I need to turn off my thoughts.
Even though I can’t stand hats, I grab the one from beside me, push it low on my head, open my book, and read. Maybe Edmond can help me clear my head.
* * *
Hours later, when I see my sister, Angel, walk over to Ash’s grave, I don’t get out of the car. When some guy walks up and grabs her hand, I don’t know who he is and yet, I don’t bother finding out. They hug and I don’t walk over and do the same thing to her. It’s not our thing to stand around having some group mourning session over the two-year-old boy who died too soon.
Nope. This is real life. Not like all the stupid fucking books I read or the movies people watch or the reality shows that couldn’t be farther away from reality.
Without moving an inch, I watch her. Watch as she sets flowers on Ashton’s grave. As the guy pulls her into a hug. As they kneel on the ground, probably talking to him in a way I’ll never have the balls to do.
The guy says something to her and then gets up and walks away. I duck lower in my seat, but no one is paying attention to me. He heads back to a little car and waits.
Angel’s hands go to her face and I know she’s crying in them. Know she’s mourning the loss of Ash, the boy she loved so much. The boy she took care of better than any mom could. I know she sent the guy away because she’s like me and needs to handle shit on her own. Only unlike me, she’ll never run.
She cries out there for probably thirty minutes. The whole time my chest is tight. Aching. It’s hard to breathe and I want to turn away, but I don’t. I deserve to feel this way and deserve to see this.
A fist squeezes tighter and tighter around my heart. My face is wet, but I don’t bother to wipe away the tears, either. Real men don’t fucking cry. That’s what Dad always said before he hit me in a series of body shots, until I couldn’t stop myself from doing just what he said I shouldn’t do.
Then he’d beat me harder for being weak.
Angel’s shoulders are shaking. I can tell from this far away.
I’m not an idiot. Never have been. I know it wouldn’t make me weak to walk over there and hug her. To hold her and tell her it’ll be okay, but I still won’t do it. What right do I have to try and console her when I’m the one who destroyed everything?
When I’m the one who let Ash die?
So I sit here and watch her, just so I’ll never forget the pain I caused.
Chapter Two ~Delaney~
I’m yanked out of a deep sleep by the sound of my cell. My room is still pitch-black, which means it’s the middle of the night. My heart immediately starts setting off rounds to the speed of a machine gun.
“Hello?” my voice squeaks out.
“Is this Delaney Cross?”
The official-sounding female does nothing to slow the rapid-fire beating in my chest. If anything, it makes it worse. “Yes. This is she.”
“I’m Doctor Marsh over at Three Valley’s Hospital. Your mother was brought in a little while ago. She’s okay, but—”
“What happened?” Now I pray for my heart to pick up again. It’s silent, almost as if it’s gone, and I miss the pounding in my ears. Miss it because as ridiculous as it sounds, it takes the loneliness away.
“We’d really like you to come down. It’s not—”
“It’s not something I haven’t dealt with before,” I cut her off again. I don’t need her to try and make this easier on me. The fact is nothing would make me deal with it better. Saying it on the phone won’t make it any less real than in person.
“We’re assuming it was a suicide attempt. She took pills. We don’t know if she changed her mind or if she wasn’t lucid enough to make decisions, but sometime after, she must have tried to leave her apartment. A neighbor found her collapsed in her doorway and called nine-one-one.”
The tears that I didn’t realize had formed in my eyes are brimming over and starting their slow descent down my face. This is her third suicide attempt in the last four years.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor tells me.
“Me too,” I whisper. I’m sorry about all of it.
I push out of bed and race to my closet. “We’ll be there soon,” I tell the doctor before dropping my cell to the dresser. Yanking a sweatshirt over my head, I’m already shoving my feet into my tennis shoes. My heart seems to have found its beat now and as I finish shoving my other foot into my shoe, I try and concentrate on it. It’s a crazy thing to do, but it keeps me from cracking apart.
“Maddox!” I yell as I run into our small hallway. “Get up!” My fists come down hard on my brother’s door. “Come on! We have to go.” I try for the doorknob, but like I knew he would, he locked his room. Before I can knock again, he’s jerking the door open, his eyes wide and frantic with worry.
“What the fuck happened? Are you okay?”
“It’s Mom. She…”
Anger washes away the worry on Maddox’s face. His jaw tenses. Veins pulse in his hand; he’s gripping the doorknob so tightly I think it could break. Quite the pair, aren’t we? While I worry, he gets pissed.
“What did she do?” It’s almost as though he blanks out in times like this. Goes numb. All I have to do is bring up either of our parents and I can see the emotion drain from him and I hate it. He and Dad used to be so close… and then something switched and I was the one who got his attention, yet Mom was all about Maddox. Now he can’t stand to talk about either of them.
“Pills. We need to go, Maddy.”
“Don’t call me that. I hate it when you call me that.”
I reach for my older brother’s hand, but he jerks it away. “Yeah, because that’s what’s important right now. We need to go see her.”
He’s shaking his head and I know what he’s going to say before he does. That he doesn’t want to go. That he doesn’t care if she needs us. Before he can, I say the one thing that I know he can’t say no to. “I can’t do this without you. I need you.”
“Fuck,” he mumbles under his breath. “Gimme two minutes.” The door slams, guilt tingeing the edges of my pain. I shouldn’t manipulate him like that, but he’s my brother. Her son. Mom and I both need him. She can’t help that she fell apart after what Dad did.
Realizing I forgot my phone, I grab it and the car keys, and I’m pacing the living room when Maddox comes out, his dark hair all disheveled. He doesn’t look me in the eyes. He’s pissed and I know he knows what I did.
We head out to the car and I drive us to the hospital because I don’t trust him to do it when he’s mad. He likes to go too fast and the last thing we need is to get into an accident on the way.
I’m shivering by the time we walk through the hospital doors and only part of it is from the cold. Maddox isn’t wearing a jacket, even though it’s a frigid cold January in Virginia.
“We’re here to see Beatrice Cross,” I tell the desk clerk. Maddox doesn’t step up beside me. He has his arms crossed about five feet away from me.
“Are you family?” the clerk asks.
“Yes. We’re her children.”
She puts bands on each of our wrists and directs us where to go, as if we don’t know where the ER is. We could find anywhere in this place.
I’m not surprised when my eyes pool over again. No matter how many times this happens or how many times she slips back into her depression, it doesn’t get easier.
Right before we leave the sterile white hallway and head for the emergency room, Maddox grabs my wrist.
“Don’t cry for her, Laney. Don’t cry for either of them.”
Maddox is so much older than his twenty-one years. He’s always been the strong one and both of us know it. It’s not that simple for me. My mom just tried to take her own life. My dad is in prison and my brother—my best friend—hates the world.