Chapter 15
Fifteen
FELIX
A my is hovering as I scramble out of bed, ignoring her barrage of questions. I topple to the floor as I try to work my legs into my jeans, but I'm too frantic and still half-drunk.
Fuck pants.
I snag a pair of shorts from a drawer and pull them on while still on the floor, then stagger to my feet.
"FELIX!" Amy shouts, grabbing my shoulders. "What the fuck is happening?”
I wrench out of her grip, stumbling unsteadily away from her. "She needs help! I don't fucking know. I don't fucking know."
She shoves past me and pushes on my bare chest. "Stop! You can not drive like this, Fee."
"Fuck, fuck— FUCK !" I stab at my phone's screen until Riley's name appears and the burble of the ringing line emits from the speaker.
"'Lo? Fee? Whazzit? Whazzwrong?"
"Ember—Ember," I choke out. "Texted help. I'm too drunk to drive. Please fucking tell me you can drive."
He’s instantly awake and alert. “Yeah, I'm good, I'm good. You’re at home?"
"Yes."
"Be there in less than five, brother. I'm coming."
Amy vanished while I was talking to Riley, and now she reappears with a T-shirt which she shoves unceremoniously over my head and guides my arms through the sleeves. She vanishes again and reappears with my running shoes, a ratty pair of white New Balance sneakers that I’ve had for years—they're green from being worn while cutting grass, and they're knotted and sagging open from shoving my feet into them without untying them.
I slam my feet into them, and then peer at Amy. "Thanks," I mutter.
"Fee, I—" her eyes are scared, worried.
My gut tells me something is terribly, terribly wrong, and I'm panicking and terrified and angry.
"A couple months ago, I'd have…" I shake my head. "I'd have thought I still loved you."
"Fee—"
I hear tires screech in the distance, and I make for the front door, phone gripped in my hand in case she texts again or calls.
"Guilt and regret aren't love." I scrub at my face with one hand, trying to push sobriety into my brain. "I don't love you. I did, back then. But I fucked up. Maybe it was my fault, maybe it wasn't. Dunno. But we can't get that back, Amy. We can't get back there."
"Fee, we can. Not back there, maybe, but somewhere new."
I shake my head. “No. Because you're not her."
Riley's headlights stab the darkness out front of my house, and he skids to a stop. I jog out the front door, leave it open, leave Amy standing alone in my living room, staring after me with tears in her eyes.
Riley leans across his cab and shoves the passenger door open. I hop in and slam it closed.
"Where is she?" he asks.
"I don't know. I don’t know. She's not sharing her location with me."
He's pulling away from the curb with a bark of tires, and within seconds we're out of the neighborhood and onto Main Street heading north.
"I already called Cole," Riley says. "Brian is picking him up and they’ve got units looking for her. What happened?" He glances at me. "Was that—?"
"Amy."
"No fucking way," he breathes. "What in the actual unholy motherfuck is she doing in your house at four in the goddamn morning?"
Nauseous, I roll my window down, inhaling the fresh air.
Nope.
Bile stains my teeth, presses against them—I lean out the window and let it rip, spewing backward until my stomach is empty.
"Ah, Jesus, bro," Riley grumbles. "At least you did it out the window." When I pull my head back in, wiping my lips with the back of my wrist, he grips my shoulder. “What the fuck is Amy doing in your house?"
I shake my head. "She was just…there. I thought it was a dream at first. She split from her husband and came up here to find me. Drove by, according to her, and saw my door wide open and came in to check that I was okay." Another wave of vomiting hits, and I barely get it out the window in time. "Fuck, I'm never drinking with you assholes again. This shit was fun when we were nineteen or twenty, but it's not fucking fun anymore."
"Hear that," he mutters. "So…what? What happened?"
"She—" I shake my head. "Find Ember. I can't think about Amy right now."
“Okay, but we have no idea where she went."
"North, at a guess." I scrub my face again—vomiting helps a little. I feel less woozy and not as intoxicated. "Ember came home and saw Amy sitting on my bed, trying to—I stopped her. Before I knew Ember was there, I told her no. It didn't—it wasn't right. I didn't want her. But Ember saw and—"
"Made an assumption and bolted."
"Right." I check my phone—my last message to her is unread. "And then a few minutes later I got a text from her—the word ‘help’ spelled out in individual texts."
I show him and he glances at it. "That's weird."
"Something is wrong, Rye," I whisper. "She's hurt. We have to find her.”
"We'll find her, bro."
"She has to be alive," I breathe. "She has to. I fucking love her."
Riley's gaze cuts to me. "No shit?"
"Her thinking I was doing something with Amy, and then this fucking terror that she's gone, or hurt, or—or—" I shake my head, fighting hyperventilation. "It was Cassie's fault. Not mine. I was drunk. Amy watched the whole but didn't realize how fucking gone I was. She thought I was just hooking up with Cassie fucking Miller. She took off and never gave me a chance to explain. Blocked my number, told her parents not to let me in, refused to see me, refused to speak to me, refused to hear a single fucking goddamn syllable of explanation."
I smash my fist into Riley's dashboard, denting the airbag cover and probably breaking something in my hand.
Riley grabs my wrist. "Hey, whoa, fucking Jesus, bro, cut that shit out!"
"Cassie just…took what she wanted. I guarantee she knew how fucking wasted I was. I couldn’t sit up. I'm pretty sure I was lying in a puddle of my own goddamn vomit." I tip my head back, face covered with my palms, and groan. "She jerked me off till I was hard, climbed on, and fucked me. I was too hammered to say anything—yes, no, or otherwise."
Riley claps a hand on my arm, frowning at me. "You never said much about what actually happened. We all heard the rumors, you know? People talking about seeing you and Cassie fucking. But you never confirmed or denied anything, you just…"
"I was focused first on Amy, on trying to get her to hear me out, and when she wouldn't, I…" I shrug. "I tried to move on. But I always harbored this…guilt. I felt like I'd fucked up. Like I'd…" Words won't come. "Like I should have been able to stop her. To say no. Or not get so drunk I couldn't. I dunno. She just—Amy left without a single fucking word to me, and I…I took on the guilt. I've lived with that guilt for almost fifteen fucking years."
"Fee, brother," Riley grabs my hand. "What happened? What Cassie did? That's called rape, man."
I shake my head. "I don't know how to apply that word to myself."
"Start with telling yourself that it wasn't your fault. You didn't do anything wrong." He squeezes my hand. "Try to—I dunno, man, I'm not a fuckin' therapist. Just…it's not your fault."
"She apologized," I mutter. "Amy. For leaving. For not hearing me out. She told me…she told me she thought about me every time she and her husband had sex."
Fee makes a face. "I dunno how I'd feel about that."
"Me either," I say.
We're well out of downtown Three Rivers by now, past the streetlamps and into the dark ribbon of highway running parallel to the lake. Mile after mile, my stomach tightens and my sense of impending doom ratchets to higher and more panicky levels. I can't breathe. My stomach is in knots.
"Ohhhh… fuck ," Riley breathes.
My gaze snaps forward—red and blue lights wash the night sky in orbiting flashes. Flares burn red, shedding ghostly, nightmarish light on the scene.
Squad cars. A fire engine. An ambulance.
Riley skids to a stop a few feet away from the uniformed deputy assigned to deal with traffic. I leap out of the truck before it's stopped, lurching, hitting blacktop and rolling, staggering to my feet. The deputy tries to stop me, but I shove him aside.
"FELIX!" I hear a voice in my ear, hands pulling me backward. "We've got her, brother, we've got her."
"LET ME FUCKING GO!" I scream, fighting the many strong hands holding me back from getting to Ember.
Cole's voice is in my ear, quiet, stern, compassionate. "She's alive, Fee. Stand down and let them do their job."
"I have to see her. I have to—I have to—"
He walks me backward, his hands bruisingly powerful on my arms, his forehead against mine. Riley is behind me, both arms around my midsection. Together, they haul me away.
"She's alive, Felix. They're extricating her right now." His tone is the calm stolidity of a professional law enforcement officer—this is not my best buddy, this is the sheriff. "She's hurt pretty bad, but she's alive."
I hear the buzzing screech of a saw on metal, voices chattering and snapping orders. I can't breathe—it's my fault.
It’s my fault. Everything is my fault.
"No, it's fucking not, Fee," Riley growls in my ear. "It was an accident. It's not your fault. Don't take this on yourself."
"I should've stopped her. Should've—I should've sent Amy away. This shouldn't've happened."
Cole reappears in front of me, ducking to make sure I meet his gaze. "They've got her out. You're gonna ride in the bus with her but only if you can keep your shit under control."
“Okay, okay, I—"
He grabs my head. "Felix. Fucking listen to me."
I'm dazed. Trying to breathe and failing. "What."
"Sit next to her and hold her hand. Talk to her. But do not interfere. They have to work on her."
"Work…work on her?" I blink, trying to make sense of what's happening.
"She's in pretty bad shape," Cole says. "Unconscious, broken bones, I don't know. Critical condition. So prepare yourself, okay? If you can't keep calm, they're gonna sedate you and you'll miss shit. So stay fucking calm , Felix. You hear me? She's alive—focus on that."
For the first time since arriving on scene, I look at Cole—notice him. He’s wearing his sheriff department button-down open over a plain white tee with ratty, torn blue jeans and knee-high rubber boots, no equipment belt. His eyes are bloodshot, and he has circles under his eyes.
"How are you functioning, Cole?" I ask.
"Wasn't as drunk as you, for one. Years of practice going from asleep to dealing with an emergency for another."
Swallowing hard, I wrap him in a hug. "Grateful for you, brother."
Cole slaps me on the back. "Had your back since pre-K, motherfucker." He pulls back, shakes me. "I've fuckin' got you, Fee. Always."
Fucking fuck—my eyes burn. I pull away, growling. "Cole, I—"
He spins me in place and pushes me toward the ambulance, where two medics are lifting the stretcher into the back of the vehicle. "Shut up and go be with your girl, Fee. I'll see you at the hospital."
I spot Riley hovering at the edge of everything, staying out of the way and watching. "RYE!"
I'm an emotional wreck. As he jogs over, my throat is closing, and my eyes are burning. I shove it all back down savagely, shaking my head.
The medics are busy inside the ambulance, securing, hooking up lines.
Riley pushes me toward the bus, forcing me to climb up and in. "Shut the fuck up and go, dude, Jesus. I'll see you there."
He slams the doors closed behind me, slapping the glass with his palm. I press mine to his, and then the ambulance pulls away. His palm leaves a clear handprint on the glass.
The medic in back with me is a microscopic woman with jet black hair bound back in a tight braid, the long part of the braid coiled at the back of her head and fixed in place by some sort of girl magic. I recognize her—she's the same medic who patched up Bear after that shitshow with Duane. She's stunningly beautiful, with angular features, big, bright blue eyes contrasting with her dark hair, and a Julia Roberts-esque mouth.
She's injecting something into the IV, and then prodding gently at Ember's ribcage—they've cut her clothes off completely, the scraps laying open to either side. I can see that she's got at least one broken leg, but the medic doesn't seem concerned with that. She's focusing on Ember's ribs, prodding here and there on both sides, listening to her breathing with a stethoscope that she hangs around her neck when done.
The ambulance is howling, racing south toward town. I sit at the back edge on the right side, shaking all over, barely breathing. Ember is covered in blood—the whole left side of her face is a crimson mask, and it's all down her arms, neck, and chest. She's covered in a myriad of tiny cuts.
The medic glances at me. "You can hold her hand, Mr. Crowe."
I slide down the bench until I'm within reach of Ember, and gently, gingerly fit my hand under hers. "Em, honey. I'm here." I look at the medic. "Can—can she hear me?"
Without looking away from what she's doing—swabbing something orange-ish over the side of Ember’s ribcage on her left side—she shrugs. "Dunno for sure, but I've always thought so. Can't hurt to talk to her." She glances over her shoulder at the driver. "Hold it steady, Mike. She's got a punctured lung. Need to aspirate it."
"We're five minutes from the hospital, Chels," Mike says, "better to wait."
"I don't know if she has five minutes. She was there for several minutes with an untreated pneumothorax. She can't breathe."
"Fuck. Fine." Mike glances back at me. "Stay cool, man. It's gonna be scary, but Chelsea is the fucking best."
“O-okay. Just—just save her."
"That's the plan, my man," Chelsea says, not looking at me as she readies a giant needle. "Beginning needle aspiration.”
She presses her fingertips along Ember's ribs, finding a specific location and marking it with a gloved fingertip—she slides the needle between Ember's ribs and removes part of the syringe or whatever the hell the thing is. There's an immediate hiss of escaping air, and Ember's chest noticeably deflates—she unconsciously sucks in a desperate, gasping breath, and her breathing normalizes to a degree. Chelsea then secures the needle-thing in place.
"There, done," she says.
"Is she okay now?" I ask.
She glances at me. "She's not out of the woods, no. She’s got a fractured skull, but her pupils are equal and reactive, so I'm hopeful she's avoided major TBI."
I shake my head. "I—I'm sorry, I don't—"
"She hit her head really hard," Chelsea says, rephrasing, "but I'm pretty optimistic that she won't have any lasting brain issues. She's got the collapsed lung and a tibia fracture. Lots of minor cuts and bruises, but the skull fracture and collapsed lungs are the major concerns."
"Just hang on for me, Ember," I whisper. “I’m here."
A few minutes later, we're pulling up to the ER of Three Rivers Medical Center, where a renewed flurry of activity takes over. Hospital nurses yank open the ambulance doors, and Chelsea immediately starts barking out medical jargon that I don't follow—she's covered Ember from the neck down with a white sheet that sticks to her skin where she's bloody. The nurses hurry the stretcher into the hospital while listening to Chelsea's report—I follow them, walking beside the stretcher with Ember's hand in mine. They bring her to the curtained-off section of a room—the ER is bustling and noisy—children are crying, someone is moaning, someone else is shouting, things are beeping and hissing, doors open and close, shoes squeak on tile.
As soon as she's in place, a cluster of nurses and a white-coated doctor surround Ember, pushing me out of the way.
The doctor, examining Chelsea's needle insertion, glances at me. "You're her husband?"
"Um—n-no. I—I'm her…boyfriend, I guess," I answer.
"Then you need to wait in the waiting room. Family only."
"She doesn't have family," I snap. "I'm all she's got."
"No parents, siblings, aunts—no one?"
"No, no one. Just me."
He points to the corner of the curtained room. "Stand there and stay out of the way."
I move to the indicated corner and stay out of the way, watching as they work on her. I don't follow most of what they do, but they work on her for what seems like a long time. They tend to her head, set her leg, replace the needle in her ribs with a large clear tube, and then go over her whole body thoroughly, checking her pupils, listening to her breathing, connecting wires and patches and a heart monitor on her finger.
Eventually, the chaotic flurry of attention stops and the nurses scatter to tend to other emergencies. The doctor, a good-looking man in his late forties with salt and pepper hair, strips off his bloody rubber gloves and washes his hands, addressing me while drying them.
"Mr. Crowe, your girlfriend is stable."
I exhale a sigh of relief. "What about her head?"
“Well, her pupils are equal and reactive, but she's still unconscious, so it's hard to say. We've got her scheduled for an MRI. Ortho will be here at some point soon to put a cast on her leg."
"Her lungs?"
"They'll re-inflate on their own. The puncture was small enough that it’ll resolve without surgical intervention. We'll leave the tube in for a few days, but for right now, the biggest question mark is her brain. Once we get the MRI results back, we'll know more." He glances at a cell phone, and then at me. "I have to go. For now, just sit tight. They should be here within an hour or two to take her back for the scan."
"Thank you, Doctor," I say, moving to the hard plastic chair in the corner.
He nods, offers me a brief professional smile and then bustles out, yanking the curtain across the opening to provide us with some measure of privacy.
I move the chair closer to the bed and take her hand. Kiss the back of it, not caring about the dried blood. "I'm here, Ember. You're gonna be okay."
I'm hoping for a hand squeeze or something, but there's nothing. Just the beep and hiss of machines and the chaos on the other side of the curtain.
I rest my cheek on her hand, and I'm lulled into sleep by the steady beep of the heart monitor.
* * *
Groggily, I follow the gray scrub-wearing orderly or nurse or whatever as he pushes Ember's bed through the maze of hospital corridors, into an elevator and up several floors—confusingly, when we emerge from the elevator, we're only a floor two above ground level despite having gone up several levels.
I wait on the other side of a wall of windows as Ember is moved to a machine that retracts her inside it. There's a lot of clanking and banging for a long time. The nurse moves her back to the bed and then it's back to the room.
More waiting.
* * *
"Mr. Crowe?"
I blink awake—my first instinct is to look at Ember. She's still asleep—or comatose.
I peer at the nurse. "Mmm?"
"We're here to put a cast on Ms. James."
"Okay."
It's a strange, complicated procedure. When they're done, she has a cast up to her hip on her left leg. As this is finishing up, the doctor returns with an iPad in one hand and a small paper cup of coffee in the other. "MRI results are back," he says, setting his coffee down beside the sink.
My heart palpitates. "Okay, and? Is she okay?"
He shows me the iPad screen and I recognize the shape of the brain, but the images otherwise mean nothing to me. "There are no signs of damage to the brain tissue. She's very, very lucky."
"But she's still unconscious."
He nods, sighing. "Yes. It's her body's way of helping her heal. She suffered what we call a moderate TBI—a moderate traumatic brain injury. With these kinds of injuries, it's not uncommon for the individual to remain unconscious for up to twenty-four hours. But from what we can see here, there's every reason she should wake up without any deficiencies."
I frown. "Deficiencies?"
"Well, it's her brain, Mr. Crowe." He takes a sip of coffee, lifting it afterward. "My apologies for this, but I'm at the end of a thirty-hour shift."
I pull a shocked face. "Damn, that's a long shift."
He shrugs. "Emergency medicine." He sets the cup down. "Deficiencies can mean any number of things and come with more severe injuries. Mood swings, personality changes, sensitivity to noise and lights, cognitive difficulties, memory loss, the list is long. But as I said, I don't foresee Ms. James experiencing too much of this. That said, however, the human brain is the most mysterious and complicated organ in the human body, so until she wakes up there's just no way to know."
"More wait and see, then," I say with a sigh.
He gives me a sympathetic look. "Unfortunately, yes. I know you've been here for a while, and I know those chairs suck. We are going to admit her to keep her under observation for a few days at very least, so we'll get you sent up to a room, at which point you can bring your visitors in."
"Visitors?"
He blinks at me. "Uh, yeah. There's a good half-dozen people out there asking for updates."
"Fuck, I—I forgot. I've been focused on her and then I fell asleep."
He smiles. "A nurse informed them about—" he checks a wristwatch worn against the underside of his wrist, "thirty minutes or so ago that there should be news soon. We'll get her admitted and moved in the next few minutes and you can go talk to your people."
My people.
"Thank you, Doc."
He nods, whacks my knee gently with the iPad. "There are better options for sleeping up there, so hang in there, alright, bud? Your girl will be okay. I mean, she's got a pretty long recovery ahead of her, but with the right support, she'll come through it just fine." He stands up. "Alright. Well, on that note, I’m out of here. I'll be back on in a couple days. I'll try to come check on her. Take care."
"You too."
“The next few minutes” turns out to be forty-five minutes. I make sure to memorize the route from the ER to her room, and once she's settled, I head back down to the ER waiting room.
I find Riley, Nyx, Cole, Bear, Noelle, Amy, and, oddly enough, Layla and Lainey Cartwright—owners of The Alt Cafe—all clustered in chairs together. Cole and Nyx are huddled together watching something on Nyx's phone, Riley is asleep with his head on Bear's mammoth shoulder—Noelle is asleep on his other shoulder, and Bear is reading a dog-eared paperback.
Amy is the first to spot me coming. "Felix!"
She shoots to her feet and scurries over to me, reaching for me—she stops herself at the last second. "Is—is she okay? They wouldn't tell us anything."
I don't know how to handle Amy. For a minute, I just stare at her, trying to form words, or even coherent thoughts. Behind her, I see Riley jerk awake and sit up, wipe at his mouth with his sleeve, and stare at Bear's shoulder as if it offended him somehow. Bear's lips twitch in a smirk, but he doesn’t otherwise react—saving Riley's dignity. In moments, I'm surrounded and being peppered with questions.
Bear's voice pierces the barrage with a low but powerful snap. "Yo! Let the man speak."
"Um. Sorry I didn't come out earlier, I—" I sigh, shake my head. "She's okay. I mean, relatively speaking. She has a moderate TBI and she's still unconscious. They don't think there will be any lasting brain issues, though. She also had a collapsed lung and a broken leg."
Amy turns away, shuddering as she tries to contain some powerful emotion.
I have no space in my brain to deal with her right now.
Riley moves beside me and wraps an arm around my shoulders. "What can we do?"
I swallow, shake my head, shrug. "Dunno. She's still unconscious and she's been admitted upstairs. If you wanna visit her, you can, but we've got no way of knowing when she'll wake up." I look at the Cartwright sisters. "I didn't know you two knew Ember."
Layla, the older sister with shoulder-length black hair, smiles sweetly. "She's been coming into The Alt to study for months. She's a darling and we just adore her."
I blink. "Studying? For what? She hasn't mentioned that to me."
The other sister, Lainey—the younger one, her hair cut razor-straight at her chin—smirks at me. "She's taking online courses to become a vet."
I scrub my face, wondering how I possibly could have missed this about her. "Oh."
"Yeah, she took her final not long before she went to LA," Layla adds.
"Haven't spent a lot of time talking, huh?" Lainey says, grinning and wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.
I roll my eyes at her—the Cartwright sisters are sandwiched around me in age—Layla is older by a year and graduated before me, and Lainey is a year younger and graduated a year after me; I know them, but not well enough that I'd expect this kind of teasing, especially in this situation. "We’ve talked plenty, Lainey. She just…never mentioned it."
She claps a hand over her chest, feigning shock. "Felix Crowe knows my name? Holy shit."
Layla elbows her. "Lane. Not the time, not the place."
Lainey rolls her eyes. "Whatever. I'm just lightening the mood."
I send Layla an appreciative smile—I've got no problem with Lainey's humor, I'm just not in a place to laugh. Sighing, I address the group. "I appreciate you all being here. I'm not sure there's much point in hanging around right now, though. The doc said she could be unconscious for up to twenty-four hours. Hopefully less. I guess for now just head home and I’ll let everyone know when she's awake and ready to see people."
Nyx claps me on the back. "I never met the girl, man—I'm just here for you." He squeezes my shoulder. "I popped by the salvage yard on my way here and checked out your FJ, by the way. They had to cut the roof away to get her out, and it's mangled to hell and gone."
I wave a hand. "Least of my concerns, Nyxie."
He grins at me. "Wasn't finished, bro. I can totally fix it. It'll just be…permanently topless."
"Like your bartender girlfriend?” Riley teases.
Nyx gives him a no-look middle finger. "Fuck off. Barbie is not my girlfriend. We're just friends with benefits. And she's not permanently topless."
"Those tops she wears barely count, man."
Nyx smirks at him. "You're just jealous that I get to play with those F-cups and you don't."
Riley splutters. "F? Jesus."
Noelle cups her own breasts, looking down at them in shock. "And here I thought I was well-endowed. My god, does she wear a back brace?"
Lainey snickers, glancing at Layla. “Each one has to be bigger than both of ours combined."
"Her name is Barbie?" Cole says. "For real?"
"Barbara Yanetti," Nyx says. "She's talked about a reduction, but she never does because she's worried she'll get tipped less."
"That's fucked up," Layla says.
"Like for real," Lainey adds. "That's the most sexist bullshit I’ve heard in a long time. I need to have a chat with the poor woman."
Nyx chuckles. "Go for it."
"You'd be okay with her getting a reduction?” Lainey asks.
Nyx shrugs. "Not my body, first of all. Second, she's not even my girlfriend so it's not like I get a vote anyway. And third, even if she was my girlfriend or whatever, yes, I would be. If it would make her life easier, she should do it." He arches an eyebrow at her. "What, you think the only reason I hook up with her is her tits? She's a great girl. Funny as fuck, laid back, easy to talk to."
Lainey shrugs. "Not a wild leap of logic, Nyx." She arches an eyebrow. “If she's so great, why is she just a friend with benefits and not a girlfriend?"
He rolls a shoulder. “We’ve talked about it, but neither of us is looking for a relationship right now, and we agreed we wouldn't make a good couple anyway. We fight a lot. If we lived together, it'd get volatile."
“You gonna keep seeing her if you ever do date anyone?" Lainey asks.
Nyx gives her a puzzled look. "What is this, Lainey? An inquisition? No, I would not. We both agreed a long fuckin' time ago that if and when one of us starts seeing someone seriously, we'd cut off all contact. We've both been cheated on."
I shake my head, throwing up my hands. "As interesting as all this is, I need to get back to Ember's room."
"Mind if I tag along?" Riley asks.
"Nah, 'course not," I answer. I turn to Cole. "I just wanna—"
He stops me with an uplifted hand. "Nope. Just doing my job. I'm here as your best friend. You'd be here if the situation was reversed."
Nyx shoves Cole playfully. "Hey now, asshole, I'm his best friend."
"You're both my best friends," I say, cutting off a thirty-year-old argument before it can start. "Jesus. When will you two let that shit go?"
Cole shoves Nyx. "Who are you callin' an asshole, asshole?"
I shake my head and sigh, leaning in to give Bear a quick hug. "Appreciate you guys being here." I hug Noelle next. "For real. Means a lot."
Noelle pulls back from the hug and rubs her hands up and down my arms, offering me a supportive smile. "We're here for you, Felix."
Bear nods his agreement. "I got things handled at work, Boss. Take time."
Riley leans in, stage-whispering. " We have things handled."
"Call me if you need anything," I tell Bear. "Yeah?"
"Course I will," he rumbles. "Go be with your girl."
Everyone except Riley and Amy files out of the ER, then. I hesitate, glancing at Amy. She swallows hard, looking physically ill.
"Fee," she whispers. "I'm so sorry."
My throat goes tight. "Amy, I…" I sigh, rub my face. "I don't know what to say, to be honest. I'm a fuckin' mess right now."
She licks her lips. "It's obvious you and me are…we're not—"
"Maybe we can talk another time," I suggest. "After things have settled. I dunno what's the future for either of us, but I do know we got some shit to talk through. At the very least, so we both get closure."
She nods, eyes watering. "Not why I came up here, I'll admit, but…" She attempts a brave smile, lower lip trembling. "We'll talk later. By Fee. Good to see you again, Rye."
Riley nods. "Yeah, you too, Aim." When she's gone, he shakes his head. "Haven’t seen her in almost fifteen years and we're Rye and Aim again? Like she didn't fuckin' ghost you and ruin your fuckin' life over somethin' you were a fuckin' victim in?"
"Rye," I say, letting out a groan. "I can't hold onto that shit anymore. I've been angry and guilty for a decade and a half. I wanna be over it."
He hooks his arm around my shoulders and shakes me gently. "About goddamn time." He guides me toward the elevator. "Let's go see your girl. You can tell me what the fuck happened with you and Amy."