Chapter 17 Lex
Lex
“You are not saying a single word until your father gets here.”
My head throbs as I sit partially upright in a hospital bed, staring into space, a dark film clouding my vision.
“Fall back on your head wound,” Mom continues, texting a million miles a minute from the plastic chair beside me. “When the doctor comes back, just say everything is hazy. You’re not lucid.”
Bullshit.
I remember everything. And if I hadn’t passed out at the scene, I would have confessed every sordid detail right there on the spot. Unfortunately, I woke up in this shitty hospital bed twenty minutes ago to my mother interrogating me.
I told her the truth: I fell asleep behind the wheel and almost killed my only friend in the world.
Mom nearly flatlined.
“I knew that girl was trouble.” My mother taps her jeweled stilettos against the linoleum floor as her gaze remains fixed to her phone.
“Luring you to a party, getting intoxicated, demanding you drive her home. I figured you’d have good enough sense to not get involved with her kind.
” She sighs, pink-cheeked and flustered. “Your father will fix this.”
I see red.
Dragon fire burns smoke through my nostrils as my achy chest heaves, and my fists clench to stones at my sides. “Fix this,” I echo, my voice sandpaper raw, a deadly kind of low.
“As long as you keep your mouth shut, yes.”
My eyes slam closed as I clench my jaw. “How is she?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Is she even fucking breathing?”
“I. Don’t. Know.” She punctuates each word. “Her injuries are not my concern. You are my concern. This family is my concern.”
Wretched tears bite at my eyes. Guilt, pain, debilitating sorrow. It’ll be a miracle if Stevie makes it out of this without lifelong injuries.
I need to know how she is. I need to see her.
I rip the IV out of my arm and untangle the mess of cords, launching myself off the hospital bed and doing a one-legged hop out of the room.
Mom whips up from the bedside chair. “Where the hell are you going?”
It’s just a head wound, some bruises, and a busted ankle.
I’m fucking fine.
“Lexington!”
I turn the corner and wind down multiple corridors, holding on to the wall for support. Nurses try to stop me, but I barge through, narrowly focused on finding Stevie’s room.
Mom’s voice pitches behind me. “Get back here! Your father is on the way.”
I ignore her.
When I collapse against the emergency-room desk, a nurse blinks up at me, taking in my half-tied gown and the bloodied bandage around my head. “Um, sir—”
“Stevie St. James. What room is she in?”
“Are you family?”
“I’m her friend.”
She frowns. “Let me call for a nurse. You should really get back to your room before—”
“She’s in here.”
Whipping around, I lock eyes with Stevie’s sister. A sullen dark gaze stares back at me, her eyelids puffy, lashes damp with tears. I swallow. “Can I see her?”
She hesitates.
Then Joplin offers a slight nod before pivoting around and ushering me toward the room down another endless hallway.
When she swipes open the cornflower-blue curtain, two more sets of eyes pan in my direction. Her parents. Her grieving, shell-shocked parents. I stand there, out of breath and out of place as Joplin trudges into the room and sinks down in an empty chair.
I look over at Stevie.
And my heart sinks to the grubby tiles.
Her leg is elevated and wrapped in a bulky splint, the swollen knee beneath it looking painful and unnatural. A bandage, stained dark red, is wrapped around her head, and her complexion is pale and sallow. Tubes and IV lines snake into her arm—more than I had.
But her eyes are open.
She’s awake.
I move closer, every step heavy, as if I’m wading through thick fog. The room is quiet except for the rhythmic beeping of the monitors and the occasional rustle of medical staff in the hallway. And my damn heart. It sounds like a freight train plowing through my chest.
“Hey,” I murmur.
What a stupid fucking thing to say.
Stevie cranes her head in my direction, her eyes glazed over like frosted emeralds. Her bottom lip trembles. I can’t imagine the pain she’s in, the pain I’ve caused.
I blink over to her family members and shake my head.
I don’t even know what to say.
Joplin leans forward in the chair and clears her throat. “A rib fracture. Minor lung contusion. Broken leg. Crushed knee.” She lists off the injuries, her words cracking. “Concussion, bruising, surface wounds. By all accounts, it could have been a whole lot worse.”
Numbness digs deep into my bones as I swivel back to Stevie.
She stares up at the ceiling, and a tear slips loose from the corner of her eye.
“Stevie…” I cup a hand over my jaw, then drag it up through my hair and squeeze the strands as I hold my weight up on one leg. All the weight. Every weight.
I’m still trying to think of something to say when chaos unleashes.
“Where the fuck is he?”
My father’s voice booms through the hallway, icing my veins. A second later, he charges through the curtain, a pair of cops rushing in behind him.
Mom hollers his name from behind, trying to catch up on her fifty-inch heels. “Mortimer!”
“Sir, you can’t be in here—”
“I’m an attorney,” he snaps, ripping free from the officer’s grip. Then my father whirls me around by my gown and yanks me to his chest. “What the fuck did you do?”
Every bone in my body shrieks in agony. My vision blurs. His spit mists my face as he bares his teeth at me, shaking me with explosive force. I sag like a sock puppet as he grips my thin gown in a meaty fist, tugging me an inch away from his nose.
Two officers pull him off me, and I wobble backward, catching myself on something. On someone.
Stevie’s father.
He holds me up by my armpits before I can plummet to the floor. “Get him out of here,” he orders, curling his forearm across my chest for leverage.
“Don’t touch me,” Dad demands, grappling with the cops. “I said I’m a goddamn attorney. That’s my client.” Then he stabs his finger in my direction, his stone-blue eyes saying all they need to say. “You’re done.”
My throat locks up. I know he’s serious.
I’m fucking done.
I won’t be surprised if I’m removed from my house in a body bag by sunrise.
I’m trying to regain my balance as the officer ushers my father out of the room when a voice breaks through the havoc.
Her voice.
“He didn’t do anything,” Stevie croaks out, her words strangled. “I was driving.”
I almost don’t hear her. I don’t think I hear her.
Not correctly. Maybe not at all.
I wiggle myself free from her father’s hold and fight for steadiness, glancing at Stevie as she avoids my gaze, her eyes glued to the paneled ceiling.
An officer steps back into the room while the other deals with my father.
No.
What the hell is she doing?
My wide eyes film over, turning glassy. My mother materializes beside me like an unwanted ghost and presses her hand to my shoulder. Squeezes. I hardly feel it. All I hear are those words, those untrue, awful words. “Stevie, don’t—”
“I was driving,” she repeats, slowly twisting to look at the officer. “It was my fault.”
“No. Fuck, no, I was—”
My mother digs her nails into my shoulder. “Lexington, it’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. She wasn’t fucking—”
“I was,” Stevie interjects. “I know you’re just trying to protect me, Lex.” She still won’t look at me. “I was drinking. It was a horrible mistake.”
“ Stevie .” Her mother gasps out her name in a breath of anguish as she flies off the chair. “Honey…no. Please, no.”
Stevie’s eyes fall shut, more tears leaking through and lining her cheeks with misery. “I’m so sorry.”
Everything around me blackens. Whitens. I can’t tell. It’s all a blur, a colorless void of disbelief.
My father’s shadow looms outside the curtain.
Mom’s hand tightens on my shoulder, her fingernails angry skewers.
I look back over to Stevie.
I say nothing.
I’m numb.
A cowardly waste of space.
Our eyes meet for a stopped breath, and we hold, something passing between us, something that sneaks inside my soul and rots it from the inside out.
I’ve lost her.
No more piano chords to mend my restless heart. No more rooftops, hand-holding, or catnaps beneath her walnut tree.
No more comfort. No more music.
In this moment, it’s clear—she’ll never sing to me again.