Chapter 55
FIFTY FIVE
I DON’T KNOW how I got back in this chair.
The last thing I remember is the slam of the restroom door against the tiled wall.
Now I’m here, sunk deep into the hard plastic.
The only warmth comes from Matthew’s heavy suit jacket, which I pull tighter around me.
My exhaustion is bone-deep, and my mind is blessedly blank.
The soft scuff of dress shoes on linoleum pulls my head up from its stupor.
Matthew stops in front of me. The fiery anger from before has vanished, replaced by a smooth, impenetrable mask.
He looks like a stranger.
“You should drink some,” he says, holding out a cold bottle of water.
My fingers feel weak as I take it from him. Our hands brush for a fraction of a second, and the absence of any lingering touch is a sharp pain in my chest.
“Thank you,” I whisper to the floor.
He doesn’t say anything else.
Instead of taking the seat next to me, he moves to the row of chairs opposite, creating a vast, empty space between us. He leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees, and stares at a fixed point on the scuffed floor.
The sound of approaching footsteps breaks the tense stillness. A woman in blue scrubs appears, her expression tired but kind. She holds a clipboard, her eyes scanning the waiting room before landing on me.
“James Devlin’s fiancée?” she asks politely.
The false title makes me flinch, but I force myself to stand on legs that still feel unsteady. “Yes,” I say, my voice hoarse. “Amy. Is he okay?”
As I walk toward her, I see Matthew rise from his chair, his movements slow and heavy. He comes to stand beside me, an imposing figure.
The doctor’s gaze flicks to him, her curiosity piqued. “And you are…?”
“He’s—”
“A friend.”
His words cut through my own, sharp and definitive. His gaze is fixed on the doctor, refusing to look at me.
Friend.
The blood drains from my face as I stare at his rigid profile, my heart splintering.
The doctor clears her throat, her eyes glancing between the two of us. “Well, I’m Dr. Fenrich, the attending physician who saw to Mr. Devlin when he was brought in.”
I force my gaze away from Matthew’s stony profile to focus on the doctor. “How is he?”
“He’s going to be okay,” she says with a small, reassuring smile.
“He’s stable. The gash on his forearm was quite deep, and he lost a significant amount of blood.
That, combined with a very high blood alcohol content, caused him to lose consciousness.
We’ve stitched him up, given him fluids, and something for the pain. He’s sleeping now.”
Every word she speaks is a weight lifting off my chest.
He’s okay.
He’ll live.
The relief is so immense it makes my eyes well up. “Can I see him?” I ask.
Dr. Fenrich’s expression turns sympathetic.
“About that,” she starts hesitantly. “We’ve contacted Mr. Devlin’s parents.
They’re on their way, and they have requested that he be moved to a private room as soon as he’s processed.
They’ve also been very clear…” she pauses, her gaze softening with apology, “… they’ve requested no visitors at this time. I’m very sorry.”
My heart sinks.
The relief I felt evaporates, replaced by a sense of utter powerlessness.
Shut out.
Of course.
James would parade me like an accessory for public view, but the doors to his personal world, to who he truly was, remained firmly locked.
“I understand,” I whisper.
“Try again tomorrow. Things might have changed by then. But not to worry, we’ll take good care of him,” she says with one last, kind smile.
“Thank you, Doctor,” I reply.
My reason for being here leaves the room with her.
The silence rushes in to fill the gaping chasm this horrifying event has torn open between Matthew and me. I see him take a sharp, unsteady breath, wiping a hand roughly across his chin. His expression is still a hard, impenetrable mask, but the stress is clear in the tense line of his shoulders.
He drops his hand. His eyes, now cold as ice, find mine. “Ready?”
His single word is not a question. It’s a dismissal.
An ending.
Too tired to form a proper answer, I just nod in defeat.
Without another word, he turns and walks out, leaving me to follow in the silent wake of his fury.
The walk to his car is a blur. He keeps a half-step ahead, a short distance that feels like a mile-wide canyon.
He doesn’t look back.
He doesn’t slow down.
When we reach his car, he unlocks it remotely, leaving me to open my own door.
The silence on the drive to his house is so tense it feels like a third passenger.
I sit rigidly, staring out at the glittering lights of Madison as they streak past, but I don’t really see them.
All I see in my periphery is the rigid profile of the man beside me.
His jaw is a hard, unforgiving line. His hands grip the steering wheel at ten and two, his knuckles white.
The hand that should be holding mine looks like it could punch a hole through the dashboard.
A dozen apologies, a hundred explanations, rise in my throat. But they all die there. The wall he’s erected is too high, too solid. There are no words that can scale it.
He pulls into his driveway and kills the engine. Without a word, he gets out of the car, the slam of his door echoing in the quiet night.
He doesn’t come around to open my door.
My body feels heavy and slow as I get out on my own. He lingers at the end of the driveway, his back to me. Once I’m out, he walks to the front door, unlocks it, and steps inside, leaving it open for me.
I walk into the foyer to see he’s already thrown his keys into the bowl on the console and is halfway to the living room.
I reach for the door, pull it closed, and turn the lock.
I start to follow him, but the sharp throb in my feet, an ache I’d ignored, now screams for attention.
I stop in the archway between the foyer and the living room, leaning against the frame for support.
Bending down, I slip off one heel, then the other, a sigh of pure relief escaping as my bare feet meet the hardwood.
Straightening, a shoe in each hand, I continue into the living room.
Matthew is standing in the middle of the vast space, his back to me, his shoulders rigid. He lifts both hands and runs them slowly, agonizingly, through his dark hair, gripping the strands at the back of his neck.
My heart aches at the sight of his distress.
“Matt…?” My voice is barely a whisper.
He drops his hands but doesn’t turn. His shoulders rise and fall with a long, heavy breath.
Then, slowly, he faces me.
His eyes are dark with a turbulent storm of pain and fury.
“Do you have any idea where my mind went, Amy?” he begins, his voice a tight rasp.
“When Helen told me you ran out of the café in a panic over James? When you didn’t answer your phone, call after call?
” He takes a step closer, his voice laced with a cutting edge of accusation.
“Do you have any idea the things I imagined? And then to walk into that hospital and see you covered in his blood?” He shakes his head, a look of recalled terror on his face.
I take a half step toward him. “Matt, I’m so sorry. I never meant to scare you. But what was I supposed to do? I heard him collapse. Then the line went silent. I couldn’t reach him.”
My apology doesn’t seem to register.
His eyes remain hard, his focus narrowing on me with a chilling intensity. “So you ran to him,” he says in brutal assessment.
“What? No! That’s not—”
“You could’ve called 911 from the café,” he continues, his voice ruthlessly calm as he lays out his case. “You could’ve called me. But, no. You chose to run to him.” He takes another step closer, his hands balling into fists at his sides. “That was your choice.”
“I didn’t have a choice!” I shoot back, my anger flaring at his unfair simplification. “Hydra, Friday night, the whole thing… it pushed him over the edge. I did that to him! I went too far. It was my responsibility to make sure—”
“Responsibility?” Matthew whispers the word.
A look of horrified recognition dawns on his face. He lets out a short, humorless breath. “That’s it.” He looks at me, but I feel like he’s seeing a ghost. “That’s the same word she would use.”
“What?”
Matthew shakes his head, bitter anguish twisting his features.
“My mother spent her entire miserable life making excuses for the man who hurt her,” he says, his voice thick with decades of pain.
“Her mantra was always responsibility. Responsibility to her marriage, to her son… responsibility to endure.” He takes a shuddering step closer.
“She always thought she could fix him. That if she was just patient enough, good enough,”—he gestures at me—“that her love could somehow absorb his darkness.” His voice cracks.
“Is that what this is, Amy? Are you her? Is he him? Because I can’t bear to watch it happen all over again. I just can’t. I won’t.”
I stare at him.
Shocked.
He’s replacing me with the ghost of his mother.
He no longer sees me.
He’s reducing me to nothing more than a pattern he vows to avoid at all costs.
“How dare you?” My whisper trembles with a fury that makes him flinch.
“You want to talk about him? About James?” I take a step forward, closing the distance he just created, my voice rising.
“Let’s talk about you! You stand here judging my choices.
Guess who else did that? Who else thought he had the right to tell me how to feel and what to do?
Take a wild guess!” I jab the shoe in my hand toward him in blinding anger.
A dawning horror descends like a shroud over his eyes.