AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Each one of us told him that he needed to step up and watch over her, while we were gone off at college. He looked all of us in the damn eyes and swore he would. I couldn’t say one damn thing about how I felt, because that would only provoke Lucas more to walk into his room and take him off life support, if I did. Jacob and I kept our mouths shut, knowing that nothing between them was ever going to be the same after this.
Especially if…
I pushed the thought away from my mind before it even fully formed. Terrified it would take over and I would be the one walking into Austin’s room. Although, Jacob was the oldest by a few months, I always felt like I was. These boys and Alex, they were my life. If I could trade places with either one of them, I would in a heartbeat. No questions asked. I couldn’t help but feel responsible for both of them fighting for their lives.
I walked out of Alex’s room needing to get some fresh air. I was starting to go stir crazy at the hospital and it had barely been two fucking days since the accident.
“Honey, you need to go home and get some rest. You can come back after you get a few hours of sleep. I promise I will have the cab there for you first thing in the morning,” Aubrey’s mom said as I walked up behind them stopping in the archway, to listen.
“I don’t want to leave.”
“Aubrey—”
“You don’t understand. What if I leave and something happens, huh? What if I don’t get to say goodbye. I can’t do it again, Mom. I can’t know someone might leave me and not get to say goodbye. Been there, done that already, remember? I can’t go through that again. Please don’t make me leave them,” she wallowed, neither one of them knowing I was standing there.
I didn’t step away. I was glued to the floor that felt like it was caving in beneath me.
“Oh, honey,” her mom sympathized. “Is that what—”
“Please let me stay. At least if something happens, I can say goodbye this time. They won’t leave me, too.” She was on the verge of hysterics.
All the air was knocked out of my body. The realization hitting me harder then a ton of fucking bricks. That’s why she wanted me to go, she would rather me leave on her terms.
I’m such a fucking idiot.
“Nothing is going to happen to them. They’re going to pull through, sweetheart. Look at me, I promise you. I’m treating them myself and I know they’re going to be just fine.” She pulled her into her arms and Aubrey visibly melted against her mom as she repeatedly kissed the top of her head. “Baby, your dad didn’t leave you. He left me. He divorced me. Not you, never ever you. You have to understand that. I’m so sorry it’s taken me this long to say it to you. He loves you more than anything in this whole world,” her mom declared, holding her at arm’s length so she could see the truth in her eyes.
“It doesn’t feel that way,” Aubrey murmured. “It hasn’t felt that way for a long time.”
“Oh, honey. Give me a chance, okay? I’m going to be there for you. Things are going to change. I promise you. You have no idea how I felt when your friends came in. God, Aubrey, I didn’t even know if you were with them. I swear I thought you were going to be pulled in next. My whole world flashed before my eyes. They’re going to make it because I will do everything in my power to make it happen.” She kissed her head again.
Watching such an intimate moment between them was something that I would take to the grave. Her vulnerability in that moment took me back to the time that I first fell in love with her. Back to a time that I didn’t know I missed till right now, back to a time that my life seemed complete because I had her.
All of her.
Things became much clearer to me now and it took everything in me not to run to her and tell her how much I loved her. How I would make everything better, how much I thought about her, dreamt about her, how hollow I felt on the inside because she wasn’t with me. How I debated so many damn times to transfer to Wilmington just to be near her again, just to see her smile every day. To tell her she was so damn beautiful, even when she was broken.
To promise her that I would never leave her, that she was mine.
“You can stay—” her mom was in the middle of saying as I walked up to them.
“I’ll take her home, ma’am,” I interrupted, both of them immediately wiping at their faces.
“You don’t have to—” Aubrey interjected, but I cut her short.
“Suga’, I’m taking you home.”
I gave her a stern look that told her I wasn’t going to back down on this. I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and tugged her into my side.
Her mom walked toward us, lovingly smiling. “Get some rest, too, okay? I’ll hold down the fort. Your friends are going to be just fine,” she reassured both of us.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She gripped my shoulder for a few seconds and then walked back towards Alex’s room, leaving Aubrey and I alone in the waiting room. There wasn’t anyone else around, but us.
“You don’t have to take me home. I know you want to stay here.” She looked up at me, with tears still in her eyes.
I tugged on the ends of her hair, I couldn’t remember the last time I did that either.
