Better Left Buried (31 page)

“But I was the only one you’d listen to. I didn’t realize how much she leaned on you, or what she was going through. My friends’ biggest problems are what car to ask for,
who made homecoming court, and whether or not they can get away with sneaking a few beers. Their lives are the same with or without me. We’re all interchangeable. Like Rachael. She’s gone and no one even misses her. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

“There was no
way we could all be friends. Harmony would
never
have gone for that.” Brea needed to let Jaxon off the hook. Yes, he’d brought the fact to light, but that didn’t make any of this his fault.

“She was a complicated girl, Brea. I can’t stand to see you beating yourself up over that. I might be out of line here, but how long could you have held her togeth
er? This wasn’t the first time—”

“I know.”
The fact she’d attempted suicide before didn’t make her success an inevitability. Brea was convinced she could have stopped her if she hadn’t been so damn selfish. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Absolutely.
How about some of this great hospital TV?” He reclined in the lounge chair next to her bed and opened a bag of chips. “Late night talk show, infomercial, or black and white movie?” Ten channels left limited choices.

“Surprise me.”

“Infomercial it is.”

The last
one she watched gave her the overwhelming urge to steam clean everything within a quarter mile. The fact that he watched them, too, was just one more thing to love about him.

“
And whenever you need to talk about it, I’m here.”

She wasn’t ready and he knew it, like so many things he seemed to understand without her having to say it.
“I know. Thank you.” She stared at the vegetable chopper ad that had her thinking of French fries.

“You want some?” Jaxon held out the salt and vinegar chips, her favorite under normal circumstances.
He had dirt from the basement caked under his fingernails.

She shook her head, her stomach still queasy from the pain medication she’d been weaning herself off of. “Are you sure you don’t want to
clean up?”

The nurse had offered him to use the shower down the hall when he was ready. His father had brought him a change of clothes—track pants, a sweatshirt, socks and boxers—which were the only things clean about him. He’d freshened up the best he could in her tiny bathroom.

“I’ll shower when you can.”

“It’s going to be a while.” She lifted her casted arm only slightly.

“Then I’ll wait. We’ll both stink together.”

The show of solidarity made her smile. She had worked up the courage to look in the mirror once and had avoided anything reflective since. Bruises and scrapes peppered her freckled skin and a shiner was starting to come through near her right eye. Her auburn hair hung in makeshift dreadlocks that were stuck together with mud and cobwebs. She tried to get a brush through it, but lifting her arm made her ribs hurt too much. Jaxon spent the better part of an hour doing what he could to untangle th
e knots with a hospital-issued comb.

She forced a smile. “What time is it?” Her cell was on the tray table too far away to read it.

He looked at his. “A little after midnight.”

She’d guessed as much from the silence.
The hospital went to a graveyard shift after ten. Visitors were refused with few exceptions and most of the patients were asleep.

“Any word on Adam?”

“He’s awake, came around earlier today. His light was on when I went down to get ice a little while ago.”

“Does he have a roommate?”

“I’m not positive, but I don’t think so. Why?”

“Because I think I’d like to go see him.”

Jaxon loaded Brea into the wheelchair, moving her IV bag without the nurse’s help.

“You’re getting good at this,” she said.

“I’m a quick study. Are you sure you’re up to talking to him?”

“I
am.” She needed to believe there was something she had missed that had nothing to do with her. Harmony texted Adam for a reason, and it was clear from her determined suicide attempt that it wasn’t for him to save her.

Jaxon propped
the door open with a doorstop and checked to see that the coast was clear before wheeling her into the hallway.

Adam had been admitted to the room six doors down from hers, on the opposite side of the hall. Brea counted the floor tiles to keep her nerves at bay. She pulled her robe closed, careful not to snag the plastic tube running fluid into her good
arm, and drew a deep breath as Jaxon knocked softly and wheeled her through the doorway.

The room smelle
d faintly of cigarette smoke and the urine filling the catheter bag. Adam sat up in bed, his face easily as bruised as hers, a broad white bandage wrapped around his head. Black tufts of hair stuck out around it, but there was skin, too, saying that he had been at least partially shaved.

“Hey,”
she said. “You okay?”

Adam
clutched Harmony’s camouflage jacket to his chest. “As okay as I can be.” He sniffled, tears filling up his already red and swollen eyes.

“Do you have a few minutes?”

He shrugged. “I have all the time in the world.”

She looked over her shoulder at Jaxon. “
Do you mind if we talk alone?” She could see that he did, but wasn’t about to argue.

“I’ll be back in ten. Call if you need me sooner.”
Jaxon set Brea’s phone in her lap, pushed her to Adam’s bedside, and kissed the top of her head before leaving and closing the door behind him.

“I don’t care what Harmony said
about him, he seems like a nice guy.” Adam dabbed at his eyes with the one-ply hospital tissues she’d grown to hate.

“She talked to you about Jaxon?”

“More
complained
than
talked
, but ….”

A genuine smile spread across Brea’s face. “Wasn’t that just like her?”
She was uncomfortable talking about Harmony in the past tense. It reminded her that she was gone and she, too, started to cry.

Adam held out a tissue.

“No. No, thank you. I think those make it worse.” She dried her eyes on her sleeve.

“You just missed Charity,
” Adam said, explaining the phantom smoke she smelled coming into his room. “She brought me this.” He lifted Harmony’s jacket.

“Did she tell y
ou what happened? I mean before, like why she turned Harmony in to Bennett and Sylvie?”

“Enough for me to know why she almost stabbed me with a screwdriver.”

“What? When?” Brea felt her jaw go slack.

“Harmony didn’t tell you about our fight?”

It seemed a critical detail had gotten lost in the growing distance between them. “I mean, she said you had an argument, but—”

“Do you know why I ran away from my family?” She sho
ok her head, having no idea what his past had to do with Harmony’s fight. “There’s irony to be appreciated here.” He hit the red button for his morphine pump and his eyes glossed over. It wasn’t just physical pain he was numbing. “They had to drill a hole in my skull to relieve the pressure. It hurts like hell.”

“I can imagine.” The pins in her wrist weren’t any fun, either. “So, you were sayi
ng something about leaving home.”

“My father was an abusive alcoholic.
There are men who abuse wives and those who abuse families. My father beat me and my mother more times than I can count, sending one or the other of us to the hospital. Charity says Harmony’s father hit only her, but there’s an effect just seeing that kind of thing. Harmony never told me anything about her father, but I’m guessing she didn’t know. At least not on the surface. She repressed things, Brea. She was cracked, on the verge of breaking. Anyway, my mom was convinced Dad could change. We went in and out of battered women’s shelters until I got too old to be there with her. There’s a difference between bringing a boy and a man to a place like that. I was fifteen the last time she checked herself in. They didn’t want me there with her, and my grandparents were both gone. She gave me enough money to stay in a motel that ended up being my home for almost three months. The cash ran out by the third night, but I made arrangements to do odd jobs, mostly painting, in exchange for a room. The owner was a good guy, late sixties and a heavy smoker. He had a garage out back and taught me a bit about cars.” His gaze drifted. “He died of a heart attack the day after my sixteenth birthday. His family closed down the motel. It was a really shitty place, don’t get me wrong, the by-the-hour kind, but when they locked all the doors I was done. I could’ve broken in, but they’d have found me. I didn’t want trouble. I didn’t want to go home, even if my mother went back for the umpteenth time. I didn’t want to
become
my father.”

“Adam, you’re not your father. Not by a long shot
. You took such good care of Harmony—”

“I hit her, Brea.”

“You
what
?” Brea scowled and her skin tugged where the fresh scabs had formed along her temple and jawline.

“I lost my temper and I hit her. I never wanted to, not in a million years, but
she’s the kind of person who can get under your skin. You know it as well as I do. She’s a button pusher. That thing with Lance—I—God, I’m so damn sorry but no matter what I said she wouldn’t forgive me.”

“
Why
are you telling me this?” She stifled her anger to keep from drawing unwanted attention.

“Because you need to understand that what happened wasn’t any
more your fault than it was mine. You needed a break from her, probably well-deserved after she nearly got you arrested, and I slapped her out of anger, but neither of us
caused
her death. It’s been a long time coming. She was determined. Charity intended to stab me the day I hit Harmony, and she might have gone so far as to kill me if Harmony hadn’t stepped in. She was remembering her past, Brea, and it was eating her like cancer. Just because her father didn’t hit her, doesn’t mean he didn’t leave a mark.” He tried to shift his position, but couldn’t do more than turn his head. There was sadness in his blue eyes, but there was also acceptance, which Brea had yet to reach. “Did Harmony ever ask you one of her weird hypotheticals? ‘If you could choose, how would you die?’ ‘Where do you think we go when we’re dead?’” Brea didn’t give him the satisfaction of nodding. “She was obsessed with the idea of dying. She romanticized an afterlife that erased all the shit she’d been through. She wanted a clean slate. You and I kept her together, but she longed for death the way her mother craved drugs.”

Jaxon knocked softly and opened the door. 

Brea was sobbing, the pain in her ribs nearly unbearable.

“Are you ready?” His eyes welled up, too.

“Yes,” she whispered, a string of saliva connecting her upper and lower lips.

He didn’t ask what had happened and she didn’t tell him. She needed time to process
what she’d just heard.

“Remember what I said, Brea. No matter what
anyone did, Harmony wanted this.”

It was most certainly true, but she’d had a push.

Brea dressed in her going home clothes, requiring more help from her mother than she would have liked. Sleeves were the hardest and her shoulder ached from the weight of maneuvering the unwieldy cast.

“You okay?” Her mother’s
red hair was tied back without a strand out of place and her flawless makeup looked painted on by an artist. She wore a pair of navy dress pants and a navy and white boat neck sweater. Her wedding ring sparkled.

Brea swallowed the pain pills on her tray. “I’ll be fine.” She chewed at the irritating plastic hospital bracelet, needing the damn thing off.

Her mother pulled her hand away from her mouth. “The discharge nurse will cut that in a couple of minutes.”

The edge of the plastic had scraped her skin all night. That, coupled with the pain from the nurse who so harshly yanked her IV, put her good arm in contention for as painful as her bad one. She didn’t want to move either if she could help it.

“Is Jaxon still here?”

Joan nodded.
“Dad, too.”

A knock came at the door and a middle-aged woman with heavy gray streaking her dark hair asked if it was okay for her to come in. “Are you dressed?” Her brilliant smile stretched ear to ear. Not everyone knew the grave circumstances surrounding
Brea’s injuries.

“I’m all set.”

The woman opened the door and pulled out a chair. “My name is Sandy and I’ll be your discharge nurse this morning. We’re going to go over some basic cast care, review your medications, and I’ll answer any questions you have before you leave.”

“How long will
that
take?” Brea said. Her mother draped her coat around her and flashed a look that said ‘be nice’.