In Ruins (28 page)

I frown. “Do you want me to go?”

She quickly shakes her head, uncharacteristic nerves etched in the creases around her eyes. She thinks I'm here out of pity, and why wouldn't she? I look at Billy, so small in the hospital bed. He's got tubes running every which way and he looks like he may never wake up. Before I can even process the horror of that thought, I hear someone say my name, and I get the feeling it's not for the first time.

“I said hello, Tucker.”

My shoulders tense and I try to conceal my distaste. I offer a cordial nod. “Mrs. Stanger.”
Stanley
.

Carl's anxiety is palpable, and I don't want to be the cause of it. I don't know what role her mother did or didn't play in her father's crimes, but I know the woman well enough to suspect that even if she didn't encourage him—which I find hard to believe—she more than likely knew what he was up to.

A smile as artificial as her lips themselves stretches wide, no other part of her face moving so much as a twitch. “You can still call me Nicole. No need to be formal just because you and Carleigh aren't dating.”

No thanks
.

Carl pulls nervously at a loose thread on the hem of her—
my
—shirt, glancing between her mother and me as if anticipating some sort of blowout. Her mother scarcely notices.

“Rory's coming in a bit,” Carl murmurs, and I recognize she's offering me another out.

“Oh good,” her mother replies without so much as peeking up from her phone. “Have her stop by the house and bring you something to wear. And perhaps some makeup and a hairbrush. Since you obviously rushed out of bed.”

I have to hold in my snort. Nicole Stanger can't see that her daughter is a nervous fucking wreck, but
this
she notices.

Carl chews her bottom lip, a rare demure blush painting her cheeks, no doubt recalling just whose bed she rushed out of.

“Carl looks beautiful,” I challenge, unable to stop myself, and they both stare at me.

Nicole turns back to her daughter and gives her an obvious once-over. “Surely you'd agree that she could make herself a bit more…” She gestures breezily. “
Presentable
,” she finishes.

I can't help my eye roll. I sure as shit would
not
agree. Carl looks gorgeous as fuck in my shirt. But Nicole's attention is already back on her phone.

“Do you want to grab a cup of coffee?” I ask Carl, wanting to get both her and myself away from her obnoxious mother.

Carl nods. “You want some, Mom?”

“Hmm. I doubt they have anything remotely drinkable here.”

Carl doesn't argue. She seems just as eager to escape that room. “Text me if Billy wakes up before I'm back.” And she grabs my hand and pulls me away.

“You okay?” I ask her.

She breathes out a long-winded sigh. “Yeah. Just…You know how she is.”

“Sure do,” I agree. “Can't fucking stand how she criticizes you.”

Carl shrugs. “Whatever, I'm used to her. Honestly, Tuck, I don't even care right now. I'm just glad Billy's going to be okay.”

Yeah, me too
. It would've absolutely killed me to watch Carl go through that—to see her suffer that kind of anguish, completely powerless to do a damn thing to fix it for her. But beyond that, I really do love that kid. And after last night, I realize I didn't just bail on Carl, but I abandoned Billy, too.

It's just more regrets to add to the pile—
the fucking
landfill
—and more mistakes I vow to correct. That is, after I kick his ass for taking such a stupid fucking risk and scaring the living shit out of his Carl. And me.

Speaking of correcting mistakes…

I spot a small, empty waiting room and change direction without warning, pulling Carl inside. “I've been thinking about what you said back at Cap's—”

She shakes her head anxiously. “We don't have to do this, Tuck. I get it—”

“You get nothing.”

She blinks at me.

“You're wrong.”
Shit
. I'm in such a fucked-up position. I need to apologize—to tell her I was wrong for doubting her. For assuming the worst, and letting myself vilify her when I fucking
knew
better. But it's not the time for that. And until it is, I can't exactly tell her she was wrong back at Cap's, either. Instead, I need to work on rebuilding our friendship. I need Carl to start seeing me the way she used to. As someone who cares about her, someone she can lean on—someone she can trust, and talk to—instead of the guy who only ever spits spite at worst or ignores her at best.

In the back of my mind I realize I'm doing the same thing I crucified Carl for—waiting until I'm ready to confess something that might affect us both deeply. I only hope she can forgive me for it in turn.

I blow out a slow exhale and offer her an apology far less sufficient than the one she deserves. “But look, you're also right. I should be more sensitive. And I'm sorry, okay?”

“You're sorry…” Carl looks like she can't quite believe what she's hearing.

More fucking sorry than you know
. I take a step forward, suddenly standing too close for the
friend
I insisted I could be.

I'm scared she'll retreat. But she doesn't. Her breathing picks up and she licks her lush, pink lips, making my blood rush south.

My hand cups her face all on its own volition, and between the blood donation and my hard-on I'm lucky if there's any blood left for my brain to function. But mercifully there appears to be just enough to stop myself from doing something dangerous like kiss her.

But my thumb strokes her cheek and I start to get lost in my favorite emerald color. Carl gasps at my touch, and my T-shirt slips off of her shoulder.
And there goes the rest of the blood.
Other than our mutual labored breathing, the room is blaringly silent, so the sound of Carl's phone buzzing in her hand is sudden and jarring.

My gaze automatically lands on the source of the interruption, and though I honestly don't mean to peek at the screen, some words—or names—just jump out at you.

Zayne
.

I try to keep the snake of jealousy in its coiled slumber, but that fucker has the same reaction to Zayne's name as I do. To strike.

“You should take that,” I murmur, fighting not to let my emotions show as I walk out the door.

I wait in the hall, because I told her I wouldn't leave until she told me to, and I won't abandon her ever again. But I'm not going to beg for her attention either. If she wants to talk to Zayne, then what the fuck does she need me for?

Present Day

We linger in the cafeteria after we finish our coffees, but I know Carl wants to be there when Billy wakes up, so we head back to his room before too long. It's still a few hours before he finally stirs, and I hang back in the corner while Carl and Nicole crowd his bed, softly calling his name and trying to get hold of his attention.

Rory, Cap, and Beth showed up sometime during the past couple of hours, and they decide to go down to the gift shop to “find something to brighten up Billy's hospital room.” It's a thinly veiled excuse to give the Stangers some family time, and rationally I know I should go with them, but I need to make sure Carl is okay first.

A nurse comes in and checks Billy's vitals, which appear to be strong, and warns us to “keep the excitement down.” It isn't until she's long gone that Billy starts with questions about his accident, and Carl bursts into tears.

She sobs through her account of Thanksgiving night and the following morning, but Billy remembers most of what led him to be in that car with Kyle. I was worried he might hold on to his resentment from his fight with Carl, but he doesn't. He apologizes and apologizes, still pretty dazed, and I take their emotional exchange as my cue to give them some privacy after all.

I take a walk around the hospital, unable to stop myself from wondering if Carl actually still wants me around. I head back to Billy's room for the third or fourth time—I've lost count—and find Nicole out in the hall talking to a doctor, and Carl still at his bedside, the two siblings laughing about God only knows what.

I hang back in the doorway, not wanting to interrupt them, especially now that they both seem to be in better moods. But Billy spots me, and I wait an interminable beat for his reaction to my presence. But he doesn't say anything, he just stares, gaze impassive, if a little unfocused from the drugs.

“Glad to see you giggling like a little girl again,” I tease him. I can't help it. This is the ball-busting brotherly relationship we've always had. At least until the breakup.

To my great relief, Billy's mouth twists into an uneven smirk. “Whatever, Mother-Tucker. You're just jealous they gave me the
goooood
drugs.”

I make my way to his bed, standing beside Carl, who looks up at me with a relieved smile. I crack a few more jokes through a strained smirk, and Billy and Carl laugh and laugh like last night—or this morning—never even happened. Nicole pops her head in to tell us she's going to Kitchen Cabaret to pick up some soup so Billy doesn't have to eat the “hospital garbage.”

My phone buzzes with a text from Cap saying they're on their way back up.
Good
. They can keep Carl company while I talk to Billy.

I brush my palm over Carl's partially exposed shoulder, rubbing my thumb into the muscle at the base of her neck the way she likes. She automatically turns into my touch, and meets my gaze.

“Cap texted that they're on their way up. Do you think I could have a minute with Billy?”

Carl's brows pinch together in vague confusion, but she doesn't question me. “Yeah. Of course,” she murmurs, and climbs from her armchair. She forces an unsure smile and tells Billy she'll be right outside.

I hate her uncertainty, especially when it's about me, and I grab her hand as she passes, squeezing once to reassure her.
Trust me.

She squeezes back—blind faith I don't deserve. But I fucking will.

Billy watches me cautiously as I approach the chair Carl just vacated. If I wasn't sure whether or not he remembered what he said last night, his wary expression would easily give him away. I take the seat at his bedside, raising my eyebrows with mock melodrama—an attempt at easing the stress of these insane circumstances we've landed in—and Billy's lip twitches in an affirming half-smile. “How you feeling?” I ask.

He tries to shrug, but winces. “Sore,” he admits. “But not too bad, thanks to modern medicine.” He grins sloppily and gestures to the IV currently delivering the morphine that's making his injuries tolerable.

I scoot forward in my chair. “Modern medicine did a lot more today than make you high, you know.”

Billy's grin fades instantly. “I know.” His somber tone speaks volumes.

But I don't hold back. I tell him. I tell him how Carl reacted when she heard about his accident, how she broke down in the car ride over. I explain how she fought to keep it together while we waited in purgatory for news, and how she blamed herself for everything. I describe her face when his doctor walked into that waiting room to deliver the verdict of his surgery, and her palpable relief at the outcome. I tell him she took such a deep breath that I swore I felt her suck the air from the room.

And then I tell him how it feels to get the opposite news, and what it's like to know you'll never see someone you love again. I describe what it's like to wake up having forgotten for just a second they're gone forever, only to have reality come crashing back, again and again, every day for months…years.

I tell him all of it.

He cries. My eyes might water a bit. But he gets it. And I know there's more going on under the surface with him, and at some point I hope to talk about the underlying reasons for his acting out. But now is not the time for that. I'm just grateful that when Carl returns to Billy's room with our friends, her brother has a little more insight into how much she loves him, and how his actions affect her. And I can only hope that whatever he's dealing with, he'll think twice before he risks his life, or his sister's heart.

Now that Billy has been released from the hospital and Nicole Stanger has apparently decided to stick around and be a mother for a change, Carl is back at school and finally acting more like herself.

I cornered Ben in our garage our first day back on campus, and listened to him swear up and down that he had no ill intentions. That he knows giving Carl the meds and not explaining exactly what they were was stupid. I know that as an athlete he's taken them many times for injuries, and I also know plenty of people end up using them for reasons they weren't prescribed for. Others, still, take them recreationally. So it's possible he really didn't think it was a big deal.
Fucking idiot.

He admitted he was wrong, and apologized profusely to both me and Carl. He understands how dangerous what he did was, or so he claims. I'm not so sure. I still want to kick his ass, but Carl asked me to back off. I begged her to report him, but she fucking believes him, and she doesn't want to ruin his entire future over one stupid mistake. She's way too compassionate. He didn't think twice before potentially risking her fucking life, and he deserves whatever punishment he'd get. But reluctantly, I have to let Carl make this call. And at least for now, she has. So I focus on other things.

We present our creative marketing project this week, and as we film our final scene at the lax house of a couple hooking up in the laundry room—or trying to—I can't stop staring at Carl. She caught me twice already, and the third time I don't bother looking away. I just blatantly eye-fuck her until she has to bite her bottom lip red to suppress her self-satisfied smile. It's her own fault. She knows what those flouncy little skirts do to me—the way the hem flirts with her supple thighs—and I doubt I'm imagining that extra sway in her hips as she walks to and from the kitchen to get a cold bottle of water. I can use a little cooling down myself, and I grab it from her and suck down half the thing in three big gulps.

“Hey.” She swats me on the biceps and takes it back from me.

I'm so distracted by her that I barely notice Julia call cut, and thank our volunteer-actors. She has an evening class, so she says good-bye and walks them out. Manny checks today's file on his computer, making sure it automatically uploaded from his camera via the Cloud, as he's programmed it to do.

“Are these our releases?” Carl asks, staring wide-eyed at the organized mess of paperwork I have on the table. They are my responsibility, and though Carl has helped with a few of the guys who were reluctant to sign, we also needed signatures from the random girls who were in the background at our parties, and that is where I shined.

“Yup.”

“Ugh, Tucker. You're so messy,” she admonishes, and she starts alphabetizing them.

“Hey, my job was to get them signed, not make them pretty,” I remind her, and she rolls her eyes. My chest swells. I've missed this. Having Carl not be afraid to talk back to me. To challenge me.

“While you two perfect the form of argument as foreplay, I'll be over at my dorm creating a masterpiece,” Manny teases a little bitterly as he packs up his computer.

“What?” Carl gasps, but I just grin. She can deny it all she wants, but there's only one part of that Manny got wrong—we've had this shit perfected for years.

Manny rolls his eyes and salutes us before he leaves, but his calling us out has obviously unsettled Carl, and that bugs me.

“These are all crinkled,” she complains as she tries to flatten a sheet of paper on the folding table we keep in the laundry room for—well—folding.

“At least they're all signed,” I counter.

“Not
all
,” she corrects me, but she's wrong.

I come up behind her and reach around her on both sides to find the release that had given us so much trouble. A particularly entertaining reaction by a girl who hadn't gotten the memo that the jokes were scripted. She heard half a line about spiking the punch with roofies and she lost her shit on Manny and me. It's gold for our video, but without her release, we couldn't use it. Neither Carl nor Manny could convince her to sign, but two days ago I discovered her weakness—a little begging and a big smile—and got the job done.

I find the paper in question and smooth it out in front of Carl.

She spins to face me. “You got it!”

I smile smugly down at her, so close my chest brushes hers with every inhale.

“How?”

“Employed my secret weapon.” I shrug.

“And what's that?” I don't miss her breathy tone, and my jeans feel infinitely tighter as a result.

“What do you think?” I raise my eyebrows. I'm just fucking with her at this point, but what can I say? I can't resist. “Fair is fair, right? A release in exchange for…a
release
.”

She eyes me dubiously, like she's actually considering whether or not I would do something like that, and admittedly, it stings a little, but I'm also massively amused.

Carl shoves at my chest, but I don't let her move me. “Ugh! You're so disgusting,” she hisses, and accepting she can't push me away, she turns away from me—never mind that she's trapped between me and the table as she pretends to busy herself with the paperwork again.

I lean down to her ear. “What's the matter, Princess? I thought you'd be pleased. I took one for the team.”

“Don't fucking call me that.”

I ignore her ire.
God
do I love riling her up. But if she's going to believe that I whored myself out for a goddamn school project, then she's going to fucking pay for it. “What's wrong, Carl? You jealous?” I taunt her with my breath on the back of her neck.

Her aggravation doesn't hide the goosebumps that rise—or the flush that sweeps over her skin. I grit my teeth to stop myself from tasting it.

“Why would I be jealous, Tucker? I've fucking had you, haven't I? Plenty of times,” she sneers.

I love her wrath, but hate the whisper of vulnerability—the aggrieved undertone I know would kill her to know I've picked up on.

“I guess your secret weapon is losing its magic.”

Oh, hell no
. I keep my mouth close, letting my lips lightly graze her earlobe as I speak. “Is that why your breathing's gone shallow?” I lean farther down and brush them over her carotid artery. “Or why your pulse is racing?”

Both her breathing and pulse respond by accelerating even more, but her shoulders stiffen in an attempt to resist the effect I have on her. “No.
That's
because you're making me uncomfortable,” she lies. Fortunately, I have mastered the art of reading Carl Stanger.

“The feeling is fucking mutual,” I growl, and I close my hands around her sensuous hips, pulling them back the half inch that separates our lower bodies, and I lightly press the evidence of my raging
discomfort
into her enticing ass.

Carl gasps before she can stifle it, her head lolling against my shoulder in a fleeting surrender before she regains control and squares her stance. “Too bad I have standards.”

“Have they gone up in the past week?” I scoff, gently scraping over the skin of her throat with my teeth, soothing it with my tongue, unable to resist a taste.

“Fuck you, Tucker.”

I spin her to face me. Now I'm fucking pissed. She tries to look away so I grip her jaw and force eye contact. “How well do you know me?” I demand.

“Not as well as I thought!” she seethes.

My gaze narrows. “Clearly fucking not, if you actually think I would fuck some stranger to get her to sign a damn release form!”

Carl's eyes widen so slightly and briefly I know anyone but me would've missed her combined relief and remorse, but it's instantly crushed by a wall of defensiveness. “Well, how the hell am I supposed to know who you do or don't fuck.” It isn't a question.

I know her attitude is out of self-preservation, born of insecurity, and I also know I'm to blame. I bend enough to level with her, softening my tone. “You're the
only
person who knows that, Carl.”
You're the only person I'm fucking
. Even though we've only hooked up twice in the past few months, so we're not technically
fucking.
But as I try to get our friendship back on track, even if I know it's too soon to pursue something more, I see no reason for us to torture ourselves with abstinence. We've never been ones to do things in traditional order.