Page 7 of Reckless
“Yeah, you just think it,” Violet agreed. “You could reel you in a big one if you just wiggled your bait a bit. It’s still there.”
My mouth fell open.
I wasn’t going to try to figure out if she was talking about my bait, or some other part of my anatomy that might be prone to wiggling. I wasn’t what you’d call skinny, or what you’d call fat. Just in between. I was always in between something.
Millie gave me a finger wave and exited the room, leaving me with our patient.
“Well, you gonna wiggle that bait or not?” Violet cackled. “Men your age are getting snapped up and married off quick. Before long, there won’t be any left but the ones who got thrown back. Wiggle! And it wouldn’t hurt to jerk the bait away and let it float back in front of their face again.”
“Their?” I gave a very unprofessional snort.” As in plural?”
Violet smiled, showing perfect dentures. “Why, honey, with a little blusher here, a little mascara there, you’ll have more biters than usual.” My entire face grew warm, nullifying any need for color on my cheeks. Violet frowned, her keen expression examining my features. “You do already have biters, don’t you, dear?” When I just stared at her, she gasped. “Any biters at all? Ever?” I continued to stare, unsure how to answer her. She clasped my hand. “Honey, have you ever been with a man?”
I looked up at Millie, who was staring at me just as intently, and I wanted to run screaming from the room. This sweet little lady was a patient under my care, so I stayed and turned my attention to her IV tubing. “My sex life or lack thereof is none of your beeswax.”
She gave me a sideways look, like she agreed and would tuck the subject away, but reserved the right to butt in any time she wanted. She had the grace and dignity to change the subject. “So, you were going to be one of those lucky people who managed to escape New Hope?”
I offered her a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t mind New Hope, there are worse places to be. It’s probably good that I ended up at Bucks Community College.”
“Hmmm, sure, but for a beautiful girl like you, there is a whole world out there.”
I again swallowed back the urge to tell her to mind her own business. “I think New Hope is perfect. The hospital isn’t too big, we don’t often get anything toodramaticto deal with.” I pinned her with a one-eyebrow-hoisted look. “I enjoy the work. I love helping people, even if I don’t save lives on a daily basis.”
It beat sitting around on a smelly tour bus. Even if I would’ve loved it purely because it would have meant I was with Gage.
I clenched my teeth as the memory of our breakup rolled over me unmercifully.
The morning after the worst day of my life, just after my friend’s mom had taken me home so I could get some rest, Gage came to the house.
I was staring out the window, wishing it would snow so I’d have something besides dead trees to look at. Everything outside was dead—just like my dad and my brother. With my back turned, he couldn’t see my face when he spilled his news.
“This awesome band just made me an offer. They want me to sing lead. They just lost their singer and are in the middle of a tour, so I’ll have to be on the road for a while, but it’ll be worth it cause when I get back…” I could hear him take a step toward me on the carpet. I was going to lose him too. Well, why not? Everything was dead, even my heart, after all. “Kelly?”
I didn’t think I had any more feelings left in my body, but at his words, what little composure I had left tore in two.
I’d just lost the two most important men in my life, my existence as I knew it had come to an end. It wasn’t Gage’s fault he hadn’t heard about the accident, had come to my house the morning after and announced he’d been headhunted into a band.
He had a right to be happy. Leaving New Hope and being a rock star had been his dream, after all.
A day ago, before, I would have been certain I was going with him. But now…after…
He received the brunt of every emotion that had been roiling just under the surface of my skin all night as I accompanied my mother to the morgue then sat in her hospital room after she was sedated. Writing two obituaries.
In clipped sentences, the horror of the previous twenty-four hours slipped from my tongue, my insides nothing but ice.
He tried to take me into his arms, but I pummeled him with my fists.
“Go! Just go. I don’t ever want to see your face again,” I sobbed, feeling nothing but cold air under my feet where he’d ripped out what was left of the floor with his announcement.
“I’m sorry, Kelly, I didn’t know. I-I’ll stay. I’ll turn them down.”
I couldn’t let him do that. Even under the heavy weight of my immense pain, I knew I couldn’t hold him back from his dream. And I knew I couldn’t go with him.
So I did the only thing I could think of.
“No, Gage, please. I know how badly you want this. Just go. Please, go.” I knew he wanted it. I could see the excitement tamped down in his eyes, underneath his pity for me.
He kept promising to stay, but I couldn’t take the brunt of that decision. What if he could really make it and he gave it up to stay with me? The girl whose family might still be alive if she’d just gone to pick up Stephen with Dad as usual. They might have taken a different route, stopped at the store, any number of things.
