Ethan is stoic when he appears in the waiting room. My brother’s been a doctor for years, but since I don’t spend much time at the hospital, I’m not used to seeing him in medical scrubs. Something about the sight of him looking so official makes this nightmare seem too real.
“Is she okay?” My voice cracks.
“She’s stable.” He grimaces and looks away. “Where’s Colton?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.” I shake my head. “Nobody knows. He’s not answering his phone or replying to messages.”
“Is Ava around?” he asks, referring to Ellie’s best friend and Colton’s sister.
Ava McKinley’s been pacing the halls for the last hour, disappearing down the corridor and appearing every ten minutes or so to check for an update. Now she comes around the corner and walks straight up to Ethan. “Is she okay?”
My brother drags a hand through his hair and shakes his head. “It’s too early to say.”
Ava’s hand trembles as she lifts it to her lips, and I just feel . . . so fucking numb. Colton’s baby just died, and he’s not even here to hold Ellie.
“Do you have contact information for her family?” Ethan asks. “Her mom or a sibling or . . .”
“I don’t,” Ava says, “but I know where to find it. I’ll call them for you.”
“Good. They should come quickly.”
I grab my brother’s arm. “What does that mean?”
Ethan looks dead tired, but worse than that, I don’t see the hope in his eyes I so desperately need to see right now. “She has swelling in her brain, so they’re putting her into a medically induced coma.”
“What?”
Ava covers her mouth with her hand. “Oh my God.”
“Let me see her,” I say.
Ethan shakes his head. “Levi, come on. You know I can’t do that.”
“Fuck you, Ethan. Let me back there.”
“No one can see her right now,” he says firmly. “You should go home. Get some rest. You can’t help her sitting out here.”
I lower myself into a waiting room chair and glare at my brother. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He shakes his head. “Suit yourself.” Then to Ava, he says, “Contact her family.”
Ava nods, and we both watch him go. When my brother’s gone, Ava turns to me. “Don’t you have a race in Indianapolis tomorrow—today?” She looks at her watch. “Shouldn’t you be leaving?”
I shake my head. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She nods, and I know she understands. Ava wouldn’t leave Ellie right now either.
I squeeze the knots at the back of my neck, where tension has coiled tighter and tighter since I got the call. Where the fuck is Colton?
Levi
Saturday, October 20th
Six weeks later . . .
I pull up to the two-story brick house and cut the engine. Ava reaches across the center console and squeezes my arm.
It’s been a quiet drive to Northern Indiana, with Ava and I lost in our thoughts. We’re equal parts eager to see Ellie again and hurt that we have to show up unannounced to get the chance.
Ava absently rubs her belly. She’s only three months pregnant, but she can’t stop touching her stomach, as if she needs some sort of reassurance the baby is still here. After everything she’s lost in the last two months, I can’t blame her. “If she doesn’t want to see us, we’ll just leave,” she says.
I glare at the house, a run-down split-level. The lawn is a couple of weeks overdue for a cut, and there are more weeds than flowers in the beds around the door. I’m pretty sure if Ellie wanted to see us, she’d take our calls and we wouldn’t have had to drive down here.
The last time I saw her, she’d been moved from Jackson Harbor’s small hospital to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. She was still unconscious, still in a medically induced coma, still attached to half a dozen machines that hummed and beeped all around her. The second her sister realized I was Colton’s friend, she threw a fit, insisted I leave, and threatened to call the police if I came back.
Since Ellie was released and taken to her family home in Dyer, Indiana, I’ve called, but it goes straight to voicemail. I’ve texted, but she never replies. I’ve even logged on to the Facebook account I otherwise neglect and sent her a message, but no matter how long I stare at the screen waiting for the little blue “received” checkmark to appear, it doesn’t. I wouldn’t have known she’d been released if Teagan hadn’t violated half a dozen medical privacy laws to find out.
“Are you ready?” I ask.
Ava shrugs and stares at the house. I silently curse Ellie for the hundredth time since we found out she was awake, home, and recovering. Doesn’t she understand that Ava has lost something too? That Ava’s grieving too? Doesn’t she understand that she should be leaning on her friends right now and not shutting us out?
Does she hate me that much?
“Let’s do this.” I climb out of the car and rush around to Ava’s side to open the door, offering my hand to help her out. The way Ava braces her shoulders as she steps forward, you’d think we were approaching a house of horrors and not her best friend’s childhood home.
I press the button to ring the bell and wait. A tiny dog yaps maniacally and pops up in the window beside the door, growling as the boom of steps comes closer.
“Hush now,” a woman says. “Go to bed.”
The dog growls at us one last time and then races away. The woman opens the door only a few inches and frowns at us. “May I help you?”
“Is Ellie home?” I ask.
Ava offers the bouquet of flowers we picked up at the supermarket around the corner. “We’re old friends hoping to see her.”
The woman narrows her eyes at Ava, then shifts them to me and shakes her head. “I recognize you two from Ellie’s pictures.”
“This is Levi,” Ava says, “and I’m Ava.”
“Ava McKinley,” the woman says. Her lips press into a thin line. “Colton’s sister.”
Ava shoots a pleading glance in my direction before nodding. “Yes, that’s true.”
“We’re not here about Colton,” I say. Does Ellie not want to see us, or does this woman think she needs to protect her from us? “We’re Ellie’s friends.”
She closes the door an inch so I can’t see any more than a sliver of her face. “And I’m her mother. You people hurt her once. I won’t let it happen again.”
“We didn’t hurt her,” Ava says.
“Mom? Who’s at the door?”
I nearly push past the woman and into the house at the sound of Ellie’s voice. Ava grabs my arm before I can.
“No one of consequence,” her mother says. She slams the door in our faces.
Ellie
I watch from the top of the stairs as my mom shoves the front door shut.
“Who was that?” I ask without coming down. I don’t like strangers. Or unexpected visitors.
Mom climbs the steps and gives me a tight smile. Her dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and her face is lined with worry. I wonder again what happened to my easy, carefree mother with her broad smile and easy laugh. And when did it happen? During the last three years while I was living my life in Jackson Harbor? Or after “the incident,” as they call it? After she was called to a hospital in Michigan, where I was lying helpless, beaten black and blue, and in a medically induced coma while they waited for the swelling in my brain to subside?
“No one,” she says. “It was no one.” She steps forward and sweeps my hair behind my ear, tucking it back as she studies my face. “How are you feeling today?”
I shrug. “Good.” The truth is that I’m tired, and everything takes more effort than it should. I go to physical therapy three times a week, where they attempt to restore the strength I lost while I was lying in that hospital bed. “But who was at the door?”
Her expression tightens. “Friends of Colton’s.”
I freeze, fear making every muscle in my body contract.