Chapter Forty-Two
The drive to Rowan Medical Center in Salisbury felt like moving through a nightmare underwater.
Rain still clung to the roads from earlier, turning every streetlight into a blurry halo of gold and white across the windshield.
The wipers dragged back and forth with a rhythmic squeal.
Andy drove too fast, one hand locked around the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles had gone pale.
The ancient truck rattled over potholes and rough patches of asphalt, and he kept adjusting in his seat like it might get us there faster.
I sat rigid on the passenger side, my phone clenched so tightly in my hands my fingers had begun to ache.
I called Morgan again. Voicemail. Again. Voicemail. The automated message felt crueler every time I heard it. Something was wrong. Wrong enough that Penelope wouldn’t tell me over the phone.
It was more than someone being hurt in an accident. Something had irrevocably shifted, and it was going to ruin me. I knew it with the same certainty people claimed to know God existed. I could feel it in the deep hollow of my chest where my heart was beating rapidly against its cage.
My pulse throbbed against my throat as I stared out the window at the dark blur of trees and fields passing beyond the glass.
Woodland had always felt small enough to hold in my hands.
A tiny place where every tragedy became community property before the ambulance even arrived.
Yet somehow tonight the distance between the church and the hospital felt endless. A space too large for me to control.
I should have been there. The thought repeated itself relentlessly. Morgan had asked me to come. She’d looked so excited talking about her birthday all week. So hopeful. And I’d promised.
Instead I’d spent the afternoon standing in a church while murky water dripped down my back and Pastor Spires pretended holiness excused cruelty.
I should have been there.
The closer we got to the hospital, the worse the guilt became. It settled in the nape of my neck like something alive, chewing through me slowly.
The emergency room parking lot glowed beneath harsh floodlights. Andy parked crookedly across two spaces without seeming to notice. Before the truck had fully stopped rolling, I was already fumbling for the door handle. I ran across the parking lot, Andy bolting to catch up.
The automatic doors slid open with a mechanical hiss. The metallic scent of sickness that seemed to cling to every hospital no matter how much they cleaned hit me immediately.
The waiting room was awash in bright lights that made everyone look exhausted and vaguely unreal. Plastic chairs lined the walls. A television mounted in one corner played a muted game show nobody was watching.
My eyes found them immediately. The misfits occupied nearly an entire section of the waiting room.
Ben sat hunched forward with his elbows planted on his knees, staring at the floor so intensely it looked like he was trying to burn a hole through it.
Wyatt stood nearby, broad shoulders pressed against the wall, arms crossed tightly over his broad chest. Angelica paced beside a vending machine, chewing at her black thumbnail with enough force to draw blood.
Penelope sat curled into herself in one of the plastic chairs, mascara smeared beneath red-rimmed eyes.
And August—my breath caught.
It’s not him. He’s fine.
Air finally filled my lungs fully, though it hurt to expand them after breathing shortly for so long.
August stood the second he saw me. His eyes were swollen nearly shut from crying.
His cheeks were blotchy and red. Freshly dyed black hair stuck up in uneven directions, as though he’d spent hours dragging trembling hands through it.
Even from across the room I could see the tension radiating from him.
His shoulders were drawn so tight they looked painful.
For one foolish, hopeful second I thought he might come toward me. Instead he stared at me with an expression I’d never seen on his face before.
Rage. Pure rage.
“Where the fuck were you?” he growled. The words cracked through the waiting room like a gunshot. The group looked up with it. Wyatt and Angelica looked as pissed as he was, and Penelope was wide eyed and terrified with eyes flashing between us.
I stopped so abruptly Andy, who I hadn’t realized was behind me, bumped into my back. His hands went to my shoulders, bracing himself, and August tracked the movement with a heated glare.
“Where the fuck were any of you?” he asked again, voice trembling. My mouth opened automatically.
“I was at church,” I said, confusion and panic tangling together inside my chest. “I texted Morgan this morning.”
August took a step forward. The movement was sharp enough that Wyatt immediately pushed off the wall.
“You were supposed to be with her.” His voice sounded rough, shredded raw from crying. “You promised you’d be there, Lola.”
My stomach dropped. My eyes flickered over the group again. Morgan. Where was Morgan?
I could still see her smile in the cafeteria. The way she’d talked about her party. The way she’d looked relieved when I said I’d come, and I had just walked past her.
Behind me, Andy stepped closer. His hand moved from my shoulder and landed firmly against August’s chest, holding him back. “Hey,” he snapped. “Watch it, man.”
August’s eyes dropped to Andy’s hand. Slowly. Deliberately. Then rose back to his face. His expression shifted from a fragile desperation to a meaner one. He slapped Andy’s hand away hard enough for the crack to echo.
“Or what?” he snarled. His voice shook. “You’ll hit me again?” August laughed. The sound was horrible. Halfway between a sob and something feral.
“Go ahead, buddy.” Every muscle in Andy’s body went rigid behind me. “The last time you did,” August continued, eyes locked on his, “your girlfriend felt so bad she let me fuck her on my couch.”
The waiting room vanished around me. Everything narrowed. The bright lights overhead. The pounding of blood in my ears. The sudden ringing silence that followed. My entire body went cold.
“What do you think she’ll give me this time?” August laughed, that manic smile I recognized from the fits my mother used to have grew widely across his blotchy face.
I sucked in a sharp breath.
Andy physically recoiled, not from August. But from me.
He turned slowly, looking down at me. It was as if my whole life flashed in front of me—vacation bible school in a church that couldn’t afford AC so we ate popsicles till we were sticky and blue tongued.
Playing on the same soccer team in elementary school, and Andy being kicked off the team when he got in a fight with another kid for kicking the ball at my head.
Freshman year when he held me when I cried after I lost my virginity to a guy I shouldn’t have.
Junior year, when he told me he had always loved me.
A month after, when I saw him shirtless for the first time—his body littered with bruises.
Football games, and parties, and school dances, and a thousand nights spent in a church counting the minutes to when we could touch each other.
Both of us starved for any sort of intimacy.
Oh God. I was going to be sick.
I’d seen Andy angry. I’d seen him jealous. I’d seen him scared. I had never seen him look heartbroken. Not even when I broke up with him, he had looked like he was disappointed, and hurt. But like he thought it was temporary.
Now, his face seemed to collapse inward. Like something fundamental inside him had finally cracked. His chest heaved with a jagged breath.
“Is that true?” The question came out so quietly it hurt more than if he’d screamed.
August laughed again. “Yeah, Lola.” His glassy eyed attention shifted toward me. “Is that true?”
I couldn’t answer. August knew I couldn’t lie with him here. Knew that I wouldn’t. He was daring me—forcing me to hurt Andy in a way I never wanted to. All the secrets I’d spent months balancing so carefully had finally collapsed under their own weight.
I was shaking my head, hot tears streaking down my face as I looked up at Andy. All I could see was that boy from our first time—bruised and vulnerable.
“Or do you even know what the truth is anymore?” August pushed again. I couldn’t look at him, too afraid that if I broke eye contact with Andy that I’d never get the chance to explain.
Maybe I didn’t deserve it. But at that moment, it felt like the only safe thing to hold onto. The smallest of my problems threatening to swallow me whole. One I could solve if I could just say the right thing.
“I’ll give you the truth.” August went on.
I opened my mouth, finally. “August—”
“No,” he cut me off. The word came out sharp enough to cut. “Your perfect little girlfriend has been cheating on you for months.”
The shame hit so hard I thought I might be sick.
I watched Andy absorb the words. Watched his jaw tighten. Watched his eyes glaze over. Watched him begin to understand.
But August wasn’t finished. His grief seemed to spill out of him now, unstoppable.
“Slumming it in my bedroom while you and your friends—who gave my sister a lethal amount of diet pills, by the way—partied across the street.”
There it was. The real wound. Not me. Morgan.
“When she told you she was studying, or sick, or at some bullshit charity thing…” He laughed bitterly. “She was with me.” Every word sounded like it physically hurt him. “Begging me to make her come because you couldn’t.”
I flinched. He said it like he wanted it to hurt. Like he needed someone else to be wounded in that moment. My eyes didn’t leave Andy. My vision was blurry, but I could see him holding back tears.
August moved, stepping closer to me. Andy’s fist balled at his side, his knuckles popping with the tension. August bent his knee, forcing himself into my line of vision. He’d done this a thousand times before, and every time it had sent a thrill through me. But now, it scared me.
Because beneath all the anger there was devastation. “And now…” His voice dropped. After everything we’d shared, after every whispered confession in dark rooms, I’d never heard him sound like that. “So help me God, Lola…” His throat worked. “You promised you’d look after her.”
I mouthed the words “I’m sorry.” But the sound wouldn’t come out.
“My goddamn sister is in surgery.” The words echoed through the room, through my veins, fingernails, and hair. “Having damage to the lining of her organs repaired.”
I felt physically ill. The room tilted slightly. My knees threatened to give out beneath me.
“And it’s because you taught her how to hide the thing that was killing her,” he said, so soft it sounded like a plea. Like he was begging me for it to not be true.
I opened my mouth again. Again nothing came out.
I’d known. Handed her concealer, and painted her nails. Stood outside the bathroom countless times over the last few weeks. And I’d never told August how bad it’d gotten.
Andy turned away. The movement was slow, like every muscle in his body hurt.
“Andy,” My voice broke. He didn’t stop. “Andy, wait.”
The automatic doors opened. Closed, and he was gone.
I stared after him helplessly. Part of me wanted to run after him. Part of me wanted to collapse. Part of me wanted to rewind the entire day and start over. Hell, the last two months.
I wanted to go back to the day I’d sat with August in the courtyard. To break up with Andy when he came to the library. To tell him I wasn’t in love with him anymore.
To tell August that when I said I wanted all of him that first time in the hallway, that I meant it. That he was enough for me.
Instead I looked back at August. Breathing hard, and eyes swollen. Looking as broken as I’d ever seen another human being.
“I’m sorry.” The words sounded pathetic the second they left my mouth. Worthless and tiny.
August shook his head. “Go on.” His voice had gone flat. “Chase after him.”
I took a step closer.
“No. We both know he’s who you want to apologize to right now.” he said quietly. Like he knew it was true, and didn’t need a voice in his head to convince him of it.
“No,” I whispered. The answer came immediately. I reached for him. For his hand, or shirt, or any part of him he’d let me have.
“I want you. Honest.” The tears blurred him.
His fingers twitched in mine. For a second I thought he might let me in. Instead he pulled away. The rejection hurt worse than anything he had said.
“I want you,” I whispered again. “Always.”
August closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, they looked exhausted. Not like an eighteen year old boy, but someone who’d finally run out of hope.
“One honest person isn’t enough for you, Lola. You only exist when you’ve got a room full of liars looking right at you.”