Where We Left Off (31 page)

The interruption to my drive home set me back about twenty minutes, but I was a staunch believer that everything happened for a reason. Even Officer Douglas’s shenanigans twelve years ago. Whatever the motive, he felt he was doing the right thing, and who was to say that I wouldn’t’ve done the same thing, had I been in his shoes? All right, I wouldn’t’ve done the same thing, but that was not the point. I figured the grief and deceit he’d harbored the last decade was punishment enough, and I wasn’t about to lay it on even thicker. He deserved to move on, too.

I hopped right back onto my cloud nine and enjoyed the view, but not for long.

Pulled over on the shoulder up about a quarter of a mile ahead was a gray sedan, its hazard lights ticking out a distress warning.

With my left hand, I turned my blinker on and coasted the truck up to the back of the vehicle, slowing against the dirt on the side of the road. I stepped out of the cab and called out to the driver who was exiting her car at the same time. She appeared young—probably a college student—and pressed herself against the vehicle as a semi rolled past in the slow lane next to her.

“Everything okay?”

“Flat tire!” she yelled over the roar of cars. “Mr. McBride? Is that you?”

“Brittany Carson?” When I got closer, I recognized her as one of my students from my very first year of teaching. “How the heck are you?”

“Well …” She glanced to the offending tire, its air completely gone. “I could be better.”

“Know if you have a spare?”

Brittany walked around to the trunk. “I think so. I’ve never had to use it, but my dad said there was one when I called him.”

“He on his way over?”

She shook her head. “No, he’s at work, but I’m sure I can figure it out.”

“Let’s see if we can figure it out together. For starters, the tire’s probably going to be under the vehicle. The jack is most likely in the trunk. Let’s pop it open and see what we’re working with.”

Brittany’s face when slack with relief. “Thank you so much, Mr. McBride. I had no idea what I was doing and this isn’t exactly the safest spot to pull over. I don’t know why it’s flat. I don’t think I ran over anything.”

I located the jack and dropped it to the ground. “Probably a nail or something, but we’ll take a look. I hate to say it, but I’m glad I just got pulled over, otherwise I wouldn’t have been driving down the road at this time of night to find you.”

“You got pulled over?” she asked. “That totally sucks.”

“It wasn’t so bad. It was actually really great, to be honest.” Brittany gave me a look like maybe I’d just fallen from a tree, but I shrugged it off. I grabbed a crowbar from the toolbox in the trunk and rapped it against my palm. “Let’s see what we can do about turning your evening around, too.”

Mallory

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.”