I whip around to look at him. “Huh?”
“I heard you get up and burn out of here at three or something. Where the hell d’you have to be in such a hurry?”
I haven’t breathed a word about my mother’s cancer diagnosis. I don’t know why, I just haven’t. I’m not ready to talk about it now either. For some reason, talking about what happened last night, especially what happened with Presley…I have zero interest in rehashing any of it. I don’t lie to my boys, though. So I’m rude as fuck instead. “None of your goddamn business.”
“Nice.” He isn’t fazed; the sarcasm’s only for show. “I’m gonna grab some sushi. You want some?”
I don’t think Wren’s eaten as much sushi in Japan as I have. “Get the fuck out of here with your disgusting Hicksville New Hampshire sushi. I’d rather starve.”
He gets up and drops something onto my chest. “Suit yourself.” It’s his apple core. The fucker’s just dumped his gnawed on apple core right on top of me. Asshole. I grab it by the stalk, ready to hurl it back at him, but he’s already countering—by holding his ginormous book out at arm’s length. Right over my junk.
“Don’t you fucking dare, Jacobi.” I bare my teeth, just to let him know I mean it, but he doesn’t appear to be taking the threat seriously. He arches that suggestive eyebrow again.
“Tell me where you went last night.”
“No.”
He shrugs. “All right.” The book falls. I have just enough time to deflect it with my knee, sending it crashing to the floor, before it can land directly on my balls.
I snarl, launching myself up off the sofa. “Good job I have the reflexes of a cat.” The fucker vaults over the coffee table before I can grab him, though. I swear to God, when I get my hands on the bastard—
“Let it go, Davis. You sank a one-point-three-million-dollar yacht and I forgave you. We’re nowhere near even.”
“Oh, we’re fucking even!” I let him go, though. I don’t have time to start a fight with him right now. I have a very pressing prior engagement to attend to. A way more important fight that’s been brewing for fucking years.
11
PRES
* * *
Beep.
* * *
Beep.
* * *
Beep.
* * *
The heart monitor chimes with regularity even though my pulse feels like it’s dancing all over the place. I’m swimming in sedatives and pain meds but I can still feel my anxiety, crawling over my skin. When I woke up five hours ago, I already knew where I was. The knowledge was a heavy weight pressing down on top of my chest, and I couldn’t get out from underneath it.
Jonah, standing by the closet door, wreathed in night, waiting for me to wake up…
“Hey, Red. Did you miss me?”
I swallow down the rolling wave of nausea that rises from the pit of my stomach. I’m not in any pain. Not now. That will change when the meds wear off. I keep willing that to happen—for the miasma clouding my mind to lift. I’d give anything to be able to think straight right now, but whenever I try, my thoughts slip away from me like smoke.
I’ve kept myself together. Even when the psychiatrist from upstairs came to assess my mental state at the crack of dawn, I didn’t cry. But the moment the door to my room opens and my father walks in, I’m done for. His face is the color of funeral pyre ash.
“Presley! My god, sweetheart, what the hell have you done?” He rushes to me and takes my hand. I barely even flinch—it’s not as if I can feel much of anything at all right now—but Dad recoils when he sees the thick bandages at my wrists and gingerly places my hand back down on top of the blankets. His hair is brown like Jonah’s. Darker than his son’s. Even when he lived in California, Dad was never really one to sit out in the sun. He’s definitely more of an indoor type; he’d spend his entire life locked away in a kitchen if he could.
There are purple shadows under his eyes now, and a horrified set to his jaw that makes me want to die. He shouldn’t have to see me like this. I wasn’t supposed to cause him this much pain. This wasn’t the plan at all. But…there really wasn’t a plan, was there? There was only the fear, and the pain, and the shame. And the knife.
“Presley,” Dad whispers. “What the hell happened?” He shakes his head, clearly trying to imagine what could possibly have transpired for me to wind up in the hospital with slit wrists. “I know you weren’t happy about the Europe trip, but I didn’t think for a second it was this important to you—”
“It’s not, Dad.” Fuck, I am so tired. I sound so tired.
“Then…why? Was it because of the divorce? That…that Mara girl? Why, baby? Talk to me. I couldn’t believe it when they called and told me what…what you’d done. I couldn’t make sense of it. I still can’t make sense of it. I—Is this my fault? I don’t—” A sob leaps from his mouth, and my heart shatters. I’ve never seen him come undone like this before. Not even when Mom left. The pain in his eyes will haunt me for the rest of my days.
“Dad. Dad, it’s okay. It—” Sighing heavily down my nose, I compose myself. “It wasn’t supposed to be this bad. I just wanted to feel something. I was so numb. And…I guess I just took it a little too far this time.” I whisper the last part. The words arrive laden with guilt. Enough to choke on.
Dad sets his jaw, his eyes flashing with hurt. He flares his nostrils, looking around the room. When he sees the chair tucked away in the recess by the window, he drags it to my bedside, and the scrape of the chair’s legs on the floor is like nails down a chalkboard. When he’s perched himself on the very edge of the chair, elbows leaning on the mattress beside me, he puts his head in his hands and just…breathes.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
He doesn’t look up. “You nearly died, Presley.”
“I know. I—” This is easier, talking to the top of his head, but it still isn’t easy. I want to curl up into a ball and cry. I want to pull the covers over my head and teleport to another fucking dimension. Anything so I don’t have to be here, witnessing my father in such pain.
“I thought you just went back to your room at the academy. I thought—” He laughs bitterly. “I thought you were sulking about that stupid European trip, and I just assumed that you’d gone back up to the school. I didn’t even check. I should have checked. After what happened to that girl—”
“Dr. Fitzpatrick’s behind bars, Dad.”
He sits up at last, and he looks hollowed out, as if a piece of him—the vibrant, cheerful part of him that had finally begun to show itself again after Mom’s departure for Germany—has been extinguished for good. “I don’t give a shit if he’s behind bars. There are plenty more psychos out there, Pres. I can’t believe I didn’t check on you. I should have—”
“Dad.”
“There’s no way you’re staying up at that school anymore. Not now, after this, and with me living within spitting distance of the place. I’m going to look into transferring you over to Edmondson—”