Page 4 of Holding On

Chapter Two

Eight Weeks Later

Ethan

My mother walks briskly through the living room to the kitchen, then back to where I'm sitting on the couch. She puts her hands on her bony hips. "Ethan, this house is a disaster. Haven't you cleaned even once since you moved in?"

I point to my leg, which is still in a cast. "How do you expect me to clean? I can't even walk."

She sighs, then shakes her head. "Then I'll have to hire someone to do it. You can't live like this."

She takes off down the hall that leads to the bedrooms. She'll be even more upset when she sees my room. There are dirty clothes scattered everywhere, a few half eaten sandwiches, empty soda bottles.

When I rented this house it was spotless, but it took less than a week for it to become a mess. That's only partially due to my lack of mobility. The other reason is because I just don't care.

I don't care about anything right now.

I've shut down. Completely shut down in an attempt to protect myself from the excruciating pain I would feel if I even let myself go back to that night and the days that followed.

They were all killed. Jason, Lyndsay, and Kasey. They were dead by the time the ambulance arrived. I was the only survivor, and that's only because of Kasey. The SUV finally stopped rolling that night when it hit a tree. A large branch shot through the window and impaled Kasey's body. If she hadn't been on top of me, the branch would've gone right through my chest, killing me.

She saved my life. A girl I'd known for less than an hour saved my life. And in saving my life, she lost hers.

I passed out before the ambulance arrived but I've been told it took firefighters almost an hour to get her body off me. She was pinned in place, her legs tangled in the crushed metal, the tree branch wedged in her torso.

Thank God I wasn't conscious to see that. I don't think I'd be able to live with that image in my head. The memories I already have of that night are horrific enough. I can't escape them. They fill my dreams in the few hours of sleep I manage to get each night. And when I'm awake, they consume my thoughts. The only way I'm able to survive the memories is to detach all emotion from them, leaving me numb. Lifeless.

My father paces the floor, his phone pressed to his ear. "We are NOT going below ten mil. Tell them we're done negotiating if they toss out another lowball offer like that."

He's been on the phone since he walked in the door. There was no quick hello or wave of his hand. Not even a nod in my direction. He completely ignored me.

I'm dead to him. Worthless, now that I can't play football. That's the only reason he ever paid attention to me. I was his ticket to even greater wealth and success. He'd planned to be my agent, representing the young rookie that everyone said was 'the one to watch' come draft time. First round pick. Set to make millions. My dad would be there by my side through it all, smiling for the cameras, his hand cupped around my shoulder in an attempt to convince the public we had the perfect father-son relationship.

It was his dream for me to play in the pros. A dream he's had since I was a kid. But now, that dream may be over.

The accident crushed my leg. Fractured my femur so badly it damaged the surrounding tissue. I had surgery right after it happened and might need another if my leg doesn't heal right.

As for my other injuries? I cracked a few ribs and got some scrapes and bruises, basically minor injuries considering how bad it could've been. At least I'm alive.

You'd think my dad would be happy about that. Happy I'm alive when I could've easily been killed. But he's not, because my leg affects my career and that's all he cares about.

After the accident, he made sure to tell me how pissed he was, and then he blamed me for what happened. I was in the hospital and had just woken from surgery, and there was my dad, standing over my bed, yelling at me for fucking up my career. Telling me it was my fault. That I never should've got in the car with a drunk driver. That he taught me better than that, and that now we both have to pay the price for my mistake.

The guilt was too much and it got even worse when the doctor came in and told me my friends were dead.

It was then that I shut down. I turned off all emotion and tried to figure out what to do next. I couldn't go home. There was no way I'd survive living with my parents again. I'd had three years of freedom, not even going back for summer breaks, so moving back into their house wasn't an option.

I'd already leased an apartment here for the summer but it was on the second floor so wouldn't work for the month or two I'd be spending in a wheelchair and the weeks after that that I'd be on crutches.

While still in the hospital, I went online and found a house for rent. A one level house that's handicap accessible. Having to even search for listings that were handicap accessible blew my mind. I've been an athlete for most of my life, so calling myself 'handicapped' even for a short period of time, seemed surreal. Like I was talking about someone else.

"How can you live like this?" my mother says as she walks back into the living room. "There's rotting food in your bedroom." She takes out her phone. "I'm calling a cleaning company this instant." She scrolls through her phone.

"We're not taking the goddamn offer!" my dad yells at whoever he's talking to. "Tell them it'll have to wait until I get back. We're not doing this over the phone." He pauses to listen, glancing at me for the first time since he arrived. "I don't know. Maybe I could be there tomorrow."

Tomorrow. He's been here less than five minutes and he's already planning to leave? My parents were supposed to stay for the week but I knew it'd never happen. They're type A personalities. If they aren't constantly busy, they go crazy. I've never seen them relax, even on vacation. So spending a week with their son in small town Ohio is enough to give them a mental breakdown.

My dad finishes his call, then sits across from me in the leather chair, dressed in his custom-made suit, his ten thousand dollar watch peeking through the sleeve of his dress shirt. His hair is slicked back, dyed dark brown but left with just enough streaks of gray to convey a sense of authority and experience to the young men entrusting him with their multimillion dollar careers.

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