Sound Proof (Save Me #5) (9 page)

I think I can hear every clock in this hospital ticking in my ear and it’s driving me absolutely crazy. However, compared to watching Payton fall apart, it’s nothing. They finally let us into Willow’s room about an hour ago but we’re still waiting for an update on Sage. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen time pass this slowly.

Willow mumbles something incoherently but it’s nothing any of us can make out. She’s been in and out but the after-effects of the anesthesia keep pulling her back under. Payton already knows she’s going to need help while the girls recover because Willow’s face is so swollen that she’s not sure she will be able to speak clear enough for her to make out. She wouldn’t even be able to read her lips if she couldn’t hear her, and with a broken collarbone and broken fingers, she won’t be able to sign correctly.

Payton has her head resting on the edge of the bed, hiding her face, when the doctor comes in. He stoops down next to her and when he finally has her attention, he tells her that Sage is out and he’s going to take her down to her room.

She begins to rush from the room but stops just short of the door, torn between both her daughters and it’s heartbreaking. I stand up and pull her into me, framing her face between my hands. She grabs my wrists, holding me there, and looks up at me like she hopes I hold all the answers.

“Go. Take your parents and go check on Sage. I’ll stay with Willow until you come back.” I press my lips against her forehead and feel her tears slip down over my fingers.

After Payton and her mother walk out the door, Roger grips my shoulder, thanking me, and follows behind them. I don’t know how long I sit there watching Willow, pain washing over her face every time she tries to wake up. It never lasts long before giving in and letting the drugs pull her back under, but each time, it’s enough to make my chest ache.

When Willow’s eyes finally stay open for longer than ten seconds, I slide my chair as close to the bed as I can without hitting it and page the nurse.

“Hey, babe,” I whisper.

Her face scrunches up, tears leaking out of the corner of her eyes. “Mom? Sage?”

“Sage just came out of surgery. Your mom went to check on her.” I try to keep my voice low and calm so she doesn’t freak out.

“Is she gonna be OK?” she mumbles.

“Yeah of course she is.” As gently as I can, I pick her unbroken hand up in mine and squeeze her fingers lightly. “Willow, can you tell me what happened?”

She picks a spot on the wall and stares at it as she forces herself to stay awake and tells me what went on throughout the day. “Max left us in the car when we got to the bar. It was so hot. He left the keys in it though so I kept turning it on and running the air conditioner for Sage. When he finally came back out, he was trashed. He hauled me out of the car and started screaming at me, kept telling me how I was just going to become a whore like my mom.”

She stops talking when the nurse finally walks into the room and starts checking her over. My fingers wrap around the bed rail, squeezing tight enough that I think I might break it just so I don’t go fight my way into Max’s room so I can kill him myself.

When the nurse finally leaves, Willow starts back into her story, and she tries to fight off the fact that the meds are trying to make her go back to sleep.

“He threw me into the side of the car and Sage started screaming and crying. I tried to tell her to stop, that everything was going to be all right, but she wouldn’t stop. He dragged her out too and threw her seat across the parking lot and laughed when it broke. I pushed Sage behind me when he wasn’t looking and he grabbed my hair and started dragging me around the car. He shoved me in behind the wheel and told me if I didn’t drive I was going to regret it. I told him no, to get a cab, but that only made him angrier.” She drags in a deep breath, her eyes flicking over to mine to see if I’m paying attention still. Truth is, I don’t think I can move away from her right now even if I need to. “He climbed in the back where Sage should have been and sprawled across the entire seat, so I told her to climb in next to me. I buckled her up the best I could, I swear. I did everything just like the driver’s ed teacher taught me but that car came out of nowhere and I didn’t have time to stop. It’s all my fault,” Willow chokes out. “I should have stood my ground. I knew something bad was going to happen.”

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s not your fault. Don’t ever think that any of this was your fault.” I try to calm her down, to drill it into her head that she did everything she could to protect herself and her sister, but it only makes her cry harder. Her tears kill me just as much, if not more, than Payton’s did. “You guys are going to be just fine.”

I’m about to text Payton and tell her that Willow is awake, but she passes back out before I have the chance. So instead, I leave her alone with Sage and sit there going over everything Willow just told me, and try to keep myself here with her instead of downstairs earning a murder rap and a new reason to search me on Google.

I must fall asleep at some point because the next thing I know, fingers are sliding down my cheek. I force my eyes open and as soon as I do, Payton drops down into my lap and buries her face in my neck. I wrap my arms around her, pulling her as close to me as I can possibly get her. If anyone saw us, and didn’t know the situation, it would look like we were together instead of one friend comforting another. I’m not going to complain though, I have her in my arms and other than Willow and Sage making full recoveries, that’s all I want.

I. Am. Exhausted. I can barely get my body to move without help, but I’m afraid to sleep. I’m afraid that if I close my eyes, when I open them, one, or both of my daughters will be gone. At the same time though, I’m wishing that all of this is some insane nightmare and I’ll wake up and they’ll both be safe in their beds.

I know that’s not the case. I know that both my girls, both pieces of my heart, are lying in two separate areas in this hospital. I know that no matter much I want to be in both places at once, I can’t and every time I leave one room to go to the other, my heart breaks a little more. Pretty soon there won’t be anything left of it.

Willow’s woken up long enough to tell me what happened, so that’s a good thing. Except half of her face is so swollen that my father had to stand beside her and repeat it for me because I couldn’t understand her mumbling. Knowing I won’t be able to take care of them when they come home, unless the swelling goes away and she can talk right beforehand, is killing me. Even when I was with Max, I didn’t expect him to help. When he did, I was grateful, but now he’s the reason our lives are falling apart. I never expected this.

Liam made it back a few hours ago. He may have broken every traffic law in two states to get here, but he’s here. Having all these people here with me is helpful because I don’t have to worry about either girl being alone at any time. Other than a few minutes when he went to check on Sage, because honestly he loves her too, Liam has been with Willow and my mother. My father has stayed with Sage for the most part, along with Max’s mother.

AJ hasn’t left yet either. Everywhere I’ve gone, he’s been right there with me. It might be that I’m afraid to let go of his hand, but who knows. I know he’s missing meetings too, because now that I’m back I’m missing the same ones. He’s losing money, both his and the label’s, but he says it doesn’t matter. That it’s just money, and money isn’t important. That he can get it back and how the girls are more important to him than any dollar amount.

What do you say to that? Seriously, what do you say to someone who treats your children like they hung the moon, even though they don’t need to? To the person who always seems to catch you when you almost hit the ground. He’s picked me up and kept me on my feet more times since we met than Max had in all those years we were together.

I shift in my seat, trying hard not to wake AJ up, but it doesn’t work. His eyes fly open and bounce between Sage’s bed and me.

“You all right?”

I shove my hands through my hair, pulling it off my face for probably the millionth time in the past few days. It’s a complete disaster but I can’t force myself to go home and shower so I’m stuck with hospital shampoo which leaves me a tangled mess. If I looked in a mirror right now it would probably shatter. I felt bad even having to ask someone go to the house to feed Duke and bring me the chargers for my receivers so I could continue to hear everyone.

I yawn, rolling my shoulders as I stand up. “I’m not going to be all right until they tell me that both girls are going to make a full recovery, and even then I probably won’t be OK until they actually are.”

With Willow, it’s a bit easier because I can go to her room, talk to her, and make sure she’s OK. I can’t do that with Sage. They’ve only let Sage wake all the way up twice since she came out of surgery. They’re afraid, that she’s going to freak out and move too much, which could mess up the bones in her face setting correctly.

AJ pulls me down onto his lap before he slides his fingers across my cheek, tucking a loose strand of hair back behind my ear. He leaves his hand against my face and I sink into the comfort and warmth he’s giving me.

“Payton, everything is going to be OK. You have to believe that. You can’t think like this.”

“I know.” I choke on my breath and have to take a minute to calm myself down. “But I can’t help thinking the worst right now. I feel like this is all my fault. If only I had told Willow that she couldn’t go with Sage on Friday none of this would have happened.”
If I had taken his threat of me regretting not going back to him seriously…
“Instead, the monster who caused all of it just walked away, and I’m sitting here with two injured daughters and all I want is for them to be better. To be able to watch them grow up without having what happened to them hanging over their heads for the rest of their lives.”

His eyebrows draw together and he becomes angry. “Don’t,” he scolds, “don’t ever think that this is your fault. Willow tried to pull that same shit the other day, and I’m not going to let either one of you think that for one single second. Neither one of you did anything wrong and if it takes me telling you both that for the rest of my life, I will.”

I can’t breathe. It’s like the air has been sucked out of the room, leaving me sitting here wondering if I’m going to be able to make it through the next ten seconds, let alone long enough to figure out what the feelings growing inside me for AJ mean.

I’m thankful that a few calls to some of my connections got this case pushed through as fast as possible, but this is definitely not how I pictured things going. I drop my face into my hands on the table and shake my head. Even though I know Max really doesn’t stand a chance in hell of getting custody since the accident, that hasn’t stopped him from throwing shit out left and right to try and mess this up.

I look back up at Beverly, the court reporter, and try not to laugh when she rolls her eyes as she types the next idiotic thing Max throws out. My mouth drops when he says something about me being an unfit mother.

I slap my palms down on the table, hard enough that it makes them sting, and jump out of my chair. “Are you for real right now?” I yell.

I hear the judge yelling something and see his arms waving out of the corner of my eye, but I ignore him. I know if I keep yelling I’ll be sitting on a contempt charge, but right now, I don’t care.

“You think that I am an unfit mother because what? Because I can’t hear the words from their mouths when I don’t have these on?” I point at my ears “Or because I’m not going to stick around and watch you screw your way through my assistants?”

“You hit one reason out of many,” Max says back, a menacing look on his face. “You can’t hear if something happens to Sage without assistance, I can. I also don’t spend my days with out of control rock stars and drug addicts.”

I’m stunned, speechless, and I just stand there and stare at him until Wesley, my divorce attorney, grabs my hand. I spin toward him and push back the tears threatening to spill over. I grab my arm back and scream through the courtroom. “He got drunk, left my kids in the car while he was in the bar, forced my unlicensed teenage daughter to drive his passed out ass home and then they got in an accident. It’s his fault that my daughters got hurt. And it’s his fault that Willow thinks it’s her fault that the other driver was hurt! If he thinks for one second that he is going to have any part of Sage’s life, he has another thing coming!”

The bailiff steps closer to me, his hand outstretched as he tries to gain my attention. He looks confused. I can’t blame him though, in all the cases he’s seen me try, I’ve never acted like this. Some of my clients, yes, but me… never. Wesley yanks me down next to him and tells me to shut up. So I do. I keep my mouth shut for the rest of the day unless asked to speak and glare at Max, who hasn’t stopped smirking since my outburst.

When the judge reads the verdict I’m ecstatic. Relieved that, even with my outburst, I no longer have to worry about either one of my girls going through anything like what they did again, but my mood shifts the second I see Max. I know by the threatening look on his face that he’s going to pull something else.