Page 15 of Never Really Over

“She might not have been in the accident.”

“Yeah,” I whisper again. My instincts are screaming at me that his words are only for my benefit and that the next phone call I receive isn’t going to be a good one.

“You need me to drive you back to Hollow Grove?”

Tears stream down my cheeks, dripping from my chin and a sob escapes me. What would I do without my mother? She’s the only family I have. “I can drive. I need to go.”

“Don’t think you should. You sound pretty upset.”

Sniffling, I tell him, “She’s not answering, Dalton. I can’t get ahold of her and I need to get there now.”

“Waiting fifteen minutes for me to come pick you up isn’t going to make a difference. Please, let me do this for you.”

I have no desire to be in a vehicle for five hours with Dalton but he’s probably right.

“I’ll bring someone with me. I’ll drive your car and she’s going to drive mine. That way you’re not stuck without a vehicle, okay?”

I don’t even care who she is, I appreciate the fact that he cares enough to come up with a solution.

“Thank you, Dalton.”

“We’re heading out the door now. Been meaning to go see my parents anyway. Gives me a good reason.”

We hang up after I tell him I’ll meet him down at my car that’s parked in the underground parking garage, give him the code to get in, and I close up my apartment.

Exactly fifteen minutes later, I’m opening the passenger door of my car while Dalton slides into the driver’s seat.

It takes until we get out of Chicago for me to ask, “Who is she?”

“My girlfriend.”

My jaw drops and I stare at him with wide eyes. “Holy shit.”

He grins and nudges me in the shoulder. “Right? My dad always said it’d take just one woman to stop me from being an idiot.”

“And she’s the one?”

He swallows and nods. “Yeah. She is. I got a ring, too. Grabbed it before we left because depending on how this whole meeting my parents thing goes, might do it this weekend.”

“Wow,” I breathe out, turning to look out the window. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Me either,” he admits. “You wanna hear a funny story?”

“Could use something to cheer me up,” I say, after checking my phone once again to see no reply to my many texts to my mother or any return phone calls.

He reaches across the console and grips my hand, squeezing once. “It’ll be fine. Mom is doing some checking and as soon as she hears anything, she’ll call me right away. Besides, if she were in the accident and brought to the hospital, wouldn’t they have called you by now?”

I shrug, not wanting to think about my mother being in the hospital. “Just tell me the story about how you got brought down to your knees, will ya?”

“Of course.” He chuckles.

For the next hour, I don’t listen as he tells me the story of how he met his girlfriend through a work thing. Her name is Bridget, she has short brown hair and he ‘fucking loves her curves’. Apparently he didn’t expect to fall in love with her, yet here he is. Getting ready to propose. That’s the extent of my knowledge. The rest of his talk, I zoned out and didn’t hear a word of what he was saying because I was thinking about the type of woman Colt is married to, what his daughter is like, and, of course, my mind never strayed too far from my mother.

“Do you have regrets?” I blurt out suddenly, interrupting him in the middle of a story about how he pursued her for a couple of months and she kept turning him down, but he finally ‘got in there with her and showed her he could be the type of guy she wanted’.

He glances in my direction and back out the windshield again, watching the weather closely. It stopped raining a bit ago but by the looks of the clouds, it’s not done raining yet. “About?”

“Life, in general, I guess.” I shrug, look at my phone, and sigh heavily. Laying my head back against the seat, I look out the window again. “I have regrets.”

---