Chapter Thirty-Nine Lexie
Gray is the ugliest color. I can’t believe I’ve never noticed before. It’s drab, bleak, and depressing. Gray is questions that may never be answered. And I need answers.
I’ve walked these exact halls too many times to count, and I never once noticed.
That gray is ugly. Gray chairs, gray fixtures, and a dingy gray linoleum floor.
It does nothing to console, comfort, or create hope.
It seems like I’m doomed to drown in a never-ending sea of gray for the rest of my life.
Here I am, stuck in this dull, gloomy waiting room at Columbia Memorial Hospital, that I used to call home. The thought that Samantha is somewhere in this horrid building all alone is absolutely maddening.
I’ve given up on sitting. Instead, I’m wandering aimlessly along the row of hideous chairs, but I never stray far.
Callum sits in a chair silently, his attention only ever leaving me to very briefly respond to an email or a text.
Roscoe had been on the plane too, but somehow, he didn’t end up in this unbearable waiting room with us.
“Lexie.” Mia’s voice reaches me only seconds before she does.
I barely have time to open my arms before she’s in them, pulling me into a giant hug.
We embrace each other tightly, just her presence already helping to ease some of the weight off my chest. She lets out a harsh breath of relief heavily, causing tears to prick behind my eyes.
“Damn, one hug and I’m getting emotional.” My words are muffled by her hair, the tight brown curls tickling my face. The sound she makes is half laugh, half sob. It’s a good two minutes before she’s finally pulling back to look at me. “Hi, bitch.”
“Hi bitch,” she repeats with a smile, brushing away a stray tear from fluttery lash extensions.
“It’s been way too fucking long.” I’ve missed her gorgeous face, with her alert mocha-brown eyes that see more than I want her to, and her full lips that deliver brutal honesty and always make me laugh.
Her navy-blue scrubs do nothing to hide her full hourglass figure, and her curls are pulled away from her heart-shaped face by a clip in a half updo.
“I know,” I agree. “I almost forgot how much prettier you are than me.”
“You’re such a liar. Damn, I miss you.” She grins. Her eyes look over my shoulder, focusing on something behind me. Lowering her voice so I’m the only one who can hear her, her tone shifts to approval. “Hot tattoo guy is right.”
Following her gaze over my shoulder, I turn to look at Callum. Our gazes collide, his eyes fixed solely on me. Even now, when I’m so angry that I can barely stand to look at him, the passion in his eyes sends warmth flooding through my veins.
Our six-hour flight was spent in silence, the tension between us growing with every passing moment.
Sitting in the waiting room wasn’t much better.
The constant feeling of Callum’s eyes on me every waking minute just added fuel to the fire, causing friction dangerously close to bringing us to the point of destruction.
Mia’s presence has only dampened the flame temporarily.
But no matter how long it lasts, it’s a nice little vacation from the complicated whirlwind my life has become since moving to New York.
“This is Callum. I work for him in New York.” My matter-of-fact introduction has disapproval flashing in Callum’s eyes.
His expression is unreadable, but I can still hear the question his eyes are practically spearing me with.
How much longer do you think you can deny what’s between us? “This is my best friend, Mia.”
“Nice to meet you, Callum.”
“I wish it was under better circumstances.” He’s turned on the charm, his mask of calm back in place. His comment brings us back to why we’re here.
“How’s Samantha?” The words tumble out of my mouth a little too fast. Mia’s face grows serious with the expression I’ve seen her use for the families of patients. I have one of those looks of my own as a nurse. It’s fucking awful being on the receiving end of it.
Mia lowers to one of the chairs, motioning for me to sit next to her.
Callum takes a seat across from me. “She’s in post-op.
Her spleen ruptured, causing severe internal bleeding that we were able to catch.
Her left femur is broken, she’s going to need surgery to get plates and screws.
But she should recover fully without risk of paralysis.
There was minimal swelling in her brain, but there’s no way to know the extent of her head injuries until she wakes up.
” I nod, absorbing and processing the information.
“So, she’s going to be okay.” I don’t realize how much I need to hear her say it until she’s nodding.
“She’s going to be okay,” Mia confirms with a small smile.
The breath that leaves me is a sigh of relief, happy tears prick behind my eyes and a little bit of the weight lifts from my chest. I glance at Callum, getting caught in his gaze for a few long seconds.
He sits silently, running a hand over his beard while he watches me carefully.
“When can I see her?” Pulling my focus from him, I look back at my best friend. Mia glances between me and the man across from us like she noticed our little moment—it’s something I’ll be hearing about later.
“As soon as she’s set up in her room you can go sit with her until she wakes up.”
“Oh, thank god,” I sigh, the corset strings loosening around my chest ever so slightly. Samantha’s not out of the woods yet, there’s still so much up in the air until she wakes up. But she’s stable.
The sound of ringing pulls my attention to Callum. He glances at his phone and stands up to excuse himself. When his eyes meet mine, the air between us is charged with everything going unsaid. “I have to take this.”
I nod to him, barely making eye contact before turning back to Mia. I can vaguely hear Callum’s deep voice answer the call while he walks down the hall in search of some privacy.
“How long do you think it’ll be before Samantha wakes up?” I ask Mia.
“I really wish I had an answer to that, but there’s no way to be sure.
It could be a few hours or a few days. We just have to wait and see.
” Mia’s not telling me new information, I know that’s how brain injuries work.
But somehow being on the patient side of it feels different—like maybe the rules don’t apply to this case. To my case.
“I’m so glad you’re here. You got here a lot faster than I was expecting. I thought it would take you at least a day to get tickets.”
“Callum has a private jet,” I explain, knowing exactly how wide I’m cracking open this can of worms. Some things just can’t be explained away, and this subject is something we’ll have to bring up eventually.
“Of course he does. Hot tattoo guy would have his own plane.” She reaches up to re-clip her mess of curls back from her face. Her hair has gotten longer since I last saw her, the tight ringlets reach past her collarbone.
“Yeah, I guess I’m lucky he was willing to bring me,” I reply vaguely.
“Speaking of Callum, what’s going on between you two?” Mia asks intuitively. She has no idea how loaded that question is. There are so many ways to answer, but all of them result in more questions that I can’t answer. Not honestly, anyway.
“It’s nothing.” I hate to lie, especially to Mia, but the truth isn’t an option. She flashes me a dirty look, the one telling me she’s about to call me out on my bullshit.
“Did you really just lie to me like that? A blind idiot could see the way you two look at each other. Not to mention the fact that he can’t seem to take his eyes off you.”
“He’s just like that.” I’m cherry-picking now, and Mia knows it. Shit, she’s known me too long.
“So, you’re seriously trying to tell me nothing has happened between you and Callum?” It’s impossible to lie convincingly to someone who knows you better than you know yourself. There’s really no point in trying to keep this up. I’ve got to give her something.
“We had sex,” I admit. Her face lights up like a child on Christmas at the nugget of info, before her brown eyes narrow at me.
“I knew it! How many times, more than once?” I knew she wouldn’t be satisfied with that one vague bit of info. The girl is addicted to gossip and finding out all the juicy details. Details I would usually tell her before I met Callum and signed that damn NDA.
“More than once.” I really can’t get into this with her right now, if ever.
“Damn, girl. I knew there’s something with you and him. He hangs on your every word. It must’ve been a good more than once. And he’s hot too.” Mia’s both scolding me and giving me props. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you?”
“It’s complicated.” Tip of the fucking iceberg.
“You haven’t been telling me a lot of things lately,” she says, getting worked up.
“Look, I’m not enough of a bitch to try and have this conversation right now.
But we are going to talk before you leave—starting with why you never came back from New York.
” Mia wants answers, and she does deserve some sort of explanation.
I just need to figure out what I’m going to tell her.
What I can tell her.
“Okay,” I agree. “We’ll talk.”
“Good.”
My sister looks completely different. Outside of the bruises and swelling, she cut her hair to her shoulders and dyed it black. Samantha has always kept her golden-brown hair long and wavy. As surprising as this new hairstyle is, it’s good to see her making changes.
Since she’s a few years younger than me, she was stuck in my parents’ house alone for a while after I moved out. It’s been a long process for her, but she’s slowly getting past the trauma from our upbringing. This haircut is one step closer to her finding herself.