Chapter Twenty-One #2
“His arm is broken and his wrist is fractured,” the nurse explained, checking one of the machines Dex was hooked up to.
I drifted over to the bed, running my hand up his shoulder and into his hair.
He leaned into me at once. “He’ll have the cast for six to eight weeks.
All in all, he’s incredibly lucky. People have died falling from that lookout. ”
My blood went cold. Dex hummed something that sounded like “Call Me Maybe” into my shoulder.
“But he’s okay?” Phoebe asked. “Nothing permanent? No concussion?”
“He’s fine.” The nurse smiled. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to check the heart monitor. If it’s still normal, you guys will be all set to go.”
“What if it’s not normal?” I asked, eyes wide.
“It’s protocol. I promise you, he is just fine.”
I sank onto the edge of the cot, pressed against Dex, letting his scent overtake everything else. “Are you okay?” I murmured, combing my fingers through his hair. He nodded against me. “Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore.”
“Morphine?” Phoebe guessed. Dex chuckled.
“More like. More please.”
She guffawed. “This is so fun. Let’s ask him personal questions and see if he’s high enough to answer. Hey, Dex, why do you have so much money?”
“Menace,” he muttered, pulling away from me. “You’re a bad person. Taking advantage of someone who just risked their life to save yours.”
“I wouldn’t have died,” she said, waving this off. “Probably.”
I rubbed a hand down my face. “Did you guys know it’s one o’clock? This has been the longest day of my life and it’s nowhere near done.”
“Where’s the closest hotel?” Dex asked. “We’ll check in. I’ll sleep until tomorrow and you guys can grab dinner or something.”
“We can’t leave you alone when you’re this high.”
“I’ve been higher.”
Phoebe’s eyes lit up. I cut in before she could pounce. “I already checked nearby hotels. There’s a Holiday Inn down the road, but you’re not a Holiday Inn guy,” I said, at which he grimaced, confirming this. “There’s a cool lodge not too far from here. I think you’ll like it.”
“You know what I just realized?” Phoebe said. “This was Dex’s detour. Nice one, man!”
“I’ll kill you,” he replied and she fell over laughing. I kept brushing my fingers through Dex’s hair, listening to the sound of Phoebe’s laughter. For the first time in hours, the tidal wave of my mind shrank to ripples.
Three things: Them, them, them.
The nurse returned. As predicted, Dex’s heart rhythm was normal, so he was given the okay to leave. He wobbled on his feet and I held his arm, steadying him. Phoebe snapped a photo.
“Christ,” he muttered. I bit my lip in a small smile. “Can we go? I’m sick of this place.”
“Do you have everything?” I asked.
He rubbed his eyes. “Uh. My shirt and stuff is in that chair.”
I made sure he was steady before grabbing his crumpled shirt from the wooden rocker in the corner. Phoebe bounced on her heels, poking Dex’s elbow. “How long do you think we’re staying? Because there’s a sushi place not far from here—”
“You want to eat sushi in a landlocked state? Do you have a death wish?”
I shook the shirt out so I could fold it and his wallet, car keys, and a card flew out, clattering at my feet.
I bent to pick them up, Dex’s unsmiling face staring back at me, and I grinned at how predictable his license photo was, as if it was such a nuisance to take. As I stood, my eyes stuck on the name.
August William Dexter.
“I’ll take you to a great sushi place when we get back to Boston,” Dex said.
“Does it have a conveyor belt?” Phoebe asked.
“No.”
“Pass.”
I stared at the name, waiting for it to break apart and reconstruct into what I knew to be true.
His name was Benji. He hated it, so he went by Dex.
I shut my eyes, breathing hard, remembering the disgust in his eyes when I asked if he was Benji Dexter.
He’d never answered, I realized. The only other time I used that name, he’d said Don’t call me that.
“Can I sign your cast?” Phoebe asked, inspecting Dex’s arm closely. He nodded, hair flopping over his forehead.
“Sure.”
I could’ve been standing on that cliffside, watching Phoebe and Dex spill over. A visceral sucker punch and the paralysis that followed. A solid beat of nothing.
“What color? I have markers in the car. Ooh! I have stickers too!”
“You’re not putting stickers on my cast.”
The world ebbing back into focus. Something huge and sharp clawed its way out from inside my chest.
Phoebe’s voice sounded farther away, almost like an echo. “Please?”
My hand shook as I inspected the license for a mistake. Dex’s sour face and a name that didn’t belong to him. I had slept beside this man. I had woken up with him. I had no idea who he was.
“What kind of stickers?” Dex asked. Phoebe let out a maniacal laugh and snatched the keys from my shaking hand, bolting down the hallway. He turned to me. “Well, that’s not a great sign. Are you… Vi? What’s wrong?”
“What, um…” I blinked hard, brandishing his license, watching the color drain from his face. “Is your name August?”
He lifted his hand and immediately dropped it back to his side, squirming as if he’d forgotten how to stand. “Violet.”
I tried to take a steady breath but it was more like a gasp. “What the hell is going on?”
He walked backward until his knees hit the bed and he sank down, dropping his head into his hand. “I can’t believe this is happening when I’m on morphine,” he moaned.
“Dex.” I blinked hard, trying to right this topsy-turvy universe I’d stumbled into.
“I’m coming up with a lot of scary scenarios in my head, so I need you to talk.
Tell me I’m being ridiculous. Tell me something.
” My mind grasped for logical explanations.
“Sometimes a zebra is a horse, right? So, Benji’s a nickname.
That’s why there’s no record of you online. ”
He looked at me, eyes swimming in misery. “Violet.”
“It’s either that or you’re some kind of con man. Is that why you have so much money? You’re a criminal mastermind?” My fingers tightened around the soft fabric of his rumpled shirt. “Maybe Catalina has no idea who you are. Maybe nobody does.”
“Violet,” he said, clearer now, as if I’d shocked the morphine out of his system. “My name is August. Benji is my brother. He died a year and a half ago.”
I sat down on the floor, burying my face in a shirt that smelled like Dex, only he wasn’t Dex. Everything was upside down.
“I was going to tell you,” he said. “I tried. I just—I don’t talk about him. It’s too much. He was my best friend and I’m still so fucking lost. I was going to tell you before we got to Bend.”
“I don’t understand.” My voice came out soft, muffled by the shirt.
“Cat was the love of Benji’s life.” He was breathing hard.
I could tell he hated this, but I didn’t tell him it was okay, that he could take his time.
Not this time. “They broke up a few weeks before it happened. He obviously sent the letter sometime in between. I don’t know why it took so long for the post office to return it.
I… I don’t know. When you showed up at Sequest and said his name, it felt like something broke inside me. ”
I heard the groan of the cot as he stood, soft steps against the tile floor. He didn’t touch me, but I could feel him right there in front of me.
“It didn’t matter then, who I was,” he said quietly. “I didn’t expect you to come back. I didn’t expect Phoebe to come up with this plan, or convince us to follow through on it.”
I raised my head, glaring at him through burning eyes. “Think very carefully about the next words out of your mouth because if you even think about putting this on Phoebe, no amount of morphine on earth will help you.”
“No! No, that’s—I didn’t mean it like that.” He swallowed hard, his uninjured hand trembling as he raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m just saying this whole thing caught us off guard. The trip, you and me… it wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“But it is. It’s been like this for days. For weeks.”
“I haven’t talked about him since he died. It’s been almost two years and I can barely get the words out.”
“That’s not an excuse,” I said feebly, through an unbearable pang of sympathy.
I spent nine months without the luxury of living in grief, setting it aside to take care of my sister.
I didn’t have a choice. Dex made his choices.
He lied to me, and to Phoebe, for weeks.
It felt the cruelest joke, to have something good dangled in front of me only to discover it was a mirage.
“I’m not trying to excuse what I did. I’m trying to explain.” Dex let out a jagged breath. “You have every right to be mad. But I’ve never lied to you, Violet. Everything I told you. Every moment we had since this started was real.”
“Every moment was under the umbrella of a lie. That’s not real, August. It’s bullshit.”
He groaned, ducking his head in his hand. “This went so much better in my head. I wish I wasn’t high.”
I stared at him, a tear slipping out. I couldn’t begin to wrap my head around this, but I hated how much sense it made.
Pieces snapping into place in every mysterious corner of the puzzle.
Phoebe’s words regarding Dex’s joy at the bar swept through the chaos in my mind: A broken heart doesn’t do this.
In retrospect, the truth felt obvious. Grief, on the other hand, had a ruthless tendency to stalk, reap, destroy.
I’d looked at him and had the thought that we were the same, and it still didn’t click. I felt like a fool.