Chapter 2
Leesa
‘Can I come in?’
Just when I’d almost convinced myself I’d been hallucinating on the day of the crash, his voice from the other side of my door gave me enough of a shock that I knocked over the little pot of hospital-issue yoghurt.
‘Uh, yeah?’ I hurried to right the yoghurt, only belatedly wondering how bad my hair looked after days in bed.
He seemed hesitant, running a hand through his already wild mop of hair. That was new, but I supposed even Colin Gallagher was capable of feeling pity.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘That’s what you said last time you saw me. My sister is on your team, remember?’
‘But she’s not in this hospital room,’ I answered doubtfully. ‘How did they even let you in?’
‘I told them I was your boyfriend,’ he explained with a shrug. ‘I, uh, brought you something.’
What fresh hallucination was this? He thrust a gold-foil cardboard box in my direction. Reaching up with both hands, I grimaced when I moved the fingers of my left hand, where the cast came halfway along my palm.
‘Hey, easy.’ He set the box on the table next to the glob of spilled yoghurt and settled my arm back at my side. ‘Go on, have a look,’ he said as he rummaged in his pocket.
‘Is it going to squirt cream in my face?’
He raised an eyebrow at me and I could have pulled out my own tongue when I listened back to what I’d just said – in front of a known juvenile wannabe comedian with a dirty sense of humour.
With a sigh, I carelessly opened the lid to find a little cake.
There was cream, but in pretty rosettes with chocolate shavings – not the sort usually used in pranks, unless he was going to shove this in my face.
‘Uh, thanks.’
‘I heard you like slagroomtaart,’ he said as he produced a felt-tip pen and reached for my left arm. He exaggerated the pronunciation of the Dutch cream cake atrociously.
Before I could come out of my stunned stupor to work out whether to stop him, he’d scrawled ‘Get Well Soon’, and something that was probably supposed to be his name on the purple soft cast. Waiting for the punchline of a joke I hadn’t understood yet, I studied him for long enough to notice how much sharper the lines of his face were at 24. He was kind of grown up.
‘What?’ he asked, making me glance away momentarily with a gulp.
‘I’m waiting for the prank. It must be here somewhere.’
‘No prank,’ he assured me, his gaze steady on mine. ‘I just wanted to see how you were before we fly out to Quebec.’
Not sure how else to respond, I waved around the room with my cast arm. ‘Not sure what you wanted to see.’
‘Anything – everything,’ he said. ‘You.’ The last word seemed to surprise him as well. ‘And I wanted to say sorry. I think it’s my fault you broke your arm.’