10. Sawyer #2
“Ms. Thorne?” A nurse appears, he’s younger than the others, and looks like he pulled the short straw for this errand.
He glances between my mother and me. “Um. Ms. Thorne? The Aldrich family has agreed to let Sawyer visit for five minutes. Just Sawyer. They’ve requested that... That no one else accompany her.”
Well, that’s to be expected. Victoria and Richard don’t want to see or hear about my parents on a good day. I’d be afraid of what would happen if Mom was in a small room with them, after everything.
I see her nod in my periphery. “Of course.”
“You sure, Mom?” I’m only asking to be nice. If she changed her mind and said actually no, either I go in with her or she doesn’t go at all, I’d find a way to keep her out. Even if it means locking her in a supply closet.
“It’s fine.” She squeezes my shoulder, but her grip is still tense. “I’ll be right here when you’re done.”
The nurse wheels me down the hallway, leaving my mother standing alone by the nurses station. I can feel her watching me go…can imagine the expression on her face—that mixture of anger and helplessness and old, festering hurt that she tries to hide, but it always shows.
We stop outside a closed door. Knox’s door. My heart pounds knowing he’s on the other side, and I swear my fingers literally itch to touch him, to feel him solid and warm and alive.
“You have five minutes,” the nurse says softly. “The family is...they’re grieving. Please be respectful.”
He opens the door and wheels me inside, then quietly retreats, leaving me alone with Victoria and Richard.
And Knox.
He’s sitting up in bed, and the sight of him steals whatever words I’d been planning to say.
He looks utterly destroyed.
There’s a thick white bandage wrapped around his head, cleaving a stark line through his dark hair.
The side of his face is swollen, the skin around it already changing color.
More bruises darken his jaw, and spread down his neck where they disappear underneath the hospital gown.
His bare arms, resting on top of the thin blanket, are covered in cuts and scrapes—some bandaged, some just cleaned and exposed to air.
But it’s his eyes that has my breath catching.
Those gray eyes that normally hold a glint of humor are completely hollow. He looks at me and there’s nothing there. No kindness, no relief, no echo of the trauma we shared.
Just...emptiness.
Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich stand on the far side of his bed like bodyguards.
Mrs. Aldrich, Victoria, looks as bad as I expected—her face swollen and blotchy, eyes red and puffy, long dark hair a tangled mess.
She’s leaning heavily against her husband like she might collapse without his support.
Mr. Aldrich, the man I always considered a second father, has his arm around her, but he’s looking at me with narrowed eyes.
“Five minutes,” he says, like he’d rather be talking to a cockroach or sewer rat. “That’s all.”
Mrs. Aldrich makes a choked sound, and turns her face into his shoulder. She shudders as she takes in a breath. “Richard, behave yourself. This is Sawyer…She’s just—”
“She’s the reason our son is dead.”
My mouth hangs open. How could he think that? Why? I look toward Knox, my eyes pleading for him to say something, protect me from his father’s false accusations. But he examines his hospital blanket, picking at a loose strand.
“Mr. Aldrich. Richard…” I manage, feeling the tears threaten to break free. “I’m so sorry but that’s just not true. Owen—”
At the sound of his name, Victoria starts to wail. Richard wraps her in his arms, still looking at me sternly. I ignore him and wheel myself a few inches closer to Knox.
“Knox,” I whisper. My hands are shaking in my lap, so I tuck them under my thighs. “I just—I needed to see that you’re okay.”
He gives me nothing. Not even a blink or nod.
“We made it,” I continue, desperation leaking into my voice despite my best efforts to stay calm. “We survived and I know it’s—I know he—” I’m trying to say Owen’s name again but it catches in my throat. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry about Owen.”
“Everyone’s sorry,” Richard practically spits. “Sorry doesn’t bring him back.”
“I know. I know it doesn’t.” I look at Knox, silently begging him to give me something. Anything. A sign that what we shared up there was real. “We were up there together. You held my hand. You kept talking to me. You told me about the storm and the fort and—”
“Thorne.” Knox’s voice cuts through my rambling like a knife. It’s flat. Emotionless. Dead. “Don’t.”
“Don’t, what?”
His jaw tightens. I watch the muscles in his throat work as he swallows, and for a second I think I see the Knox that I know. The Knox that was my lifeline up there. But then he blinks and it’s gone, replaced by that same vacant expression.
“Don’t make this into something it wasn’t.”
The room spins. “What?”
“We were stuck together.” Each word from his lips is slow and intentional, like he’s thought about exactly what to say and how to say it to cause maximum damage.
“That’s all. We were in the same car when the ride malfunctioned.
I would have held anyone’s hand in that situation.
I would have talked to anyone to stay calm. It didn’t mean anything.”
It didn’t mean anything.
The words echo in my skull, bouncing around until they’re all I can hear but they still make no sense.
“Knox…You can’t…That’s not—”
“I’m tired.” He looks away from me, fixing his gaze on the wall near his parents. “I’d like to rest now.”
“But…you don’t mean that. You—”
“Sawyer.” He speaks my name like he’s repulsed by me. Like I’m a stranger or worse, an enemy, who’s overstayed her welcome. “Just go.”
Mr. Aldrich moves toward the door, clearly ready to enforce the request if I don’t comply. “I think that’s enough. You’ve upset him. You’ve upset us all.”
“What the hell? I haven’t done anything!” The words burst out of me between shaking breaths. I hug my chest, ignoring the pain, and feel my face turn beet red. “I just came in here to see that he’s okay. This is bullshit. We survived this together.”
“My son is dead,” Mrs. Aldrich sputters. “My Owen is dead and you want to come in here and talk about survival?”
I grip the fabric of my hospital gown tight. Fuck. She’s right. What am I doing? What was I thinking, coming here, talking about what Knox and I shared while Owen’s body is somewhere, cold and alone and gone?
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry. I loved him too.”
“Did you?” Mr. Aldrich tosses the accusation like a foul curse. “Because from where I’m standing, you seem awfully concerned about my other son.”
He may as well have slapped me across the face.
But he’s not wrong. That’s the worst part of it. And I can’t say a damn word, because what is there to say?
I came in here desperate to see Knox. To confirm that connection I felt—that bond forged in those moments when we thought we’d die together. While Owen—my boyfriend, my best friend—is dead, and I’m obsessing over whether his brother felt what I felt.
What’s wrong with me?
Mr. Aldrich crosses the room and yanks the door open. “Get her out of here.” The same nurse that wheeled me in, rushes toward me while Richard continues. “I can’t even look at her.”
The nurse takes hold of the wheelchair handles. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you back to your room.”
I crane my neck as he wheels me backward, ignoring the pain it causes, trying to catch Knox’s eye one more time.
Searching desperately to find some piece of the man who traced circles on my palm with his thumb, who told me random facts about honey and octopuses and sharks to keep us both sane, who promised me we’d hold on.
But he doesn’t look at me.
He just keeps staring at the wall, his profile frozen, while his mother sobs and his father paces.
And it’s all my fault.