Page 35 of A Little Too Late
She can’t wait to feel a little better. Otherwise, money is her greatest fear. “My mother won’t help me at all.”
He’s done his best to reassure her. “I have some money, and I’m not afraid of hard work. We’re the lucky ones, baby. You’re graduating right on time, and so will I. Not everybody has the advantages we do.”
Another young man might be overwhelmed by all the obligations and possibilities, but not Reed. He feels focused and deeply optimistic for the first time in a long while.
Snow falls past the library window as he opens up a new browser tab and googles how to get a marriage license in Vermont. He’s thinking about proposing when Ava graduates next month. Eloping sounds like fun. His mother isn’t around to help him plan a wedding, and Ava barely speaks to hers…
His phone lights up with a message from Ava. His smile is automatic as he picks it up.
When he reads the text, his smile slides right off his face.
At the hospital, Reed notices how kind the nurses are to Ava. So gentle with their hands and so soothing with their words as she waits for the doctor to come into the room and talk to them.
But Reed’s heart is already a heavy weight inside his chest. He’s been here before. He’s smelled the hospital disinfectant and heard the uncaring buzz of the fluorescent lights.
The kindness of the nurses is almost worse, because he already knows they lie. Sometimes everything isn’t going to be okay. Sometimes everything goes to shit right before your eyes—like when your mother’s odd clumsiness and forgetfulness turn out to be Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a disease so rare that the doctor has never seen another case in his lifetime.
Even then, you try to lie to yourself. Imagining you’ll beat the odds. But it doesn’t work. You have to watch someone fade away. Your mother will forget your name before she forgets how to breathe. Your father will wall himself off. Your family will suffer in silence.
The black cloud has returned. It fills the little exam room. Reed can hardly breathe. He holds Ava’s hand and makes all the right noises. But he’s already pulling back. He’s mentally closing all those tabs on his browser window, because he’s made a colossal error.
Every plan, every thought, every waking moment these past few weeks was an act of hope. A vote for a future that wasn’t shadowed by grief and loss.
He bet the house on love. But that was stupid. He should have known better. He’s smarter than that.
And when the doctor finally comes in, snapping on his latex gloves, firing up the sonogram machine, Reed already knows what is going to happen. He already knows what the doctor will say.
The future he built in his mind wasn’t real. It has no heartbeat.
It’s already gone.
CHAPTER 14
THEY CALL HIM THE ICE KING
AVA
I wake up moaning, and not in a fun way. My head is trying to eject from my body. There’s a vile taste in my mouth. I don’t want to open my eyes, so I press my palms over them.
What the hell happened to me last night? I take a deep, cleansing breath. But that doesn’t help, because I’m breathing in the delicious scent of…
Reed Madigan.
Oh my God!
I drop my hands as my eyes fly open in a panic. He isn’t here, though. I’m alone in the Vista Suite bed.Reed’sbed. And I’m wearing an unfamiliar T-shirt.
Holy shit. My stomach lurches, practically folding in on its own emptiness. Reed and I didn’t… We couldn’tpossiblyhave…
Then I notice that underneath the T-shirt, I’m wearing my panties and strapless bra, which is located somewhere near my ribcage.
Not because of sex. Nope. I’m starting to remember what actually happened, and it doesn’t fill me with relief. At all.Instead of sex, there was drinking and then puking, while Reed held my hair.
Oh my God. I’m never going to look him in the eye again. I can’t believe I got so drunk that he tried to walk me home. I remember my broken heel. And slumping down in front of his fireplace, telling him not to be nice to me.
I let out another loud groan and force myself to take another deep breath.
Then, when I thought things couldn’t get worse, I hear the sound of the outer door unlocking.
