Chapter Twenty-Five #2
“It’s a real shame you can’t change the past with a flick of that magic wand you seem to think is in your back pocket. I’d have a couple things on my list I’d like to have another stab at, and getting on that plane isn’t one of them.”
Poppy’s nostrils flared, eyes shining with unconcealed rage. “I told myself I wouldn’t get into it until we knew that she was safe, but I guess I have a lot less self-control than I thought.”
“Poppy—” Landon tried to interject, but she shook her head.
“No,” she said, scaring him a little. “What were you doing at her apartment at six in the morning?”
Dave let out a long, low whistle. Landon did not have the strength to lie, so instead he deflected. “That’s none of your business.”
Poppy shook her head and closed her eyes. “She was happy, Landon.”
“Landon?” a voice behind him said. It was almost certainly a voice he recognized, though in his state, he couldn’t place it until he turned to face the voice head-on. And of course, he should have known that the rich, gravelly, perfect voice belonged to Graham.
“Graham,” he said dumbly. If he’d been thinking about anything other than Rose, he might’ve seen this coming. What they’d done last night had not changed the fact that he was her boyfriend. At least not yet.
“Your name is Landon?” he asked, as though that were anywhere near the worst of Landon’s sins.
“Technically,” said Landon.
“You know Poppy?” he asked, eyes darting to where she stood, still fuming.
“Technically,” he said again.
Graham’s beautiful face tightened, his jaw clenching so hard Landon worried he might crack a molar.
“Technically?” he repeated, voice deceptively calm.
Or maybe he really was that calm all the time.
Landon didn’t know him very well. Graham took a step closer.
“I’d like you to answer Poppy’s question.
” Any color left drained from Landon’s face. “Do you need me to repeat it?”
Landon shook his head. But when he went to answer, he found he could not speak. And that worked just fine for both of them. It was as much an answer as telling him every sordid detail.
“I’d like you to go,” Graham said. “Please.”
Landon had been expecting a swift punch to the face, or at least the ribs.
He’d steeled his body for it. If Graham hit him, it would level the playing field a touch.
The pain would be easier to deal with than the way the man was looking at him now, with those large, kind eyes that saw him as something to be pitied.
“I’m not leaving until I know she’s okay. ”
Graham laughed without humor. “You think you’re the person she’s going to want to see when she wakes up?”
He had been, before. “I just want to know she’s okay.”
“Poppy will call you,” he said. “Won’t you, Poppy?”
“I’ll call you,” she agreed, the words clipped.
“And, Landon?” Graham said, hitting each syllable of his name.
“I want to make something very clear: I don’t want to know you.
I don’t want to hear why you’ve lied or why you’ve—” He caught himself, rage threatening his carefully maintained front.
“Whatever it is you think you’re doing here? It stops now.”
Landon swallowed the lump in his throat so hard that it came back up.
Graham couldn’t understand just how bound he and Rose were to each other.
He had no idea the weight of the history between them, could not fathom the depth of their connection—so deep, it transcended the machinations of the cruel geniuses who’d developed a pill with the power to branch lifelines like veins on a leaf.
Landon knew he should walk away before he said something he couldn’t take back, but it was one of his more than two Achilles’ heels: if something was true, he could very rarely stop himself from saying it. “It’ll stop when I’m dead.”
Recounting the moment later, Landon swore that he heard the whoosh of Graham’s arm before he saw the right hook that would take him down. As Poppy had been warning him for years, it was a long way to fall.
Landon cracked one eye, then the other. A dull, incessant beeping buzzed in his ears, and for a second, he couldn’t place where he was or why he felt like he’d been tossed down several flights of stairs.
Dave stood above him like a lesser-known archangel—one with crooked teeth and a head bald as a baby’s.
“You all right there, mate?” he asked, concern all over his face.
“You went down like a sack of potatoes.” He shook his head.
“Really, it was something to see. It’s a shame you missed it. ”
Landon groaned and flopped his head back on the pillow. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Yes, you do,” Dave said, suddenly serious. “That’s your girl.”
He would never be able to repay Dave for the simplicity with which he viewed what was an objectively complex situation.
“How long have I been out?”
“Not long,” Dave said. “Maybe thirty minutes? An hour or two, tops.”
“An hour?” Landon sat up straight as a rod. “How is Rose? Is she safe, is she—”
“Whoa, whoa,” Dave said, placing a hand on his shoulder to push him back down. “Let’s get a doctor in here before you go and do something stupid. I do not want to see a man of your height fall again as long as I live.”
“Tell me.” Landon could see the wildness in his eyes reflected in Dave’s.
“She’s stable,” he said. “Came out of surgery right around the time Graham knocked you out. The only thing the doctors would tell us is that she made it, but they’re not letting visitors in—”
“Help me up,” Landon said, pushing himself up with both arms.
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“She’s awake,” he said.
“I don’t think I said that.”
“She’s alive.”
“Okay, that I did say.”
“I need to see her,” Landon said. He pulled the pulse oximeter off his pointer finger and rubbed his eyes. “Would you just help me up, please?”
“But you haven’t even talked to the police yet.”
“Who the hell called the police?”
Dave snorted. “Graham, if you can believe it. The guy must have one hell of a moral code. Claims he feels like a git for hitting you.”
“He called the police… on himself?”
“Wants to start his second lease on life squeaky-clean, I guess.”
Landon pinched his nose. The man annoyed and impressed him to no end. “Well I won’t be talking to the police, so if you could just help me up.”
“Take it easy—”
“I’ll do it myself, then.”
“Fuck me,” Dave muttered, but reached an arm out to help. “What’s your plan, then? Just going to wander the hospital until you find her?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
Dave gritted his teeth. “She’s in a recovery room on the third floor. Room 309.”
If he hadn’t been almost out of his mind with worry, Landon would have found that funny. “How is it you always know things you aren’t supposed to?”
“It’s a gift.” Dave gave him a half smile. “But it wasn’t me in the end. I don’t know how she did it, but Poppy scared the poor nurse delivering the news into giving up her location.”
Landon had a good idea how. He’d been on the receiving end of that particular superpower since he was eighteen years old. “Let’s go.” Landon could not stay in that sterile room a moment longer.
“Oh, no, that’s all you, mate,” Dave said. “This is well above my pay grade.”
That was fine, Landon thought. If he cracked his skull open on the walk up, he would have nobody to blame but himself.
Just the way it should be. He looked at Dave, clocked the worry on his face, and realized with a jolt that Dave cared about him.
“Hey,” Landon said, “when I saw you in the waiting room, I should have thanked you. You didn’t have to come. ”
“’Course I did,” he said. “You go do what it is you need to do, now, okay? And when it’s done, I’ll be here. We’ll go for a pint. I’ll have a listen.”
Landon wondered, for a moment, what kind of man Dave had been before he’d taken the forgetting pill.
What had he been like before he and his wife flipped a coin, and he started all over again?
Rose’s taking the pill had destroyed him.
But here he was, unable to deny that he was glad this version of his friend existed. “I will,” he said. “I’ll find you.”
Landon walked down the hall with his head held high, trying to look like he belonged, figuring as long as he didn’t appear lost, no one would question him.
Moving with purpose mattered in hospitals.
He didn’t like to think about how he’d come by that knowledge, but he knew this much: There are times in life when you listen to the people at the front desk, and times you don’t.
When he reached the third floor and stood in front of room 309, he rolled his shoulders, smoothed his hair, and opened the door without so much as knocking. Time was not a resource he felt comfortable wasting anymore.