Page 35 of Faking the Play

Amelia put down her spoon, her focus completely on me now.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but she’s been brought to Poudre Valley with severe injuries resulting from an assault. She is conscious and she requested that we call you.”

“I’m on my way,” I said. “Thank you.”

I ended the call and turned my attention to Amelia, preparing to tell her that we were going to have to cut our date short. I’d take her back to her dorm, of course, but then I needed to go.

“Is she okay?” Amelia asked.

I nodded. “She’s in the hospital, but it sounds like she’s going to be okay. I just have to go.”

“Wehave to go.”

I paused before standing. “What?”

“I’m not letting you go back there alone.” Her chin had that stubborn set to it that I recognized all too well. “You’re not dealing with this by yourself.”

“Don’t you have class tomorrow?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I’ll call Logan and Ryan if you’d rather they go, but one of us is going with you.”

I didn’t ask her why. I didn’t need to. My three childhood friends were the only people who knew the full truth about the shit that went on with my mom and the assholes she dated. The burn scar on my arm where one of those boyfriends had burned me with his lighter when I was six wasn’t the only permanent mark on my body. Until I hit my growth spurt at fourteen, there hadn’t been a week when I didn’t have a bruise or something else.

Sometimes, it wasn’t just the boyfriends.

Mom had struggled with drugs and alcohol for as long as I could remember, but never bad enough that I was ever taken away from her. I’d been good at hiding things, including the bruises she sometimes gave me when I was too loud or too messy or too whatever. She tried to get clean more than once, but those boyfriends had always pulled her back in. The most recent one was the same as all the rest of them, and I had no doubt he’d been the one to put my mom in the hospital.

A hand on my arm startled me, and I realized I’d been staring off into space for a few minutes.

“Do you still keep a bag of clothes in your car?” Amelia asked.

I nodded.

“Okay, then we can leave from here,” she said. “We’ll go straight to the hospital, and we’ll stay as long as you need to. Then we’ll go back to my house. My parents are spending a couple weeks with my aunt in Louisiana because she—” Amelia made a dismissive gesture. “Not important. What is important is that we can stay at the house and not worry about having to get a hotel or anything.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, unsure if I was talking about her coming with me or her offer for us to stay at her parents’ house. Or maybe I was talking about something different altogether.

Maybe I was the one who wasn’t sure about anything.

“Come on.” She held out her hand and I clung to it as we made our way to my car. “Keys.”

“What?”

“I’m not letting you drive like this,” she said. “You can text the guys on the way, and if you need to reach out to your coach, you can do that too. That way, when we get to the hospital, you can focus on your mom.”

While Amelia adjusted the seat to fit her much shorter body, I watched her, loving how calm and capable she was. She’d forgotten that part of herself with all the shit that was going on. I made a promise to myself that I’d make certain she found that again, that she remembered what an amazing person she was.

But first, there was something I didn’t want to wait to tell her.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’d do it for me,” she said. “If something had happened to one of my parents—”

“Not for coming with me,” I said. “Or, not just for that. No, thank you for not trying to tell me that I shouldn’t care about her after everything she’s done.”

Amelia turned toward me and put her hand on my cheek. “She’s your mom. I’m not going to tell you how to feel about her.” She paused, and then added, “But if she says anything mean to you, I will kick her ass, even if she’s already in the hospital.”

I smiled, which I knew was what Amelia wanted. Then, she leaned forward and brushed her lips across mine in a quick kiss before turning her attention back to the car and our trip.

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