Chapter 1
CHELSEA
I’d asked for a sign. Instead, I dreamed of darkness.
Everything around me was pitch black, as if I’d woken in the middle of the night underwater.
But I could breathe.
Once, as a kid, we went camping. All five of us kids in a giant 10-man tent while Mom and Dad slept in the tent trailer next to us.
I woke up when something jabbed at my ribs—my brother Jude elbowing me in his sleep—Dad always said Jude slept like a beached trout.
But when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face.
I was so scared, my stomach went fluttery and I cried out to Mom.
I thought I was dead. Mom came for me, wrapped me up in her arms, and sang sweet songs with her face pressed into my hair.
It was good you called for me she said. I didn’t used to.
I used to curl up in silence and terror.
Maybe I was in a tent now, camping with friends? Or maybe that fear had come true. Maybe I was dead; my whole life a dream, and I was eight years old again, in heaven.
I felt the tug of something immeasurably sad on my heart. I blinked as if that would help me see, and somehow it did. Only I opened my eyes to something bad. A man—a good man—pulling me toward him, his face panicked. His features lit up as if in a spotlight, his mouth open.
A terrible, grinding crunch.
Then, more darkness.
There was light now. Low, just pinpricks in the dark, but there. Green and red, flashing and still. A clock, with fuzzy numbers. 2:17AM. I was inside, in a room.
I’d woken up, and I was still breathing. Was this the answer I’d been looking for?
But something wasn’t right.
Muffled voices came from somewhere outside this room; and when I turned, a dull, throbbing pain in my face. I noticed with some confusion that there was someone in a chair next to me, slumped in sleep.
I was in a hospital, I realized. And there was someone keeping vigil beside me. The thought was like a soft hand holding me. Mom used to fall asleep in the chair next to my bed, when I was too scared to sleep alone.
The man was just a shadow in the dark. I had three brothers.
But I knew the shape of them, and this wasn’t one of them.
He was tall; his long legs bent in front of him.
His head was tilted down, hands curled around the armrests.
He shifted. Snored, maybe. His dark hair flopped against a shadowed face I couldn’t see.
I tried to speak, to ask him who he was, but no sound came out.
It didn’t matter; I remembered what it was like to not speak.
I spent years not saying anything at all.
My parents took me to specialists, but no one knew why I wouldn’t speak.
But I remembered you could learn more by not speaking.
So I didn’t try again. I just watched the man, letting myself fall into the comfort of his presence.
I knew he was good. Only someone good would care for me like this.
My eyelids fell, and darkness washed over me. But I was used to the dark, too. I let it swallow me up like a blanket.
The next time I woke up, it was daytime. Voices murmured, and there was a clink of something at the end of this bed.
“I’m fine to stay,” the voice said. It was deep and slightly rumbly, like rocks rolling along the floor of the Quince River. I closed my eyes, letting it wash over me. I knew this voice, but my sluggish mind wouldn’t put together who it was.
“Okay, well, just a few more minutes while I talk to Dr. Lee.”
Cass.
I opened my eyes. Two people walked toward the door. One of them was my big sister Cassandra, and she was walking out of the room. The other looked like… my dad.
That’s when I knew something big must have happened.
To me.
Dad had been gone for almost a year. We didn’t think he was coming back. But there he was, looking older, his shoulders stooped.
Through the fog, my stomach fluttered.
Dad.
I swallowed. I wanted to speak this time, but I couldn’t. Cass! I tried to move, but my hand only fluttered against the blanket.
The hospital blanket.
Then Dad and Cass were gone, out the door.
But the man was still there. He slumped back down and tipped his head back against the chair. It was a move of exhaustion. His face was still turned away from me; but I could see the dark growth on his neck and chin: he needed to shave.
Even from this vantage point I could see he looked so sad, his face a rictus of weary pain.
I was content to just watch him from here, but when he raised his hand to the opposite side of his neck, I realized I knew who he was.
“Seamus,” I said, or I tried to say. All that came out was the first sound: Shhh.
Seamus, my brother Eli’s best friend. Seamus, the quiet, tall guy I’d known as far back as I could think. Seamus, the shadow version of Eli’s big, gregarious presence.
Always there. Always standing a few feet apart.
Or sitting by my bedside.
“Seamus,” I tried again. The word came out slightly slurred, my tongue thick with disuse, but I got the sounds right this time. Shay-muss.
He blinked, registering the sound. Then he jerked his face to me, his eyes going wide.
“Jesus!” He pushed himself up. “Chelsea… you’re… Let me get the nurse. The doctor. Your sister.” He sprang to his feet. “Hey!” he called toward the door.
“Stop,” I said, but my voice was so crumbly; so broken.
I blinked, turning my face to follow him as he rushed across the room, and that’s when a bolt of pure, white-hot pain ripped through my face.
I cried out just as he reached the door.
“Stop!” That word ripped from my throat.
The pain in my face was unbearable; slicing like a knife and expanding into my skull.
He froze, then came back to me, gripping the bedrail. He was tall—so tall.
“I need to get you help,” he said.
“No,” I croaked. The pain was receding, at least a tiny bit.
“Please wait.” I looked at him. He was a good distraction.
His white t-shirt was rumpled but still stretched tight across his broad shoulders.
He wore work pants, the kind you’d hook a hammer into.
He looked strong. I always thought Seamus was skinny; I’d never seen his arms bare before, had I? Not since we were kids.
“Chelsea,” he said. “I have to get someone. You’ve been out for two days…”
Get my mom was the thought I had. I was a 29-year-old woman, and I wanted my mom. But I knew, I knew now. That’s the pain I felt while swimming in the dark; the ache. Mom’s the one I wanted right now. The only one. But she was gone. She died in my arms a year ago.
I sucked in a breath and tipped my face sideways, the pain searing. But I welcomed it now.
“I’ll be right back,” Seamus said.
“Wait,” I said, grasping his hand. It was warm; broad, with a thick vein spread across the back.
He froze.
“Why are you here?”
His face was unreadable for a moment. Then, with a choked voice, he said, “We were in an accident, Chelsea. We were hit by a truck and I thought—”
He swallowed.
I was stunned. The dream—that man, trying desperately to pull me toward him, his face lit up bright. The man trying somehow, impossibly, to protect me, when it was too late. That was Seamus.
That was real.
I let go of his hand. Then, he was gone, his work boots thudding down the hall.
“Try this,” Cass said, angling the straw toward my mouth.
Cassandra was holding a cup of orange juice with an accordion straw, her expression pleading.
She was the oldest of the five of us—together we bookended our three brothers in age—and she often took on the mom role.
Only, she didn’t know how to be a mom—she knew how to be a CEO, so that meant a balance of worrying and providing direction, and I couldn’t take either, not right now.
Not when all I could think about was what they weren’t telling me.
I shook my head. “Cass, please.” But the movement sent searing pain through my face, and renewed heaviness to my guts.
It had been two days since I woke up, and this was what I knew: I was in the hospital because I’d been in a car accident with Seamus Reilly.
He’d given me a ride home, and we’d been t-boned by a drunk driver.
I was unconscious for two nights and three days.
I had lacerations and bruises all over my body as well as a concussion.
But that was it. Miraculously, despite the fact that we rolled, I’d been spared life-threatening injuries.
Seamus, aside from bruising and minor cuts, was okay too.
Not a broken bone between us apparently.
I knew I was lucky to be alive and in as good a shape as I was.
Here’s what I didn’t know: why I was in the car with Seamus Reilly in the first place. Yes, they told me he’d given me a ride home. But how? Seamus and I had never hung out on our own. Not once. It didn’t make any sense. And Seamus hadn’t been back to explain it to me.
But the biggest thing between me and Cass and Dad right now—yes, that had been my father and yes, he’d come back the minute he’d heard about my accident—was my face.
They told me I’d suffered a laceration on my face—that’s why it hurt so much.
They’d told me the cut was deep and ran from my forehead to my cheek. But they wouldn’t let me see it.
Specifically, Cass wouldn’t let me see it. She’d been by my side almost constantly for the past two days, and when she wasn’t here, Dad or one of my three brothers was. But Cass had everyone convinced that it would be too big a shock to see it now.