Page 96 of Training the Heart

My heartbeat accelerates and squeezes in my chest as I realize there are two things I’ve never been more certain of than I am at this very moment.

One: I’m wildly in love with Ivy. I not only love her, Ineedher, the way the moon needs the sun to set every night just so it can rise.

Two: There’s no me without her anymore—she just doesn’t know it yet.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Ivy

“Ivy …”

“Ivy …” a voice says again. A firm, warm hand rubs my arm and my eyes fly open. I look at the clock. Seven a.m. Thursday. The only day we don’t get up at the crack of dawn because Cole handles the morning chores and I don’t have to be at the barn until eight. After Wade made me the dinner of my dreams, before we made our way to bed where he reminded me one more time how hard it is going to be to ever leave here, I fell into a fast, deep sleep, so much so that I didn’t even wake up through the night, much less to my phone buzzing on the nightstand just now. I pick it up just as the call ends and heads to voicemail. I focus and jolt up in bed. Wade, sensing something is wrong, jolts up beside me.

“What is it?”

“Fourteen calls from my mama. What the hell?” I don’t even have time to rub my eyes before it rings again. Dread fills my soul as I answer.

“Mama,” I say frantically. “What’s wrong?”

“Ivy …”

I blink at the voice that doesn’t fit on the other end of the line.

“Brad?” I ask, not knowing how to make sense of anything right now.

Wade growls beside me.

“Where’s my mama?”

“She’s been in a car accident.”

“What?” All the blood drains from my face and I feel like I’m floating. “Where is she? Why did they …?” Wade grips my thigh to settle me. I breathe.

“Where are you?”

“She’s in x-ray. We’re at the hospital in Pendalton,” he says, mentioning the hospital a few counties over from Jellico. What was she doing so early in the morning near Pendalton?

“She’s asking for you, she’s in and out. She’s got a pretty good bump on her head and her wrist is all fucked up. I think the glass cut her up a bit too. I’ve been trying to call for almost an hour,” Brad adds.

“Fucking shit, shit, shit.” I’m somehow already standing as I mutter under my breath, and so is Wade, tossing on his own clothes as I do and he has no idea what’s even going on yet.

“I’m on my way,” I say and then I hang up.

An hour and fifteen minutes later, Wade and I are pushing through the doors at Pendalton Community Hospital. It’s a miracle I even have shoes on; I don’t even remember the drive here, I just know I have to get her into a program. What if someone else was hurt because she was drinking and then got behind thewheel? What Wade must think of her. He hasn’t really spoken other than to ask me if I’m alright or tell me she’s going to be okay. After a thirty-minute phone call with Cassie to fill her in, where she proceeded to tell me this isn’t the first time my mother has driven drunk, I was grateful for the silence because if I tried to talk after that I would’ve burst into tears.

As I’m speeding through the waiting area, I’m muttering under my breath, “I should’ve been here. I should’ve made sure she got the help she needed.”

“You can only help people as much as they want to help themselves,” Wade whispers in my ear, squeezing my shoulder as we make our way to the reception desk. I don’t know if he heard me mutter that or he was just assuming he knew the thoughts running through my head, but just those words threaten to make me lose it. I’ve already lost my dad; I can’t lose my mom too.

I make my way across the small emergency waiting room to a glass enclosure. The nurse behind the reception desk has dark curly blond hair and types quickly into his computer, ignoring my existence. I wait a few minutes and then begin to tap my nails on the counter without thinking, Finally, he finishes and looks up at me, pushing his glasses up his nose as he speaks.

“Are you looking for someone?”

“My mother, Glenda Spencer, was brought in a few hours ago from a car accident.”

He nods and goes back to typing. “She’s being stitched up right now, and your fiancé is here. You can go back to see her, Room C-22.”

I don’t miss Wade’s grunt at the wordfiancé.Nonetheless, he slips his hand over mine to remind me we’re in this together, and we start to move. I realize somewhere in the back of my mind that this will be the first time Wade meets my mother. The last time I saw her was in November and she was a little worse for wear when I went home for a visit. I’ve meant to get backmore, we’ve just been so deep in training. A wave of embarrassment for my mother’s addiction and guilt for her choices washes over me—that is until I turn the corner to my mother’s room and see Brad at her bedside looking like he’s actually worried, waiting for her to return from being stitched. Now the only feeling I have is rage.

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