Page 4 of Fall for Me

I watched as she scanned the table looking for anything else I might go for.

“Cass, you don’t need to do this, you know.”

“Do what?”

“Stay.”

“I’m not leaving, Chels.”

I didn’t want her to stay. I didn’t want any of them to be here. Not my brothers, not even my dad who, yesterday, I’d cried with emotion as he hugged me, the familiar scent of him confusing and painful. Where Mom and I had been unusually close, Dad and I had… not. Dad was like my siblings—he said whatever was on his mind, even if that meant something I’d told him in confidence. Only Mom knew that even the smallest real thing I shared—a hope, a fear—was a big deal. She was the only one I’d ever trusted like that.

Dad without Mom was much worse than him not being here at all.

Guilt ran through me at all those terrible thoughts.

I loved them all so much. But even now, with me lying in a hospital bed, when more than one of them was here they were so loud. Sometimes they even talked about me in the third person, like just because I was quiet I couldn’t hear them.

It was like being a little kid all over again. I couldn’t think. I just wanted to be alone.

And, even though my stomach twisted when I thought about it; even though I was terrified, I wanted to see my face.

“What about work?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light. “Don’t you have to manage?” My sister was the CEO of our family’s business, the Rolling Hills resort. She took it over after Mom passed last year. I was the Events Planner, and my sister would have been my boss if I hadn’t also been part owner. It was a weird situation, all five of us co-owning the business, but it worked.

Mostly.

“They’ll survive without me,” Cassandra said. “I put Marika on point.” Marika had stood in for Cassandra while we went through an operational review this spring, to try to sort out how to get the Rolling Hills back on its feet. We now had a plan in place that we were in the beginning stages of executing, and that relied heavily on some of the additional revenue my event management team would be bringing in.

Only now I was here, grounded by this accident.

I asked Cassandra about work yesterday because while my personal life may have been a train wreck, I was good at my job. It felt like the one thing I was still good at, even if my heart wasn’t in it anymore. She’d told me Blake, her boyfriend, had connected her with some flashy New York event planner. That they were going to fill my spot until I was ready to come back. “You’ll take as long as you need to recover, Chelsea,” Cassandra had said, and I could see that was more of an order than a request. When I pressed her for how long, she said the person’s contract was going to be six weeks.

It was the first time I’d felt relieved since opening my eyes.

“Chelsea? You keep disappearing.”

I almost laughed, even as I felt my throat growing tight. When I was a little girl, I wished I could disappear. I was always so overwhelmed by the loud rambunctiousness of our family crammed into our apartment that sometimes I hid, somewhere dark and quiet. Only Mom seemed to ever notice when I was gone. Only Mom knew I needed the quiet.

“I wish Mom was here,” I said. Tears welled in my eyes now and I pinched them shut, willing them to go away. But when I did, I saw a sudden flash of the night sky, speckled with stars. I felt a sense of spinning, through the air.

I felt Cass take my hand. When I opened my eyes again everything was blurry.

My sister squeezed my hand. “I do too.” Her eyes were wet.

But Mom was gone.

“But everyone else is coming back soon—Eli’s on his way. Jude said either twenty minutes or an hour, you know him. Blake will be here by six—he had to head back to New York last night for work…”

I grimaced, fading out. Dad had been here all night, until Cass came back at dawn and insisted he go home and get some rest. My three brothers had all been here for ages yesterday, along with Blake, Cass’s boyfriend. While I loved seeing them all, it had turned into a mess of noise, the way it always did. Cass must have seen that the thought of the horde coming back wasn’t a comfort, because she said, “We can do visits one at a time, if you want. Until you’re feeling better—”

“I’m fine,” I said.

I was most definitely not fine. But I didn’t want her to worry. I just wanted… I just wanted to be alone, honestly. I wanted peace and quiet, just like I always wished I had as a little girl.

“Tell me what I can do, Chelsea. I want to help you.”

Now she was near tears. Guilt gripped my chest. I knew Cassandra wanted to help. But she also wanted me to open up to her.

Mom was the only person I used to be able to do that with. She was the only one who knew me so well I didn’t have to explain myself.

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