Page 5 of Fall for Me

“Okay, listen,” Cass said, blinking in that way she did when I knew she was trying to push her emotions aside. “How about I go down to Betsey’s and get you a muffin? You love those, right?”

For the first time since I woke up, I felt something close to a positive response. Betsey’s Cafe, a Quince Valley favorite, baked all their stuff fresh. Mom used to take me there when I was a teenager, when she sensed I needed to get away from our raucous family. No matter how busy mom was with the hotel—and she was always busy—she was never too busy to take me to Betsey’s, particularly if I needed a pick-me-up. My mouth watered at the thought of one of Betsey’s perfect moist lemony crumb and spontaneous burst of blueberry.

But also, with Cass gone, I could turn one of my unknowns to a known.

I started to raise my hand up to my face to feel the bandage but caught myself just in time.

“Okay,” I conceded, tucking my hand under my leg. “A muffin.”

Cassandra clapped her hands and grinned.

Guilt ran through me. This was the first time I’d seen her smile today. Which was unusual, given all she did was smile these days, ever since coming out about her relationship with Blake.

Then Cass frowned. “I should wait for Eli.”

“No,” I said, a little too quickly.

I knew just what Eli would be like when he got here.

My brother Jude, closest in age to me, was the lover, the playful one who hid his feelings behind his jokes and good looks and flirtatious charm.

My next oldest brother, Griffin, was reserved; measured with his feelings. Stoic but fiercely loyal.

Eli though, he was the brother who got the hottest under the collar. He was gregarious and smart and had this megawatt grin that made it look like he was easygoing. But he felt everything the hardest too, and if anyone was going to put a hole through the wall to avenge whatever stroke of bad luck had put me in this position, it would be Eli. He’d bitten it back when everyone else had been here yesterday, but if he was here when I went in and looked at my face, he’d lose it.

And now that the possibility had opened up, I desperately wanted to see.

“I can manage on my own for twenty minutes.” I held up the nursing call button before she could remind me. “See? I’ll be fine. Now please, I want the muffin. Now that you said it, it’s all I can think about.”

Cassandra grinned, picking up her purse and blazer from the chair. “Okay, I won’t be gone more than fifteen, in case Eli’s late.”

“I’ll be fine, Cass.”

Her smile faltered, but she nodded.

When the door clicked shut behind her, I took a breath, relishing, for a moment, the quiet. The sounds of the hospital still filtered in through the door, but at least they were out there. At least, for a moment, I was alone.

I’d only have a minute. I flipped back the thin hospital blanket, grimacing at the bandages on my legs. There were three of them. One ran along my right thigh. One wrapped around my right foot, the other was on the inside of my left calf.

But the worst was the one they wouldn’t let me see. It was the windshield that had gotten me, the doctor said. It had separated from the frame and twisted into the cab, slicing my face.

The doctor, a woman who looked to be somewhere between my age and Cass’s 35, kept telling me I was lucky. “People don’t often survive trauma such as you went through.” But she kept saying it. Lucky. She said it enough times that I knew she was trying to compensate.

I slid my feet onto the cold vinyl of the hospital floor.

“Let it heal a little first,” Cass had insisted, worrying her hands together. “It looks much worse than it is.”

A cart with a squeaky wheel rolled by outside.

I grasped hold of the IV pole, crying out at the pinch in my foot. My chest ached where my ribs were still so bruised. But with a creak of four tiny wheels, I shuffled around the end of the bed, closing what felt like a hundred miles to the bathroom. Pain ripped through my foot where the bandage brushed the floor—walking was agony.

But I had to see.

The bathroom door was closed, the gap between it and the floor a strip of dark shadow. My hand was damp with sweat, from nerves or exertion, I wasn’t sure. I pressed my palm against the door, pausing as the cold from the door sucked up into my skin. For the briefest moment, a desperate jolt of fear rocketed through me. Maybe I should figure out the other things first.

What happened with Seamus? Why had I gotten into his truck? Even what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life felt easier, at this moment, than opening this door and looking in the mirror.

I knew this was the last moment I’d have to picture myself as I was. To know myself as the woman before the accident. I knew I was changed, and it wasn’t just going to be in the way I looked.

---