Page 72 of Our Ruined Beginnings

You okay?I mouth, and she nods, though she says nothing more as she pulls in a shuddering breath, running her fingers over the comforter covering Caleb’s legs. I can’t even begin to imagine how my parents feel in this moment, seeing their child awake for the first time in months.

With that thought in mind, I force myself to stand and say a quick goodbye before I start out of the hospital room, hopefully for the last time.

“Mad,” Mom calls out to me before I reach the end of the hall, her steps hurried to catch up.

“What’s up?”

“All Harper ever wanted was you.”

“Mom, I don’t think—”

“No. Your time for talking is done. My turn now,” she says, propping her hands on her hips. “You and Caleb can come up with schemes galore, but none of it matters. The only thing Harper ever wanted was you.”

“I don’t think she wants that now, though, Mom. I really fucked it all up.”

She sighs, taking my hand in hers and tugging me toward her. Despite our height difference, I’ll never not feel like a child when she turns thatI’m so disappointed in youlook on me. “You did, and probably not for the last time in your hopefully long life. But that’s okay. You apologize, and you show her you can give her the only thing she wants.”

“And that’s me?” I deadpan, not feeling remotely warmed by these sentiments.

Mom nods. “That’s you. Harper wants someone that is going to love her unconditionally. Her parents have been awful—trulyawful—to her almost her whole life. Can you remember the first day Caleb brought her home? Do you remember why?”

Shaking my head, I try to rack my brain, thinking back to that very first day, but I come up empty.

“They forgot to pick her up from school. She was in the first grade, and her own mom and dad forgot to come and get her. Caleb hadn’t even spoken to the poor girl up until that moment, but he begged me to bring her home.

“After that, she was at our house way more than she was ever at her own. Because she wanted family, and love. But when you two became friends, I think she started seeing a different future than the one she always envisioned. She doesn’t need your apologies, Madden. She just needs you. Show up. Prove to her you aren’t going to run again. Believe in her. The rest of it you can deal with, one day at a time. But don’t let her walk away from you—not unless you can’t see that future with her—because that would be the cruelest thing you could do.”

“Mad?” Caleb calls down the hall, and I walk back to duck my head back inside. “I decided you can wait. I miss my best friend.”

Harper

The parking lot is quiet, and the lone bench I’m sitting on—tucked behind a series of trees that block me from view—has long grown cold beneath my leggings and hoodie in the hours I’ve been sitting here. My fingertips move over the rim of the empty to-go cup in my hand, but I can’t bring myself to move.

I watched him go in. Madden. It’s been hours, and the thought of the two of them reconciling sends the most bittersweet ache through my heart. It’s unbridled happiness that they even get that chance, therapy for my still guilt-ridden soul that it’s here now, and a stinging pain that I’m not there to see it.

Caleb woke up this morning, and still, I haven’t found the courage to visit my best friend.

The moment I got the call from his mom, letting me know what had happened and asking if I could find Madden because his phone was ringing out, hope bloomed in my chest, but something else shattered entirely.

I’d called Kinsley after the whole showdown with Madden, so she’d offered to go and find him, shoving her card in my hand and calling a car to the airport.

I’d shut down completely on the journey here, making it in record time, but I barely remember the journey, focused only on getting here. Yet the second I was here and his parents greeted me outside, I couldn’t go in. Not before Madden.

The last six months of hellish memories I’d been clinging to exploded, ricocheting through me until I was a mess of nerves and unspent emotions. I understood it then—his behavior and emotions. I was feeling them too.

Caleb is his brother—his other half—and to see him stolen away, stuck in a land of sleep for months… I can’t begin to imagine what that can do to a person. There is little to justify the way he’s treated me, and while he was in the wrong, perhaps I was too.

I blamed him for not reaching out to me; not wanting to hear what I had to say. But I’d done the same. Hiding my phone, hiding myself from the world. Unable to bear the brunt of guilt and blame I placed on myself.

How could I ever have expected him to feel differently?

The vibration of my phone pulls me from my thoughts, centering me back in the present, and I sigh, tugging it from my pocket. My breath stutters at the name flashing on the screen, one I’d convinced myself I wouldn’t ever see again.

Caleb:There’s a hot chocolate and a blanket waiting in my room for you … if you ever decide to get your pussy ass in here to say hello.

Despite myself, I chuckle at his words, and a tear rolls free from my lashes. Typical Caleb.

Harper:Are you sure?

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