Page 84 of The Ripple Effect

She sets the jaw that’s so much like Dad’s. So much like mine. “I’m not on his side! Honestly, if you weren’t in the hospital, I would flick you right in the forehead for being stupid and stubborn.” She waggles her flicking fingers at me. “He screwed up, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? He screwed up, and you deserve to be mad at him and have him apologize and make amends to you.

“But you know what? Fuck you for never forgiving anyone. Not even McHuge, the world’s kindest human, who would die before he hurt you. Andespeciallynot yourself. What’s going to happen whenIscrew up, huh? You gonna drop me for another fifteen years and hate yourself just as long because you trusted someone who wasn’t perfect? Or are you gonna grow up and give me another chance, even though your scoreboard says you shouldn’t?”

She bursts out of the chair to stalk over to the supply cupboard behind my head. “Let me ask you something,Doctor, since you’re so smart. Why do you think everyone at the Love Boat helped you after you lied to them? Willow drove you to the hospital. Mitch and Lori booked you a hotel room in case you and McHuge didn’t want to sleep in the same place tonight.Brent took care of McHuge’s dog.Brent.They all could have told you to go fuck yourselves, but they stuck around and gave you a second chance, and they hardly know you.” Boxes of gloves and alcohol wipes tumble to the counter with Sloane’s aggressive rummaging.

“W-what are you doing?” I ask, stuttering.

“Your fiancé’s going to be here in a second. We’re making you look good. Ha!” She brandishes a package labeledSTERILE GAUZE. She tears it open, wets a corner under the tap, and dabs my face, coming away with streaks of red and brown.

“You should’ve used a paper towel. The sterile stuff is really expensive.”

“They can bill me,” she growls.

“It’s Canada. They don’t know how.” I liberate the expensive gauze from her grip and use it to blow my nose. She laughs so loudly I end up having to laugh, too.

At the nursing station, there’s an escalating chorus of, “Sir, you can’t do that. Sir. Sir!”

Sloane sighs, walks to the door, and sticks her head into the hall. “She’s in here, McHuge.” She turns back to me, brows drawn together. “You look kind of pathetic. I may be somewhat regretting that monologue. Do you want me to stay? I could take him in a fight. Not, like, aphysicalfight, but I can inflict emotional damage.”

My chest constricts with her love, her care, and the pain of all the years she and I missed out on, everything pulling into bittersweet equilibrium. If I hadn’t done everything that brought me here tonight, I wouldn’t be with my sister.

“I’ll be okay. And Sloane?”

“Yeah?” She crosses her arms grumpily.

“You’re my favorite sister.”

Her stance softens. She comes back to the stretcher to drop a kiss on my forehead, her voice a touch gravelly. “I know.”

One minute Lyle isn’t here, the next second he’s the only thing in the cubicle, breathing hard, face flushed, hair escaping from its tie. An adhesive bandage covers his injured eyebrow, his face only partially cleaned up. Everything is beautiful and terrible—loving him and wanting him and knowing I have to choose what to do, who to be.

And I don’t have a clue how to do it.

“How’s Babe?” I ask, groping for a place to start.

“Ate some waves, but she’ll recover. How are you?”

“I just came here for the snacks, honestly. Want some tea?” I gesture to the now cold remains in my cup.

“Damn it, Stellar.” He’s by my side, fingers hovering over the place where the bulky white bandage contrasts starkly with my T-shirt tan. His green eyes are red rimmed and dull, shadowed from within. He swallows, not quite able to mask a low-pitched sound of dismay, and then I’m gently, inevitably gathered against his chest, cradled there like I’m fragile and so, so precious. It’s everything I want. Everything he could give to me, everything I’m afraid to take from him.

I hoped I was out of tears, but I feel them squeezing hot out of the corners of my eyes, dampening whatever dorky tree shirt is smashed beneath my face. If he’d asked me if I wanted a hug, I would’ve made myself say no. Now that I’m in his arms, I can’t bring myself to let this go.

“I should’ve listened to you when you were so worried about spying.Fuckthe risk to the business,” he says with his whole chest. “You shouldn’t have had to keep yourself safe. I should have done that. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I’ll make it even.”

I hear in his voice how long this night has been, how desperately he wanted to be everywhere at once for me and Babe. I feel in the careful press of his arms how much he wants everything to be all right, and how afraid he is that none of it will be. Even his sweat smells different, the sharp tang of stress cutting through his normal body chemistry.

I could be angry. I could demand anything from him right now, and he’d give it to me. But that’s not who I want to be.

My big sister was right. Fuck not forgiving him. He won’t ask me for forgiveness, but I can give it to him anyway. I can give it to us both, as a gift. We don’t have to keep punishing ourselves—not for what happened when we were seventeen, not for what happened tonight. We can let the people who hurt us own their part.

We can have another chance.

I lay my good hand on the back of his neck. “It’s nothing a few stitches couldn’t fix.” Evan did good work. Underneath the bandage, his tidy sutures line up nicely along the curve of my biceps, cracked circuits welded together again. They don’t look like new, but there is a beauty in something that has been broken and lovingly repaired.

“No one could have seen this coming, Lyle. Not even Fisher, that galactic fucknut. You can forgive yourself for not being perfect. Running away matters less than running back.”

“How do you do that? Forgive yourself, I mean?” he asks, lowering me to the stretcher. He straightens up, eyes fixed on the floor with its cracked linoleum tiles that haven’t come quite clean at the edges in a long time.

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