Page 38 of Our Ruined Beginnings

His dark hair is swept back off his face. The woven blanket is tucked up high, but leaves his arms and chest exposed, along with the various tubes and wires connected to him.

It’s Caleb—of course it is—but he looks so unlike himself. So still and lifeless. Almost as if he could be dead.

A shiver racks through me as I remember how close that had been to becoming a reality. All of the articles I’d read about how long the doctors and surgeons had battled to save him. How he had slipped into a coma. How we still have no idea of the outcome.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything to do with the accident, but the details haunt me all the same, and now, the aftermath stares me in the face.

Tears spill over my lashes as I make my way toward him and lay a hand gently on his forearm. I flinch slightly as I touch him, his stillness unnerving me, before wrapping my fingers around his. I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve seen him with my own eyes. Seven months. We haven’t been apart that long since we met.

Now that I have his hand in mine, so unexpectedly warm, I don’t know how I’ll let it go. Awkwardly, I hook a foot around the chair behind me and drag it closer to the bed, folding a leg underneath me so I can rest my head on where our skin meets.

Then, stroking his hand with my fingers, I let myself cry.

Heaving sobs shake my body and soak our hands, and I’m sure the sheets underneath them. Here, I don’t have to wear a straight face or fight in battles I never signed up for. I’m just a girl who lost her best friends and now has nowhere she belongs.

I weep for her. For Caleb. For us.

For the future that was ruined before it could begin.

Madden

The moment I shove the door open, my mom comes barreling into me. She folds her lithe arms around my waist, wrapping me up in a tight hug, and I drop my bags to the floor, tucking her into my body and tugging her toward the kitchen.

“I missed you, love,” she says, before she lifts onto her tiptoes and drops a kiss on my cheek. She grabs a couple mugs from the cupboard and gestures to the empty barstools, but I hesitate.

“I’m really tired, Mom. Can we do this later?” I feel tired all the time lately, like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders, but I also don’t want to disappoint her. She doesn’t give me the chance either way.

“Nonsense! I want to hear all about your semester. How is soccer going?”

“It’s been good,” I say blandly, and smile, biting back the guilt that hits me with the lie. There has been nothing good about this semester, but the last person I’m going to tell that to is my mom. She’s always wanted the best for me—the bestofme—and if she learned the kind of person I’d become recently, it would eat her alive.

“And how is Evan?”

“He’s fine.” I’m sure she’ll see him plenty over the holidays; he can tell her himself.

“Have you seen Harper around much?”

My stomach curdles at the mention of Harper, not expecting to hear her name from my mom. She tried to ask me about her a ton right after the accident first happened, but she gave up pretty quickly when she saw the reaction it got. It’s probably the worst I’ve treated my mom ever, and the guilt of that sits unhappily alongside everything else I have to feel guilty about.

Even knowing that, I reply with a curt no. Taking a large gulp of the still too-hot coffee, I go to stand, but my mom’s hand comes to rest on my arm, a not-so-subtle request to simmer down and stay where I am.

“Madden,” she says gently, as if trying not to spook a wild animal. “I saw Harper earlier in town. She … wasn’t in a good way.”

My brow furrows instinctively, something my mom no doubt clocks, but I bite back the immediate question I want to ask to check up on her. I don’t care how she is, remember? She nods with a sad smile at my reaction, then stands straighter, dropping her hand from mine. “I invited her to stay with us.”

I don’t react for a second—I can’t—but it only takes a moment for my disbelief to make way for anger. I stand, knocking the stool over in the process.

“You didwhat?!”

“Who do you think you’re talking to with that tone, Madden?” my dad asks as he strides into the kitchen, standing at Mom’s back like a sentinel.

“Has she told you what she’s done? What, are you gonna make Harper nice and cozy in Caleb’s bedroom?” I ask, turning back to my mom.

“Sheis your mother and my wife, and you’ll have a damn sight more respect than that for her if you want to remain in this home. We raised you better than this.” My dad looks more furious than I’ve seen him since the summer, and my shoulders deflate. I’m being an asshole—I know I am—but I swear Harper Delaney turns me into the worst version of myself.

Running a hand down my face, I sigh and walk around the counter, pulling my mom into a hug.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I say sincerely. “It just fucks me up … what happened.”

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