Page 3 of Fall for Me

That was real.

I let go of his hand. Then, he was gone, his work boots thudding down the hall.

* * *

“Try this,” Cass said, angling the straw toward my mouth.

Cassandra was holding a cup of orange juice with an accordion straw, her expression pleading. She was the oldest of the five of us—together we bookended our three brothers in age—and she often took on the mom role. Only, she didn’t know how to be a mom—she knew how to be a CEO, so that meant a balance of worrying and providing direction, and I couldn’t take either, not right now.

Not when all I could think about was what they weren’t telling me.

I shook my head. “Cass, please.” But the movement sent searing pain through my face, and renewed heaviness to my guts.

It had been two days since I woke up, and this was what I knew: I was in the hospital because I’d been in a car accident with Seamus Reilly. He’d given me a ride home, and we’d been t-boned by a drunk driver. I was unconscious for two nights and three days. I had lacerations and bruises all over my body as well as a concussion. But that was it. Miraculously, despite the fact that we rolled, I’d been spared life-threatening injuries. Seamus, aside from bruising and minor cuts, was okay too. Not a broken bone between us apparently. I knew I was lucky to be alive and in as good a shape as I was.

Here’s what I didn’t know: why I was in the car with Seamus Reilly in the first place. Yes, they told me he’d given me a ride home. But how? Seamus and I had never hung out on our own. Not once. It didn’t make any sense. And Seamus hadn’t been back to explain it to me.

But the biggest thing between me and Cass and Dad right now—yes, that had been my father and yes, he’d come back the minute he’d heard about my accident—was my face. They told me I’d suffered a laceration on my face—that’s why it hurt so much. They’d told me about it: the cut was deep and ran from my forehead to my cheek.

But they wouldn’t let me see it.

Specifically, Cass wouldn’t let me see it. She’d been by my side almost constantly for the past two days, and when she wasn’t here, Dad or one of my three brothers was. But Cass had everyone convinced that it would be too big a shock to see it now.

I could have fought her on it. I know the doctors warned her I needed to see. But I could see the fear on her face when I shifted and felt the pain there—or when I brought it up, which I’d stopped doing now. I’d been scared, too, when they told me about it yesterday. For my whole adult life, I’d ridden on my looks. Early on, so long as I smiled and nodded, I could get away with being quiet. With not sticking my neck out. And for the past year, I’d used my face as a ticket to self-destruct. I used it to get me into bars. To get free drinks. To go home with strange men to try to find whatever it was I was looking for.

Closeness. Connection. Something to fill the bottomless pit in my chest that had taken up residence since Mom died.

But now, I was changed. I didn’t look like the same person who got into Seamus’s truck. I didn’t feel like the same person either. I didn’t know who I was now.

I also couldn’t remember getting into Seamus’s truck.

Once more I thought of his shadow, how he’d sat in that chair next to my bed. Cass had been there too, apparently, but I’d only seen him.

“Chelsea!” Cass said gently now.

I’d been staring off into nothing again.

She shook the juice.

The last thing I wanted to do was drink orange juice. But my older sister’s face looked so desperate I took a sip. It burned as it slid down my throat. I cringed, wanting badly to spit it out.

“Perfect,” she said, ignoring my expression. “One more.”

I shook my head and pain reverberated across my skull. I groaned. “Cass, I don’t want to, please.”

I wasn’t thirsty. I wasn’t hungry. I also wasn’t normally this uncooperative, but for once I didn’t care.

“Chelsea, you have to eat. They’re not going to discharge you if they think you’re not eating.”

“That’s not true.”

Quince Valley Hospital was a small facility that served all the neighboring communities. Overcrowded, they called it. I’d helped Mom through a hospital stay here once, and knew they needed to move patients through the beds as quickly as possible.

Cass sighed. “Okay, fine. But you still need to eat. How about these?” She lifted the plastic cover off the tray on the table next to the bed, revealing a plate with a clotted bunch of pale-yellow eggs on one side, glistening with grease. Next to them was a long-since cooled square of grayish toast with a sad smear of margarine in the middle, still thick and cold.

My stomach turned. “I’m sorry.”

She put the plate back. “Yeah, I wouldn’t eat that either.”

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