Saving Ever After (Ever After #4) (29 page)

Mia

I think these are usually
the moments that people usually start asking themselves all those what, when,
why and how questions.

What happened to me?

When did my life
become this?

Why did I do it?

How did I get here?

When people hit rock
bottom, like waking up in the hospital after OD’ing on cocaine and almost dying,
that’s when it’s time for them to take a harsh look at their life.

Not me though. I didn’t
need to get all introspective. I didn’t have to ask myself how I got here, or
how my life became so messed up. My life didn’t just fall apart. I took a fucking
baseball bat to it. Every choice I made was another swing of the bat, slowly
shattering it into a thousand broken shards. Everyone who tried to save me from
myself only cut themselves on the pieces. I didn’t just hurt myself, but
everyone around me.

 I had very few memories
of the last thirty six hours after I collapsed in the dining room. It was
terrifying to know that there was this huge chunk of time where I wasn’t even
here. I lost more than a day out of my life, and almost lost so much more than
that. A doctor recounted the events after I lost consciousness, very thoroughly
and clinically.

I began having seizures due
to large quantity of cocaine in my system. I had taken too much. They called an
ambulance. My heart stopped once in the ambulance on the way to the hospital
and again at the hospital. I was very lucky to be alive.

I didn’t remember any of
that. I had bits and pieces floating around in my mind, people shining lights
in my eyes, sharp pain everywhere, being lifted, feeling like I was floating,
and someone holding my hand.

That someone had been Sadie.
She’d ridden with me in the ambulance and had been at my side every moment
they’d allowed her to be. Even now, as the nurse checked me over again, she sat
beside me holding my hand. She refused to leave me, refused to give up on me
even when I thought she should, when even I wanted to give up on me.

Sadie was so strong, and
she was on my side. Always. I could see that now. She would fight for me when I
couldn’t fight for myself. I was not alone. I was very, very not alone.

I could only imagine
what everyone had seen and thought when I stormed in and disrupted Christmas breakfast.
That had to be about as low as a person could get, and yet Sadie was not the
only person to come to my side after I woke up.

Ace was there too. I’d
thought he was only here for Sadie. I thought he would hate me for what I put
my sister through, but when my eyes had opened for the first time in thirty-six
hours, he had smiled at me too and kissed my forehead.

I cried.

Sadie cried.

Ace sniffed and turned
his head away.

They didn’t yell at me
or make me feel worse. They just sat with me, waiting for me to talk.

Jax and Ky came by too.
There was no judgment on their faces either. There wasn’t much of anything on
Ky’s face. He just stood there while Jax hugged me and whispered in my ear that
she loved me, that she was glad I was okay and that I needed to get better because
Abel needed his favorite babysitter back.

I cried again.

Then Ky nodded once at
me before they left. I figured that was about as close to a hug as I would ever
get from him, and I cried a little more.

Then Spade came by. He
was the last one to come, but what he had in his hand completely shattered me.

Sadie and Ace looked at
me slightly concerned when he stepped into the room and I started sobbing. They
had no idea why, but he knew, because he walked up to my bed and set the turtle
down beside me, leaning over to whisper in my ear.

“He asked me to bring
this. He wanted to bring it himself, but we weren’t sure what seeing him would
do to you right now. He also asked me to tell you that you were always enough
and that you always will be.”

His words were my final
undoing. My sobs became ugly and uncontrollable. Somehow I managed to squeak
out three words. “Is he okay?”

“He will be now,” Spade had
assured me, before turning and walking out of the room. Through my tears I
could see a blurry and concerned Sadie calling for a nurse because I was
beginning to hyperventilate. She shot me up with some kind of sedative that
quickly pulled me under. In my last conscious moment, I’d reached for the
turtle and pulled him into my chest.

Now that I was awake
again, I was just waiting for the nurse to leave. It was just me and Sadie and
it was time for me to let go of everything.

When the nurse finally
announced that all my vitals looked good and that I was over the worst of the
crash, I nervously waited for her to close the door behind her as she left
Sadie and me alone.

“Are you feeling okay
now?” Sadie asked, lightly caressing her hand over my forehead and back through
my hair in a soothing gesture.

“I haven’t been okay for
a long time,” I admitted softly. “Can we talk?”

She closed her eyes
briefly, sighing in relief, “Of course we can talk. All I’ve wanted is for you
to just let me in, Mia.”

“I know, and I’m ready
to.” So I did, and once I started talking, I couldn’t stop. It all poured out.
The loneliness, the insecurity and fear. Meeting Jillian my first day on
campus, falling in with the party crowd. What happened with Derek and Leland.
My feelings for Chris, how far back they went, even though she already knew
about them. I told her how quickly they grew and how much jealousy ate at me. Everything
about parents weekends came out and mom never returning any of my calls, Leila
and Cait blowing me off and how I just couldn’t handle it all. I told her about
the other Kris and everything that led to the night I got alcohol poisoning,
and then Mom’s visit at the hospital. I admitted how lost and depressed I felt.
The self loathing that caused me to push her away. Turning to Jillian again and
the coke.

Then I told her the
truth about when Chris came to see me on Christmas Eve.

“He didn’t really sleep
with me,” I said shamefully. “I lied about that. I just wanted to hurt him
because I was hurting so much.”

“Oh, Mia,” Sadie cried
softly and then tightly wrapped her arms around my shoulders in a crushing
embrace. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know you were feeling all that. I knew you
were lost and confused, but I didn’t realize what you were really going
through. I’m so sorry I didn’t do better. I’m sorry I didn’t see.”

I clung to her just as
tightly. Both of us were crying again.

We managed to pull
ourselves together, sniffling and wiping at our eyes and smiling at each other
through the tears until they finally stopped and we both sat back on my bed.

“Have you called Mom or
Dad? I imagine this is all over the tabloids and internet again,” I said
thinking about how quickly my trip here for alcohol poisoning had been leaked.”

“Actually it isn’t.
We’ve managed to keep it all under wraps by keeping the guys’ names out of this
and Chris’ dad helped pull some strings to make sure your stay here is kept
private and that very few people in the hospital are even aware of your name or
allowed to tend to you. It might get out eventually, but right now, nobody else
knows. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t know what to do. I was so afraid of how
you would be when you woke up. I didn’t want to set you off by having anyone
here that you didn’t want here.”

“Thank you.”

“But I think Dad should
know now. I understand if you don’t want me to call Mom. I don’t know if I ever
want to speak to her again, but Dad, I don’t think he meant to close that door
between you guys. Dad just isn’t good with emotions. He loses himself in work
because that’s how he’s been for so long, but he cares, he does Mia, even if he
doesn’t show it like he should. I know you don’t remember, because you were so
little, but Dad didn’t used to be this way. He adored you, all of us. We were
all his little girls, and he doted on us, but then Mom would get on his case
for spoiling us and they would fight, and then slowly everything in our house
just became so strained and different and he started working more.”

I nodded, wiping at my
eyes again. “I’ll tell him.”

“Good.” She smiled. “Do
you want me to call Chris now? Do you want him here?”

I did. More than ever I
did, but I shook my head. “He can’t be here right now.”

“Okay. I should probably
call Ace and tell him the truth though, if that’s okay. He’s been so hard on
Chris because of what we thought he did.”

“Yeah,” I sniffed. “I
owe him an apology for that. I owe him so much, and there’s so much I need to
say to him, but not right now. I need to get better first.”

“I’m glad you want to
get better. I want you to get better so much. I need you to, Mia.”

“I know. Do you think
you could go with me to Seattle?”

Chris

“When is she getting out
of the hospital? I need to see her.” I was ready to throttle Ace. He wasn’t
telling me anything except that she was okay. I’d been out of my mind with
worry since the moment she’d thrown me out of her dorm. I hadn’t slept most of
that night, afraid of what she might do to herself, but wanting so badly to
believe that she wouldn’t, that she would be strong and eventually see that I’d
only been trying to help her, do what was best for her. I’d never rejected her,
even if she saw it that way.

Then, when she’d walked
into the room Christmas morning, disheveled and shaking in just a pair of tiny
shorts and my sweatshirt, not even a pair of shoes on her damn feet, I’d known
right away that she was on something. She looked so tiny and frail and broken.
She was drowning right in front of me, being sucked under by the pain and drugs
and I couldn’t even get to her to pull her up.

My pain turned to fear
when I saw the blood dripping from her nose and then noticed the other signs
that something was seriously wrong. She was shaking too hard, her ashen skin
was coated in a sickly sheen of sweat and her breathing was labored. Then she
started clutching her stomach and chest in pain, but still she wouldn’t let
anyone help her.

When she collapsed, I swear
my heart hit the ground with her. I’d screamed her name, tried to get to her,
but Ace had pulled me back, keeping me from throwing myself down at her side.
Sadie was shouting for someone to call 9-1-1, and all I could do was stare at
her, watch her fading right in front of me as her body was racked with tremors
and sharp spasms.

The ambulance came for
her, Sadie rode with her and Ace followed the ambulance, but they wouldn’t let
me go to the hospital. Spade and my brother had dragged me out of there and
back to Spade’s place. I was so scared that she was dying and they wouldn’t
even let me go to her. I knew what they thought I did, what Mia had said I did.
I couldn’t even bring myself to correct them, to tell them she’d been lying. I
didn’t even care that she had.

I never should have let
her force me to leave. I should have stayed and tried harder to convince her to
go get help.

I couldn’t help but
think that there were a thousand things I could have said or done differently
that would have prevented this. Everything I had done, had been too late. She
was so far gone by the time I went to her. What if I had gotten to her before
the coke did?

What if I hadn’t tried
so hard to deny for so long what was painfully obvious to me now. I loved her.
I couldn’t place the exact moment that it had happened. It had been gradual and
snuck up on me, but it had happened. I’d completely fallen for her, and in
denying it, fighting it, I might have lost her.

There was so much I
needed and wanted to say to her now, but Ace and my brother were standing in my
way. “I need to see her,” I reiterated desperately.

“You can’t.”

“Why the hell not? You
know I didn’t do anything to her.” Mia had told Sadie the truth so I didn’t
have to.

“I know you didn’t, but
you still can’t see her.”

“That should be up to
her!” I shouted.

“It was,” Ace said
solemnly. “Sadie asked her if she wanted to see you, man. She said no, and now
she’s gone so you can’t.”

“What do you mean gone?”
I asked confused.

“She left. She and Sadie
got on a plane this morning as soon as she was released. I’m sorry. I know you
care about the girl and that you wanted to see her, but I think it’s for the
best. I saw the way she broke down when Spade brought her your message. She’s
in real bad shape.”

“I don’t just care about
her. I love her,” I said, feeling numb. His words had drained everything out of
me. She’d left. She was just gone. One of the last things she’d said to me was
that she hated me, and even though I knew she hadn’t meant it then, that was
the last thing to pass between us.

She didn’t want to see
me. She was at her lowest, darkest point, facing one hell of a battle and she
didn’t want me there with her. That was hard to accept. Everything in me wanted
to be at her side, refusing to let her go through it alone, but I couldn’t,
because she didn’t want me there.

I dropped onto Spade’s
sofa, my head falling into my hands. I didn’t know what to do, what I was
supposed to do. How do you just let the girl you love go? My mistake before was
not fighting for her, not letting her see how much she meant to me. I couldn’t
do that again.

I lifted my head. “Where
did she go?”

“I’m sorry, man, I can’t
tell you. She needs time, and if she wants you to know where she is, she’ll
contact you. But don’t worry, where she’s going she’ll get help. Good help.
Sadie will make sure of it. She’ll be okay, and then I’m sure she’ll come
back.”

But she didn’t.

There were no phone
calls, no texts, no letters or emails or carrier pigeons. Two months passed and
I heard nothing from her. There were a few moments of desperation when I tried
calling or texting her, but there was no answer. She never even signed into
League of Legends. I know because I watched every day and asked all of our
online friends if any of them had heard from her.

The hardest part was
seeing Sadie, knowing that she talked to her sister every day, and had been to
see her several times. She would look at me sympathetically and tell me that
Mia was doing good, but that’s all she would tell me.

Everyone else told me
not to worry, but they didn’t understand. Nobody understood what it was like
for me. They didn’t know what she was to me, and that was my own fault for
keeping it from everyone and denying it to myself for so long.

Jaxyn was my angel, the
only one who got it. The only one who didn’t ask me to be okay and accept
things. She went to see Mia one weekend. I hated that I was the only one who
couldn’t go to her, but Jaxyn’s words when she came back gave me the only peace
I got for the next few months. She told me the same thing Sadie had been
telling me, that Mia was doing great, but she admitted that Mia had struggled
and had some difficulties in the beginning. Hearing that Mia had struggled was
hard, but hearing that one of the reasons Mia had gotten off to a rocky start in
her treatment was because she slapped a counselor when that counselor tried to
tell her that loving me wasn’t healthy for her . . .  well that left me a
little speechless.

That was my girl.

At least it gave me hope
that she still was my girl.