The cruiser drove up to the house at 8:36 p.m.
I fell apart at 8:37.
“I can take you down there.”
I sat on the edge of the leather armchair, elbows digging sharply into the fleshy part of my knees.
“Mallory?”
My body rocked forward and back, forward and back.
“Mallory.”
I’d avoided looking at him by cradling my face in my palms, but the tears and the snot and the sweat made them slick against my cheeks. My hands slipped with each rocking motion.
“Mallory—I need to know what you want to do.”
“I don’t know what I want to do.” I flinched at the hand he placed on my back—at the flimsy offer of comfort that drew my shoulders to my ears. “I’m sorry, Scott. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
He was still in his highway patrolman’s uniform but had fidgeted loose the top button on his shirt. “I can drive you there. Or I can stay with Corbin if you want to drive yourself.”
“I can’t drive.” I couldn’t see two inches in front of me. The room swam in my vision. “I can’t drive right now.”
“Is there someone you’d like me to call?”
I croaked out a laugh. “How awful is it that the only person I want to call right now is Heath?”
“Mallory. God. I’m so sorry.”
“I know.” My mouth hinted at a small smile. “Of course I know, Scott.”
He waited like he said he would and when Vickie and Lucas arrived, Scott held me against his chest for a solid, wordless minute. It felt like it might’ve been more for his sake than mine, but I was okay with that. We could console each other; we’d done it before.
“Go.” Vickie shoved at me with her duffle bag the instant she walked into the entryway. Her eyes blinked rapidly but didn’t conceal the reddened veins that webbed them. “Go. I’ll be fine here with Corbin. I brought my things for overnight.”
After finding my phone, I reached for my house keys and then turned to follow Lucas out the front door to his Jeep. His mother caught his elbow and meant for it to be a conversation between for the two of them, but the stern volume was easily overheard.
“You do not fall apart in there. You understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She gritted through her teeth. “I mean it, Lucas. You keep it together … for her.”
Another nod from her son and we were down the walkway and in the car.
Lucas fiddled with the radio, never really landing on any station for more than half a song. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t use the distraction of music to temper my distraught mind. Everything was worn out, all emotion exhausted.
I’d lived this before.
Maybe at some point, you ran out of tears. My heart broke at the possibility that there weren’t any left for Heath.
When I saw him, though, I saw through that lie.
Each loss was a fresh wound, even if the pain occurred in a similar way. Some hurts just dug into the old scars. But it could cut them, too. Rip open the healed-over flesh to expose the same ache, same throb, just in a new and sharp way.
Lucas and I waited six hours in a room designated for that task. Where we’d get one answer from a particular nurse, another would come by with a completely contradictory statement or update. I didn’t know what information to let my heart rest in. Hope seemed like a foolish thing to chase.
Despite the confusion, two things were clear: he never saw it coming and he wouldn’t likely walk anytime soon.
My emotion bled out of me when I ambled into the hospital room and finally laid eyes on Heath, the man I loved—had always loved—as broken on the outside as I felt on the inside. My scars split wide open.
“He’s in an induced coma,” a young brunette nurse said to us before leading us all the way in. Machines beeped steadily near Heath’s hospital bed and monitors flashed out a regulated pulse. “He had some swelling to his brain and large amounts of internal bleeding. He’s lost a lot of blood, along with the lower portion of his left leg. He won’t be responsive, so don’t expect that from him. But you are welcome to stay until family arrives.”
Heath’s parents, along with Hattie and her husband and children, had left two days earlier for a summer trip to Cancun. I spoke with Anthony on the phone just three hours ago when they were about to board their return flights, which would put them in town right around dawn.
Tomorrow he could be with family, but tonight he would be with me.
“I’ll wait in the hall, Miss Quinn.”
“Thank you, Lucas.” I squeezed his hand.
There had been an empty feeling in the hollow of my stomach—an ache that bent me in half. The sort of despair that heartache shares with the rest of your body making you physically ill. Seeing Heath—finally being in the same room as him—took that away.
I only felt one thing. Gratitude. Not for what had happened, but for the fact that he’d survived it. That he wasn’t completely taken from me. His act of kindness had a horrific result, but he was still here.
Heath was still here.
As I stepped closer, taking in the tubes that threaded in and out of his body, studying the new marks on his skin that were crudely sewn together, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest, I felt something else.
“You are such a good, good man, Heath,” I whispered against his cool forehead, my lips lighting on his bruised skin. “Always doing the right thing.”
He really was good. When it came down to it, Heath was the kind of man I hoped Corbin would grow up to be, and that realization struck me in the gut even harder than the news of the accident. Where that brought shock, this brought peace.
Heath was the man I wanted to raise my son with. He wasn’t Dylan’s replacement. Of course not. People couldn’t replace others. And our life together would be different, it had to be. But circumstance took Dylan from me and gave Heath to me. It took my mom and gave me Nana. It took pieces of my dad but gave me the gift of his talent in his paintings and our new way to communicate. It didn’t replace the person or cover up the memories, but it filled in the void with something different. A different kind of love.
Love was the healer that poured into the cracks of heartbreak.
Heath’s hospital room was dark, only the light directly above his bed turned on. It contoured the cuts on his face dramatically. I examined each one, reminding myself to be thankful that they weren’t worse. As gruesome as it was, this was not the worst-case scenario. There were other families in this very hospital living out that horror right now. I’d lived it out before. There was thankfulness to be found in each scar that would mar his face, in the time it would take to heal, in the recovery and the physical therapy and the process of regaining his strength.
What started as a well-meaning stop on the shoulder of the road resulted in a gruesome hit and run. A hit and run that sideswiped Heath, leaving him trapped under the stalled vehicle, his leg pinned under the tire, his body a heap of unconscious flesh and muscle pocked with gravel and asphalt.
Scott was the first on the scene, as he had been at my accident so long ago.
It must’ve felt like déjà vu.
When he came to my house shortly after, he was rambling about texts and secrets and how sorry he was and if I could ever forgive him. I couldn’t process any of it at the time though I later pieced together what he was trying to reveal. I understood his involvement, and I forgave him, of course I did. It was something we would need to talk through, but I saw the regret in his eyes and tears and heard it in his voice. Maybe he felt like he’d upended my life back then, but he was sincere in trying to make it right now, and that was all I could ask out of anyone.
The thing I could process immediately, though, was the fact that Heath had been hurt, that he was suffering. But now, looking at him under the thin blue hospital sheet, his eyelids shut, his body stilled, he looked almost peaceful.
I smoothed his hair with my palm and brought my face close. “This is going to put a damper on those ballroom dancing lessons I just signed us up for.” Maybe it was morose, but to joke felt better than to cry. “You’d said that you were two left feet, but now you don’t even have the one.”
With a twisted laugh, I cupped my hand to my mouth. Had anyone heard me, they would’ve thought it insensitive, but if there was any chance that Heath could hear—could understand what I was saying—it would be worth it. It was the sort of thing he would say to me, I knew it.
“I love you.” I dropped my head to the empty side of his bed, the space between his body and the rail. I closed my tear-stung eyes. “With all the heart that I have left, I love you, Heath.”
Exhaustion must’ve set in because the next thing I remembered was feeling Hattie’s delicate hand on my shoulder, her palm rubbing slow circles to wake me. I startled and rushed to my feet. The room spun, black circling in at the edges of my vision.
“Shhhh,” she shushed, her finger brought to her lips. “It’s okay. You don’t have to go. Sit for a few minutes. Stay.”
I rubbed at my neck. “No, no. I should go home to Corbin. Is everyone else here?”
“Mom and Dad are getting briefed by the staff.” Hattie tilted her head toward the hallway. Through the window, I could see Heath’s parents deep in discussion with one of the doctors. His mother had both hands to her mouth; his father had both hands on his wife’s shoulders. They were doing an excessive amount nodding, but that’s what you did when hearing news like this. Like bobbing your head would somehow rattle the words into your brain in a way that made them easier to understand.
“The nurses said he had a good night. That they expected him to be much more restless. Having you here calmed him, Mallory.” Hattie gave my wrists a squeeze. “Thank you for being here when we couldn’t. We can’t thank you enough.”
I didn’t have words that would be able to come out alone. Any I tried to utter would have tears attached, so I just bobbed my head and hugged her back before I reached for my purse.
“Lucas is in the waiting room and said he’s ready to drive you home whenever you like.”
“He’s still here?” My stomach tightened with guilt. “He didn’t have to stay.”
“He loves Heath, too, Mallory.”
Of course he did. Heath was an incredibly easy guy to love.
“Will you call me if anything changes?” I asked before turning to go. “Or even if things don’t change? Just … just keep me updated?”
Hattie smiled as she took a seat in the empty chair next to her younger brother. “Of course. But for now, go home and love on that baby of yours. Take a nap. Get a shower and some food. We’ll be here and you’re welcome to come back at any time.”
“Is it bad that I don’t ever want to leave?”
Hattie’s eyes crinkled with another grin and she gave me the sweetest of looks when she said, “I know for a fact that my brother feels exactly the same way about you.”
