Page 85 of Closer

Please?Please?

“Brie,” Ali says, taking my hand. I glance up at her. Her eyes are puffy and rimmed with red, and her pale freckle-dusted skin is blotchy from crying. Even with the crying, she’s very pretty. It’s not hard to see why Levi fell in love with her. It’s not hard to see why Cooper married her.

“What the fuck is taking them so long?” Deb, Cooper’s sister huffs. I haven’t figured her out yet, except that she comes across as a complete bitch. I kind of like that about her.Bitchy women get shit done. Deb paces the room again. I close my eyes.

“Miss, you’re bleeding everywhere.” The nurse appears almost frantic now. “We have a bed for you. I need to clean the wound.”

“No,” I murmur, but my tongue is thick inside my mouth.Dead weight. Like Levi as I dragged him from the tub, his lips blue, eyes softly closed as if he were sleeping and not ...

No.

“Brie,” Ali says. “Come on, you need to be examined.”

“I need to wait here,” I snap, my accent so heavy in contrast to theirs. It funny the things you notice at a time like this. The colour of someone’s eyes. The freckles dusting their nose. How his lips were so blue, so blue, and his eyes did not look up at me once as I tried to save him, as I fought to keep him alive for the both of us when he had already given up. “I need to be here.”

“I have my phone. Coop will call me if they get any news.”

I just stare at her, unable to comprehend what she’s saying.

“You and I will go with the nurse, so they can clean up your head and run some tests.”

“No. I have to stay here. I have to know.”

“Brie, you sitting here is doing nothing,” Cooper says in a calm, even tone as he crouches down before me. His eyes are blue.Blue. I glance away. “Hey, he’s gonna be okay. If I know anything about that bastard, it’s that he has nine fucking lives. He’ll outlive all of us,” he says, but I see how his face falls, as if he doesn’t believe it.

***

“Ican’t see him.”

Ali frowns. “You wanna come back in the morning? I can drive you back to our place so you can sleep. You must be exhausted.”

“No.” I shake my head. “I have to leave.”

“I don’t—”

“She means the country,” Zed says. Coop and Ali turn their heads to look at him, but when Ali glances back at me, I know she knows that Zed isn’t wrong.

“I love him.” I plead with them through my tears. I need them to know that. “I love him, but I can’t do this. The drugs, the alcohol. He tried to kill himself because we had a fight.”

“Brie, no. Levi has been messed up for a while now.” She sighs. “Coop and I haven’t helped with that, but he didn’t do this because of you. He’s an addict. He always has been, in a way, I guess, whether it’s women, or booze, drugs, or misery. This isn’t because of any one thing that you or Coop or me or Ash did. He needs help. And he needs all of us to be here for him when he wakes up.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t live through that again.”

“Brie, please don’t leave.” Ali’s own voice is choked with tears now.

“I’m sorry.” I shake my head. “I’ll text you once I land in France. Just tell him ... Tell him he broke my heart, and I can’t love him if it’s already shattered into a million pieces. Tell him not to come find me.”

“Brie, you’re making a big mistake,” Cooper says.

“Maybe, but it’s the only choice I can live with. You weren’t there. You didn’t have to pull his lifeless body from a bathtub. You didn’t see how blue he was, but then you never did see him, did you?”

Cooper’s eyes widen, and I can see he wants to say more, or tell me that I don’t even know him.Which is true. I don’t know him. All I have to go off is the word of an addict, and I don’t know if I can ever trust anything he tells me ever again—assuming he makes it out of this hospital at all.

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