Falling to Pieces (17 page)

Seventeen

Caulder’s
face screwed up and he nodded forcefully as his eyes welled up with tears of his own.

“No.” Blinking furiously, I bit back the pain, stomping it into submission.

“It’s okay, Jade.”

“No. No, it’s not.” I scrubbed harshly at the few tears that dared escape. I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t because that would mean I believed him and it couldn’t be true.

“Stop.” He gently pulled my hands away from my face. “It’s okay
to cry.
”

I shook my head, adamantly refusing to believe this.

“He is dying,
Jade.” Caulder looked me right in the eye as he slaughtered my heart, ripping it open from the inside out. “Kiernan is going to die. Sooner rather than later. You can deny it all you want, but it’s going to happen. You need to be prepared for that.”

He watched me closely as I sat there still as a statue, terrified to move, terrified to feel, because I knew that if I did, it would kill me.

“Jade? I just told you that someone you love is going to die. It’s
okay
to feel that. It’s
okay
to cry, scream, curse Heaven. Do whatever you need to. Trust me, I’ve done it all.”

The pressure in my chest grew until I was afraid it may explode. That’s when I realized I was holding my breath. My lungs screamed for relief, but still I couldn’t release it, afraid that if I did, everything else would go with it. Slowly, I allowed the words to sink in. One at a time, I opened my heart to them.

I felt my heart break and couldn’t believe that I’d survived. That I was still capable of feeling anything at all. To literally feel your heart crack wide open and live . . . I almost wished I hadn’t. The pain was like nothing I’d ever
experienced before. And with it came the tears. Hot and fast they washed down my cheeks to a broken chorus of guttural sobs I couldn’t control.

At some point,
Caulder wrapped me up in his arms and pulled me against his chest. I buried my face there, fisting his shirt, and felt him shudder beneath me. I don’t know how long we sat there, holding on to one another, sharing our pain. It felt like an eternity. Caulder never once hushed me. Never tried to tell me it would be alright. Never tried to move us along so he could get back inside, though I knew he must have been anxious to check on his brother. He just held me tight, like he was trying to hold me together, and let me cry for as long as I needed.

When the tears finally wound down, I stayed right where I was. The urge to give into utter exhaustion overwhelmed me. I wasn’t ready to face this new reality yet. This horribly, unfair, devastating new reality. But I needed to see Kiernan. I needed to know he was okay. At least for now. That we still had time.

Caulder cleared his throat and shifted beneath me. “You ready?”

I nodded, my throat too raw to speak.

“Alright.” He released me and I patted my face dry before letting myself out of the car.

There were people scattered across the lot. Some limping their way inside. Others leaving with big smiles and bunches of balloons. Cars whizzed by on the road to unknown destinations. Across the street people came and went from the many shops and eateries. All of them completely oblivious to the fact that my entire world had come crumbling down around me.

“Jade?” I turned to find Caulder stopped just outside of the car, pain written in the scrunch of his brow. “Kiernan’s scared. I know he doesn’t look like he is, or act like he is, but he’s my brother and I’m telling you,
he is
. And I think what terrifies him most is hurting you. He’s going to need us to be strong for him. Do you understand?”

Strong. Not something I normally considered myself. But for Kiernan, I could do it. For Kiernan, I could do anything. Letting the emotional shields slide back into place, I nodded.
Which, for some reason, made Caulder look even more pained.

“I just want him to find peace, Jade, and he won’t be able to do that if he doesn’t think you’ll be okay. If he thinks he’s making you suffer.”

“I understand.” Swallowing the last of my tears, I turned back toward the building
, prepared to put on the show of my life when a warm hand wrapped around my wrist.

“Wait.”
Caulder was closer, standing over me with the most torn look on his face. “I . . . I want you know it’s okay to hurt, though. Just not in front of Kiernan. Being strong for someone when you’re falling apart inside is one of the hardest things there is. Believe me, I know. It’s not fair to put this on you, and I’m sorry. If you ever need to talk, or cry, or wail on something with a baseball bat, come find me. Any time. Call me in the middle of the night when it really hits you, because it will. I’ll be there for you. I promise. We’ll get through this together, okay?”

Sucking in a deep breath and then releasing it slowly between my lips, I nodded again.
Caulder gave my hand a quick squeeze before letting go, and followed me back inside the waiting room to where their mother was sitting with her head in her hands.

“Oh, Jade, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” Mrs. Parks took my hands in hers and pulled me down beside her. “I should have—”

“It’s okay. I understand. Really, I do.” I had to bite the inside of my cheek to fight back the tears welling in response to hers. “Have they said anything yet?”

“Nothing yet. Just that we have to wait. You’d think I’d get a little preferential treatment around here.” She grumbled loud enough for the woman behind the desk to hear, sinking back into her seat on an aggravated huff.

“Mom’s a nurse here,” Caulder clarified. “She works in the ICU.”

I don’t know why that surprised me. Maybe it was the fancy house, or the nice clothes, but I’d pegged
her as a lawyer, or the CEO of some big name company. For some reason, it never crossed my mind to ask Kiernan.

Either way, she was right. Working there definitely didn’t earn her any preferential
treatment. It was over an hour before anyone came out to speak with us. When they finally did, it was a young doctor in green scrubs looking even more exhausted than I felt.

“
He’s awake and coherent.” The doctor went on to explain some technical sounding things to Mrs. Parks’ which she seemed to understand, but all I heard was when he finished with. “He’s asking to see you.”

Caulder
and his mother went in first. After all, they were family. Now that I knew he probably wasn’t going to die today, I let other thoughts consume me. Kiernan and I had a lot to discuss, but this wasn’t the place or time. It would come, I was sure, but for right that moment all I wanted was to see his face.

My back and shoulders ached with tension and I slumped wearily into a hard chair to wait. I was drifting somewhere on the edge of oblivion when
Caulder returned.

“Hey. He wants to see you.” Bolting upright, I wiped away the stray tears that had leaked free in my moment of exhausted weakness as he took the seat beside me. “Are you going to be alright?”

“I’ll hold it together.”

“I know. I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about you.”

I forced a smile that probably ended up looking more like a grimace. “I’ll be fine.”

Caulder
looked unconvinced at best. “I told him that you know. He wasn’t thrilled that I was the one to tell you, but he understands why I had to. He’s really sorry that he didn’t tell you sooner.”

“I’m not mad at him, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I already told you what I’m worried about.”

“And I told you, I’m fine. What room is he in?”

Caulder
led me quietly down a long narrow corridor lined with doors to the one at the very end. Excitement and nerves got the better of me and I lunged for the handle, but he brought me up short. Knocking softly, we waited until Mrs. Parks emerged, red faced and puffy eyed.

“Oh, honey.” She pulled me into her arms and held me so tight I could scarcely breathe. It took a moment for the weirdness to fade away and then I hugged her back just as hard. I let her arms give me the strength I so desperately needed to do what came next. “I’m so sorry about all of this.”

She pulled back with fresh tears streaming down her face and the best I could do was shake my head, unable to fight through the lump blocking my throat.

“Alright, enough,
Mom. You don’t want to turn her into a blubbering mess before she even gets through the door,” Caulder teased lightly, wrapping an arm around his mother’s shoulders to support her as she released me. “Let’s give them some time. Go ahead.” He nodded to the door and once again I reached for the handle.

This tim
e I did so with less enthusiasm. What was I supposed to say to him? What
wasn’t
I supposed to say? I was going to screw this up in a big way. I just knew it.

Caulder
seemed to understand my unspoken turmoil. His hand closed over my shoulder as his mother shuffled back towards the waiting room. “It’s just Kiernan. And he just wants to see his girlfriend. You’ll be fine, remember?”

I nodded and before the ounce of courage he’d given me could dissipate, I opened the door and stepped inside. Kiernan sat up in the hospital bed, wearing a long sleeved tee and sweats that his mother must have given him.

“Hey, you.” He smiled, but still looked as apprehensive as I felt.

“Hey. How are you feeling?” I inched slowly into the room.

Kiernan sighed. “Not great. Can we skip the whole awkward, ‘I don’t know what to say’ part?”

“I
don’t
know what to say.” It was the truth.

“That’s okay. Let’s start with you coming more than a foot inside the room.” Kiernan scooted over and patted the mattress beside him. “Get over here.”

My lip was raw from how hard I was chewing it as I crossed the small, sterile space. “Is that allowed?”

“It’s my bed.” He shrugged. “We’re paying enough for it.”

This time
his smile was genuine and it eased some of my anxiety. Feeling the warmth of his body beside me as I scrambled up onto the bed went a long way toward easing the rest.

“
Sooo.” He reclined on the pillows propped behind us and rolled his head to look at me.

“So.” I copied his movements, putting us face-to-face, and his warm minty breath washed over me, overwhelming my senses. This was Kiernan. He was here. Right beside me. Close enough to touch, to smell. And he was alive.
There was an IV stuck in one arm, but otherwise he looked totally normal. No tubes, no machines. He didn't look like a dying person.

“We should probably talk, huh?”

“Kiernan, we really don’t have to—”

“Yes. We really do.”

His gaze drifted around the room. When
it returned to me, his eyes were filled with that all too familiar sadness he always seemed to get when he looked at me. Now, I understood it.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,
Jade. I should have told you. Right from the beginning, I should have been honest with you. I just didn’t want you to look at me differently, and now . . . Now your heart’s involved and all I’m going to do is hurt you. It would have been better if I’d just left you alone.”

“No. Kiernan, that’s not true.”
He shot me a no bullshit look and I screwed on a small smile. “Okay, yeah, you sort of scared the crap out of me back there. And I’m terrified of what’s going to happen, but . . . Don’t you have any idea how much you’ve done for me?” He stared back at me in disbelief, so I plowed ahead. “I was afraid of my own shadow when I met you. I
hated
myself. Everything about me. And I believed that everyone else hated me too. That they should. I believed all those things my mother and Doug always said about me.”

Pain haunted his eyes
as Kiernan took my hand in his, but not the physical kind.

“But you changed that. You made me look at the world differently. You made me look at
myself
differently. And I don’t hate what I see quite so much anymore.”

“Jade . . .”

“I would have spent my entire life hiding. Wishing myself away. I don’t know how much longer I could have lived like that,
or what it would have done to me. All I know is that you saw inside of me. You saw all those broken pieces that reflected back skewed images of myself and you pieced them back together.”

Kiernan leaned forward taking my face in his hands. “I love you. More than anything else in this world, Jade, I love you.” He said it so fiercely—his voice so strong and sure—that it was nearly impossible to believe he was as sick as everyone said.

***

They kept Kiernan overnight at the hospital just to be safe. I wanted to stay, too, but when the nurse kicked me out at the end of visiting hours, Caulder insisted on giving me a ride home.

“It’s dark, Jade. You’re not walking home. And I’m sure as hell not letting you waste your
money on a cab when I have a perfectly good car just sitting in the lot.”

Couldn’t really argue with that. “Thanks.”