get to me. It didn’t make sense.
Cleo told me how she felt about you…
“Just that you mean a lot to her,” she said, blinking down more tears. “The police said it’d been you she was texting when…”
I couldn’t see straight. I couldn’t think…
And squeezing my arm, my stepmother didn’t finish. She just took her seat, on the cusp of falling apart in her hands. She hugged her arms, dropping her gaze to the floor. But in that silence, I heard the words loud and clear. Cleo had been rushing to get to me. Cleo had been texting me.
Cleo was in here because of me.
*
