Page 64 of Stupid Dirty

“Mom, what happened? Where are you?”

“Cade?” Silas grumbles next to me, but I ignore him.

Between sobs, the only words I can pick out are “I’m sorry”, “accident” and “Sky”. It’s enough to get me moving. Panic grips me, but I shut it down fast. If the girls are hurt, I don’t have time to freak out. Mom is clearly freaking out enough for the both of us.

“Baby, wake up. We’ve gotta go to the hospital.” Calling him names like that is something I normally only do when we’re naked and my guard is down, but in this moment, it feels right. I need a lot of things right now and one of them is him. All the confusing thoughts I’ve been having shut up in the face of that.

As soon as he hears me, he snaps to attention as well. Not bothering to ask me more questions while I’m still on the phone, he focuses on pulling on clothes and tossing me whatever comes to hand so I can get dressed as well, watching me with concern in his eyes. It’s half the clothes I came in and half his shit, but I don’t care. If anything, it’s kind of comforting to pull on his stupid, boring gray hoodie.

Mom’s still crying while we jog downstairs and out to the car, so I give up trying to get anything out of her and ask her to pass the phone to a nurse. She can’t find a nurse, which is obviously not true, so I wait. By the time Silas is gunning the engine and peeling out of the driveway, Mom finds something better than a nurse.

She passes the phone to Maddi. Now, finally, I can find out what’s going on. But as soon as she speaks, she sounds almost as hysterical as Mom.

“It’s all my fault, Cade. I’m so sorry.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

It’s a half hour drive to the hospital in Mission Flats, and the road runs through thick countryside, which means it’s dark as fuck. I hate driving back roads at night. I’ve already swerved for like three raccoons, and if we make it to the hospital without being taken out by a rogue deer, it’ll be a miracle.

Which also means my focus has to be on the road instead of on Cade, where it should be.

He’s kept Maddi on the line the whole time. At first, their conversation was frantic. I could tell he was working hard to keep calm, asking her clear questions to get to the bottom of what happened. But now they’ve run through everything and they’re trapped in a cycle of him telling her it’s not her fault, which it sounds like she’s not accepting.

Every time he says it, there’s more and more heartbreak in his voice. I hate it.

From what I can piece together, Maddi and Sky were cooking dinner together while Kris was passed out in the back room. The skillet they were using caught fire. Maddi didn’t realize you can’tput out a grease fire with water, so she made it worse. The girls got the fire out eventually, but Sky got pretty badly burned in the process.

Maddi called the ambulance herself, and Kris didn’t wake up until they were on their way. The fact that she was at least up and conscious when they arrived is probably the only reason she’s not in jail right now, facing child endangerment charges.

Now Sky is being treated for the burns, Maddi is blaming herself, and there’s no way they’re getting out of that hospital without a CPS interview. The guilt settling over Cade is like a physical weight, making the whole truck feel heavier by the second.

The road gets busier, with a few more signs of life when we hit the edge of town. When we’re a couple of minutes out from the hospital, Cade tells Maddi we’re almost there and hangs up the phone. The way he throws his head back against the seat, with his eyes closed and tension etched in every inch of his expression, makes me ache. I want to fix it, but there’s nothing I can do.

It’s completely silent in the truck. With Cade sitting next to me, that feels unnatural, and for once I’m the one rushing to fill the void.

“It’s not your fault. I know it probably feels like it, but you can’t be with them every second of every day.” I take a deep breath, spilling more words into the air in the absence of a response from him. “Accidents happen, even in the best, richest families in the world. You take such good care of them. Please, Cade. Please don’t tear yourself apart over this.”

My voice is wrecked, because I can already see how much this is hurting him. He seems like he’s a million miles away, and no amount of reaching out is bringing him any closer. The wall of his guilt and anger is sitting between us, and it might as well be made of concrete.

“Thanks for driving me,” he says. I glance at him, and his eyes are open again, although he’s looking out at the road ahead. His voice is flat. “It really helps that you’re here.”

Throwing me a small smile, Cade reaches over and grabs my knee, pressing his thumb into the notch on the outside like he’s using it to cling to me. It gives me a spark of hope that he isn’t completely falling apart.

We can deal with this. This will be okay. I can be here for him. I don’t know how to, but I’ll figure it out.

He deserves that.

Silence settles over us again while we pull into the hospital, quickly finding a place to park. As soon as we get out of the truck, I take his hand and intertwine our fingers, squeezing it like I’ve wanted to do for the entire freaking drive. He clutches at me, and we walk close enough for our shoulders to brush all the way up to the entrance of the ER. I feel solid and purposeful. He can lean on me.

Stepping from the dark lot into the too-bright halogens and sterile white walls of the ER is dizzying. It makes me want to hold Cade closer, but that’s the moment he pulls away.

The second we’re in there, he’s cutting through the noise and chaos to speak to the nurse behind the front desk. They exchange wan, tense smiles and seem so familiar with each other, which is when it hits me.

This is basically where Cade works. He operates out of the station, sure. But this is the closest hospital, and he probably brings patients here multiple times a shift. These nurses and doctors are his coworkers.

Which is nice, because it means that Sky is in good hands and he can trust them to talk to him, but it also means that he’s about to go through one of the shittiest, most exposing experiences of his life in front of people that are supposed to see him as a professional.

He’s going to hate that. And I can’t help but worry that me being here is only making things more complicated.

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