Page 35 of The Beautiful Collision
The coffee burns my tongue, but I drink it anyway, needing something to do with my mouth that doesn’t involve spilling my guts all over Maya Hayes’ designer empathy. The coffee is exactly how I take it, and I wonder when the hell she noticed that.
More importantly, why did she bother filing that information away?
“Your sister’s lucky.” Her voice comes quiet, careful as a skate on thin ice. She watches Chloe fade into post-treatment sleep, with the practiced eye of a nurse who’s probably seen far worse, but I can feel her really looking at me. “Having someone who knows exactly what she needs.”
“It’s just what you do,” I manage, words rougher than intended. “It’s family… you just show up…”
Something dark and sharp cuts across her features—something that’s somewhere between shock and pain—but it’s gone before I can identify it. Her fingers strangle her mug until knuckles go bloodless, jaw working like she’s grinding expensive dental work to dust.
“Right. Family.”
The word comes out like broken glass, sharp edges barely contained. Like maybe she knows something about family herself. But before I can excavate that landmine, before this moment can crack open into something dangerous and real, Chloe coughs.
Not the scary kind, just leftover irritation, but it’s enough.
I switch back to caregiver mode, setting down coffee that tastes like possibility, checking her color, adjusting the ugly blanket that’s older than my failed dreams. Because this is what I do, and this is who I am when the performance stops and reality hits me between the eyes.
And Maya just got a front-row seat to the show nobody’s supposed to see.
eleven
MAYA
I’m tryingto be absorbed by the diagnostic criteria for cardiogenic shock, but my eyes keep drifting to the living room, where Maine is quietly dismantling every preconception I’ve ever had about him.
He’s been sitting with Chloe for the past hour, not his usual self—performing, charming—justbeing. But he hasn’t even been his private self, either, the guy I’ve seen stressed about money or a bad hockey practice, even though he won’t admit it to me. This is a third force… a third Maine…
The guy who makes himself solid and smooth for his family.
No edges, no weakness.
Reliable.
Whether it’s true or not.
I can see it in every minute of his interaction with Chloe. When she shifts uncomfortably, he adjusts her pillows before she can ask. When the nebulizer starts to sputter, he checks the medication level. When she tries to make a joke that dissolves into wheezing, he waits patiently for her to catch her breath, his hand steady on her shoulder.
Fuck, he even times her breathing by pretending to tap his leg, and the nurse in me sees it clear as day. Twenty breaths aminute is borderline for her condition, and he clearly knows it, but she’s staying above the line for now. Every few minutes, his leg starts tapping again, and he counts all over again, making sure she’s okay.
This is not the guy who leaves toothpaste tubes by the sink like territorial markers or who can turn any conversation into a double entendre or who, if I’m being honest, was flirting with me before his parents showed up. This is not the life of the party, the biggest swinging dick in any crowd, the alpha among alphas on the Pine Barren Devils hockey team.
This is someone else entirely. Someone real, someone who knows exactly how many breaths per minute mean his sister is struggling, someone who owns a medical-grade nebulizer that he hides under his bed like contraband. And the ache in my chest is getting harder to ignore. It’s not attraction—well, notjustattraction—it’s something more dangerous.
It’s recognition.
I know what it’s like to perform a role so long you forget there’s a person underneath. But while I chose my rebellion, crafted my party-girl armor like designer chainmail, Maine didn’t get a choice. His role was assigned at birth: the easy kid, the one who doesn’t need anything, the comic relief in his family’s medical drama. And it’s a mantle he takes on out of love and respect.
Different from mine, because my parents decided my role for me.
Never good enough.
Never making the right choices.
But, still, seeing his interactions with Chloe has shaken something loose in me.
My phone buzzes against the table, interrupting my thoughts, and I glance down to see my study group chat exploding with messages about tomorrow’s exam. But thenotification I’m really looking for—the one I’ve been waiting for since I sent that pathetic olive branch to my siblings twenty minutes ago—isn’t there.
Thinking of you guys.
