Half an hour later, she was cleared from her little cubicle in the ER. Her moms had been told the good news and were still in the waiting room while she changed back into her clothes. Winding her way down the white hallways toward the waiting room, she stopped in front of a vending machine, catching sight of her reflection in the glass.
She was clutching the bag the nurse had provided for her to stow her personal belongings. Everything was pretty blurry, but even she could see that she was indeed very pale, and her light-brown eyes seemed huge in her face. Embarrassment and humiliation did that to a person.
A freaking panic attack . . . Gah. She now needed a chocolate bar more than she needed her next breath, and considering she’d almost died from lack of oxygen due to panic, that was saying something.
A tall, leanly muscled guy stood in front of the machine, hands on either side of it as he gave the thing a hard shake.
A candy bar shook loose and he caught it, shoving it into one of his cargo pants pockets.
Pockets that looked already quite full.
She couldn’t see well enough to know which kind of candy bar he got, but it didn’t matter, because she liked all the candy bars in all the land. “Hey,” she said. “Save some for the paying customers.”
He turned to face her, his brown, wavy hair falling into his eyes, and . . . something made her fumble around in her plastic bag for her glasses. Self-preservation, maybe, because her instincts were screaming. Clearly not a common occurrence for her, or she wouldn’t always be able to detonate her life so thoroughly. When she got her glasses on, the world came into focus again and she breathed a short-lived sigh of relief.
Short-lived because though she hadn’t seen Eli Thomas since they were both fifteen, she did indeed know him.
“I did put money into the machine.” His expression was tight, as if he was highly stressed. And given where they were, in the hallway to the waiting room for both the ER and surgery, he in all likelihood was highly stressed. “Lots of money, in fact—” Stopping, he cocked his head, recognition crossing his face. His eyes softened and he smiled, flashing white teeth and a dimple in his left cheek. “Hey.” His voice was different now. Lower, quiet, like the one you used with people you knew. It was also filled with emotion. “It’s been a while.”
True story. It had been a while. But not long enough. And in the bad-news department, the dimple and smile were still attractive and charismatic as hell, but the good news was that she’d learned how to shut off her heart. She gave him a vague smile, implying she didn’t remember him. He hadn’t chased her after their kiss, and yeah, it was a zillion years ago, but hey, a girl had pride.
He arched a brow.
Ignoring this, because they so weren’t going there, she gestured that he should stand back because it was her turn at the vending machine. She pulled a wrinkled dollar from her pocket and tried to shove it into the slot, extremely aware of the weight of his stare. He wanted her to recognize him. She was still going with no thank you.
The machine spit her dollar back at her.
“You have to straighten it out first,” Eli said.
Grinding her teeth, she slapped the dollar against her thigh and ironed it flat with her hand before once again attempting to thread it into the machine.
And . . . once again, the machine immediately refused it.
Seriously, was it a Monday? Was the universe out to get her? What?
Eli gestured to her dollar bill. “Can I . . . ?”
When she nodded, he took it and calmly fed it into the machine.
And, of course, it was accepted.
Eli started to say something, but she held up a finger to stop him, then punched in the corresponding letter and number for the candy bar she wanted.
Nothing happened.
Oh, for God’s sake— Gripping the machine the same way Eli had, she shook it.
Nothing.
So she kicked it.
Her audience of one smirked. “Missy Judgerson goes to the dark side.”
Brynn shocked herself by laughing. It was her first laugh in . . . well, she couldn’t remember. Life hadn’t exactly been a pocket full of pilfered goodies lately.
“Here.” Her pretend stranger pulled two fistfuls of goods from his pockets. “You look far more desperate than me. Take your pick.”
She took a candy bar. And then on second thought snatched a bag of gummy bears as well.
He gave her a look.
“Hey, I’m a pint low, okay?” She stretched out her arm, revealing the Band-Aid in the crook of her elbow where they’d taken blood.
His smile faded. “You okay?”
Physically, yes. Mentally, the vote was still out. She tore into the candy bar. “I will be.”
His eyes were still the most unusual shade of gray, which should have meant they were cold, but they weren’t. They were actually very warm, and curious. And maybe she’d feel warm and curious about him too, if she hadn’t made a fool of herself with him by sporting a big, fat crush that clearly had not been returned. Add to that, he’d fooled her into thinking they were friends when they’d been nothing of the kind because he’d been part of a group with Kinsey Davis—Brynn’s arch nemesis.
Yes, apparently she could hold a grudge for years. Maybe it’d stuck with her because she’d written about the two of them often enough in her long-ago camp journal. They’d all had to write in one every night. She actually still had hers, shoved somewhere deep in her duffel bag. She used it as a reminder of the her she used to be, Past Brynn, who’d been too gullible, too loyal, too forgiving . . . She’d practically been a golden retriever.
But she’d learned. She was tougher now. Present Brynn was a German shepherd.
Eli’s phone pinged. He grabbed for it, stared at the screen, and looked stricken. “Gotta go.” He took the extra few seconds to empty his pockets, shoving his entire loot into Brynn’s arms. “In case you need another fix.”
And then he was gone, leaving her torn between the humiliating memories of the past and the hope that whomever he was here for would be okay. She started with the pilfered gummy bears. The sugar began to work its way through her system, giving her the courage she needed to go out and face her moms with the truth.
That, once again, she’d failed at life and let down the people she loved.
Chapter 2
Kinsey hated hospitals with the passion of a thousand suns. No, make that ten thousand suns. Yet here she sat in a hospital bed, wearing a washed-so-many-times-it-was-practically-sheer hospital gown.
Damn, some days life sucked more than others. She’d received the call late last night. There was a kidney, and she needed to be at the hospital by five A.M.
She’d gotten here at four thirty, because she was a lot of things, most of them not especially complimentary, but she was never late.
Especially for her own kidney transplant.
It was now late afternoon, and she was tired of cooling her jets, tired of hearing “the doctor will be here shortly to fill you in” but getting no further explanation.
If there was one thing she knew from years and years of waiting on a kidney, with a whole bunch of false starts and even more false hopes, it was that if it didn’t happen when she was told it would, it wasn’t going to happen at all.
But since that was a far too depressing thought to contemplate, she focused on things she could control. She was so hungry that it felt as if her organs were starting to eat each other. Hopefully not her one working—barely—kidney, though. She’d received it fourteen years ago at age fifteen, and her body had decided it wasn’t a good fit and was slowly but surely rejecting it.