CHAPTER 53
Phoebe
I open the bathroom door, and I’m immediately greeted by my mother’s blood-curdling scream.
“Phoebe! Oh, my darling little Phoebe!” She opens her arms and runs toward me. I’m smothered in her embrace but squeeze her tight.
She’s sobbing. “We didn’t know… oh, Phoebe, we thought… we thought you were…”
“I’m right here, Mama. I’m perfectly fine. No more worrying, okay?”
“I’m so happy you’re alive! My little baby! Oh, honey!”
I raise my eyes to find Jake hovering over us, his expression a combination of relief and confusion. He looks like he’s aged several years in a few days.
I feel terrible about that.
I pat Mama’s back, pull away, and kiss her cheek. Then I turn to Jake.
“Pea,” he says, lifting me off the tile floor room and crushing me in a hug. He whispers in my ear. “You scared the shit out of me.”
I whisper back. “Mama’s a wreck. Has she been this bad the whole time?”
“Oh, this is super chill compared to what we’ve been dealing with.” He sets me down and then gestures to Rick, who’s standing at a polite distance. “We were lucky Rick was here.”
I don’t hug Rick. I try very hard to produce a polite smile, but I worry it looks more like a sneer.
“Didn’t expect you to see you here, Rick,” I say. “It’s quite a surprise, actually.”
Jake retrieves the room’s fake leather recliner from its spot by the window and pulls it closer to the bed. He gets our mother settled.
I go to sit on the edge of the hospital bed, in front of her, and grab her hands in mine.
“I’m perfectly healthy. No worse for the wear.”
She nods, doing her best to calm down. But she’s having trouble keeping eye contact with me. I look up to Jake.
“Oh, no,” I say. “Please tell me you didn’t go looking for me.”
Jake nods. “We did. We wouldn’t be able to forgive ourselves if we didn’t.”
“Who’s we?”
“All of us.”
“I stayed back with your parents,” Rick says, helpfully.
“I nearly lost all my children in one day,” Mama says.
Everyone’s staring at me. I rise from the bed. “I’m fine! Really!” I flash a smile and strike the same game show hostess pose I gave to Jake just before I took off on the ATV.
He doesn’t miss the reference.
“Phoebe,” Rick takes a step toward me. “I’ve asked the resident on call to let me see your chart, but he said he’d need your permission first, of course.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, this is a small rural hospital, and I want to make sure they haven’t overlooked anything. I doubt there’s anyone on staff with my level of training.”
How did I miss this? Has he always been this obnoxiously superior, or is this part of his act for my mother’s benefit?
I glance at my mom. She looks uncomfortable. That’s reassuring.
“You’re not my family member or a personal representative, Rick, and you’re certainly not my medical care provider. So you won’t be seeing my chart.”
“I’m only trying to be helpful.”
If you want to help, you wouldn’t have shown up here without an invitation!
Jake is staring at me without the slightest bit of humor in his eyes. He scowls. “How in the hell did you survive in a blizzard for four days, Pea? Where did you go? Who rescued you? We tried to get some info out of that MacLaine dude—"
“The Incredible Hulk,” Rick contributes, chortling.
“His name’s Kevin,” I snap.
Jake frowns. “He wouldn’t tell me anything—all he did was shrug.”
“I’m not sure he was capable of speech,” Rick says.
“Kevin was a Navy SEAL, Rick. He’s an extraordinarily brave and capable man.”
He shrugs.
I can’t even believe this guy.
“Kevin was nothing but kind to me in the helicopter,” my mother says. “A gentleman.”
“All the MacLaines are gentlemen,” I say.
Jake snarls.
I can’t handle this.
“You know what? I think I better finish drying my hair. I don’t want to catch a cold. Be right back!”
I escape into the bathroom, lock the door, and clutch the edge of the sink. I feel the giggles building up inside me until I’m on the verge of busting out laughing. I grab a towel to muffle my guffaws and turn on the hairdryer to drown out the sound.
Catch a cold?
I got stuck in a whiteout blizzard in subzero temperatures. I fell through the ice and was seconds from drowning. I suffered hypothermia, went ATV riding half-naked through the snow, and spent a night in an ice cave.
And I’m worried I’ll catch a cold from damp hair?
I look at myself in the mirror and take a deep breath.
You can do this, Phoebe.
But Rick… I don’t want to look at his smug face.
I could kick myself for how much time I spent with him.
Was he always this person and I simply didn’t allow myself to see it?
Physicians are at the top of the food chain in a hospital setting, and I know I allowed myself to enjoy the swagger I saw in Rick.
But here, in Sweetbriar, he’s just an obnoxious dude who’s trying to play my family.
He seems pretty chummy with Jake. I’m getting a really bad feeling about what he’s let them think.
I don’t care if Rick tells them we dated for over two years. Or that we took trips together and that I stayed at his place on a regular basis. I don’t care about any of that.
But I do care if he told them something ridiculous, like that we’re still together, or that we’ve talked about marriage.
I run my fingers through my hair, feeling the hot air of the dryer on my face. I need a few minutes to think about how to handle Rick. About what to tell my family about Evander.
The truth. Nothing but the truth. That’s what we decided. So that’s what I’ll tell them.
I find a hair tie in the stuff from my locker, gather my hair up on top of my head, and pull on a hoodie sweatshirt from Bo’s baseball team. I zip it up over my scrubs top.
When I open the door, I see that everyone else has arrived—Bo, Kyle, Mason, and Ryder run over to me and take turns hugging me. Everyone’s very careful in how they touch me, worried that I’m injured. Everyone except for Bo, who lifts me and swings me around.
“Put her down,” Mama says.
“I’m fine.”
“Why don’t you rest,” Rick says. “Get under the blankets and give yourself time to decompress. You’ve been through a lot.”
Everyone gathers around me, pushing me toward the bed. I think I actually roll my eyes, but I give up and crawl under the covers. Mason raises the head of the bed so that I’m sitting. Kyle grabs an extra blanket from the closet. Ryder plumps up the pillows behind my head.
Then Rick has the nerve to take a seat next to me, on the edge of my bed. He touches my arm.
I glare at him.
Bo taps Rick on the shoulder. “Hop up, my dude,” he says. “Let’s give her some space, all right?”
“You want some water? Are you hungry?” Ryder leans down and peers at me. I know they all mean well, but I’m not used to being crowded like this. Not by so many people.
Just one man. And he’s the one I wish was sitting on the edge of my bed, touching me.
Kyle says, “Is it true you got cut and have stitches? Because I don’t see any. Where’s your cut?”
“Don't worry about it, okay?” I say.
“Seriously, how the hell did you survive, Pea?” Ryder squints at me. “How did you find shelter and stay warm?
Mason tips his head and studies me. “We were out there in that shit looking for you, and I’m not ashamed to say that we almost froze our asses off and died. That storm was no joke.”
My mother makes a pitiful squeak.
One of Rick’s eyebrows is arched as he considers me.
Lord love a duck.
“Looks like we severely underestimated our girl,” Bo says.
“Yeah, so let’s hear the whole story, then,” Mason says. “Tell us how you managed to keep yourself alive and unharmed. Because honestly, you don’t look like you’ve been through hell. You look great, Pea. Like, you know, happy.”
“Giddy, even.” Jake’s mouth is pulled into a grim line.
And that’s when all the energy in the room changes. I can’t see anything past my brothers, because I’m surrounded by a wall of large men. But I know what's happening.
My brothers look over their shoulders to the doorway, parting just enough that I can peek past them.
Evander steps into the room.