“Hey,” Bram says to me. “I’m not sure how long you’re staying in New York for but do you want to get a coffee while we wait for James? There’s a good place next door.”
I nod, thinking that’s better than staying in the hospital. The problem is, I have to head back to SF soon to open the store – I can’t afford to close it right now.
As we leave the hospital, I’m wondering if I’ll even get a chance to say goodbye again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
LINDEN
I remember once when I was a wee lass, I’d gone to the stables to help my mother. Well, I wasn’t really helping per se, as I was just hanging around. My nanny had the day off and so my poor mum was relegated to taking care of Bram and I. Boy, we really were a couple of twats. Bram would climb up into the hayloft and jump into the bales below, while I would sneak in and out of every horse’s stall.
This one day, I was following my mum around, like a spy. I knew it annoyed her to have us playing around her when she was trying to work, so I kind of hung around in the background. I remember watching her though, maybe even wondering what was it about the horses that she seemed to like so much more than me.
That day she was fussing over a yearling that she was trying to sell, I think. I remember it being a filly and sometimes I fancied that maybe it would be my horse. My mum seemed to pay that much more attention to it.
When she left to go check on another horse, I went into the filly’s stall. Appleton I think was the name, though now I’m realizing they would have named it after a bottle of rum. But then again, that seems about right.
I was petting the horse, just like my mom had, when Bram dropped somewhere in the barn. It made the filly spook and she ended up bucking out, kicking me right in the head. I was obviously not standing where I was supposed to be.
All I remembered at the time was an explosion of wet fire inside my head and then everything went deep, deep black. I woke up later with a veterinarian peering over me. Apparently it was easier to call him than it was to take me to the hospital.
For most of my life, I thought that was the scariest thing that had ever happened to me. But now, now that’s changed.
Surviving the helicopter crash is the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me. Of course that seems quite obvious. That would be one of the most traumatizing things to ever happen to anyone and luckily it rarely does. But it wasn’t the crash itself that shook me to my bones, nor the actual bones inside me breaking. It had nothing to do with that.
It was after, when I woke up in the hospital, and realized I didn’t have the one person on earth that I needed. I was alone, maybe not physically – thankfully my father and brother were there – but I was alone in my soul. My heart still belonged to someone else and I could have died without ever seeing it, or her, again.
That’s when the loss of the last couple of months, the despair and the change, all came tumbling around me at once, crushing me until I had no choice but surrender to it. Surrender to the loss. Surrender to the shit fucking choices I made.
This was all my fault.
I cried. I really fucking cried for that first night. Everyone thought I was in pain so they kept pumping me more and more full of drugs, but the pain was somewhere they could never reach. The crash was over but I was still breaking, breaking, breaking inside.
All for Stephanie, the woman I lost, the woman I threw away.
And for what? For a better conscience? For pride?
For nothing. It was all for nothing.
Nothing has such a hollow, infinite sound to it.
When Stephanie appeared by my bed, I knew it had to be a dream. There was no way I could just ache and want so much and have it appear the next day. I wasn’t a fucking genie.
But it wasn’t a dream. Was it?
I’m looking at James right now but he’s not the person I want to be looking at. The person I want left me again. The person I want still has my damn heart.
“Was Steph really here?” I ask him, my throat so hoarse and dry it’s like I swallowed sandpaper. The room still spins like I’m in a slow-cycled washing machine, so maybe it really was a dream. How am I to know?
But he nods. “Yeah. She was here.”
Then why am I still in pain?
“Look, I know I’m the last person you want to see,” he says.
I can’t help but frown, even though it hurts my head to do so. “Actually I thought I’d be the last person you’d want to see.” Considering the way things ended between us, I’m shocked he’s even here.
I’m shocked Steph is here too. And then my mind wants to focus on something I hope isn’t true. Are they together now? Did James follow through on his intentions for her? Did she end up falling for him all over again?