Smart, Sexy and Secretive (19 page)

A doctor runs into the room and lifts
Logan’s eyelids, shining a light in his face. He flinches. I see
it.

“
Is he going to wake up?” I
ask. I hold my breath, waiting for the answer.

The doctor’s mouth pinches into a thin
line. “Maybe.”

Maybe.
That’s the only word I need to hear for hope to bloom within
me. I step back, out of the doctor’s way. The nurse takes me by the
shoulders and pushes me gently to the edge of the room.

Matt walks in again. “I called Paul
and Sam. They’re on the way.”

I nod. I can’t take my eyes off Logan.
He moved. I never thought I would see him move again.

Logan suffered a terrible head injury.
He had to have surgery to relieve the pressure in his brain, and he
had some internal injuries, as well. He lost his spleen, and his
right leg is broken. They set it, and he’s in a cast. Bruises cover
most of his body.

I look at Matt, and his eyes are
filled with the same hope mine are. “He’s going to be all right,
isn’t he?” I ask.

He nods and pulls me into his chest.
“Of course, he is,” he breathes. He bends his head and sniffs me.
Then he whispers dramatically, “Now that he’s waking up, do you
think you could take a fucking shower? You stink.”

I shove back from him. “I do
not.”

“
You look like shit, Em,”
he jokes. He tousles my hair, and I don’t care. I do look like
shit. I lift my arm and smell myself. And I stink. I can’t see
Logan like this.

A few minutes later, Paul and Sam walk
into the room. Paul is carrying the canvas bag that has my
belongings in it.

“
Thank God,” Matt teases.
He turns me toward the bathroom and points. “Go shower. You can’t
have him waking up to you looking like that.”

I nod. “Okay.”

Sam sniffs me as I walk by him and
holds his nose.

“
I don’t smell that bad,” I
grouse.

He grimaces. “You kind of
do.”

“
Fine!” I say. “I’ll
shower.” I point my finger at the three of them. “Then I’ll make
you all sorry.”

“
I’ll be sorry if you don’t
shower,” Paul mumbles. But he’s smiling.

I go into the bathroom and avail
myself of the tiny shower in Logan’s room. I don’t need much, but I
do need to wash off the funk accumulated by waiting in a hospital
for four days. I get dressed quickly and brush out my hair. I
return to find the three brothers looking down at Logan. Matt’s
mouth is moving in prayer, but I can’t quite hear him.

“
You can’t pray without
me,” I protest. I step forward and put myself in their circle, and
Matt prays for Logan. And so do I.

Logan

A strong grip jerks me from the
darkness as someone tugs on my toe. Fingertips slide up my heel,
and I rock my foot, trying to knock them off. Paul used to pop my
toes when we were small. He would grab my ankle and hold me still
while he pulled on my toes until they popped. It didn’t hurt, but
it was damn annoying. And it’s just about as annoying now. I really
like the darkness. There’s no pain in the darkness.

There’s a twinge in my arm, and I
start to float. The pain recedes, and I feel like someone has
untethered me. I blink my eyes open to see how far I’ve floated,
and I see Emily. I open my mouth to tell her how fucking happy I am
to see her. She’s blurry, but I blink and blink and blink until she
comes into focus. I try to speak, but I can’t. My throat is dry,
and there’s no sound coming out. But then I remember that I’m deaf.
I can’t hear my own voice. Not much of it anyway, and especially
not without my hearing aids. My hearing aids must be
gone.

Where am I? I can’t remember how I got
here. But Paul and Matt and Sam are looking down at me. Sam’s
crying, and Paul puts his arm around him. I can read his lips.
Something about it being okay to be a pussy when your brother might
die. He can cry all he wants.

Where’s Pete? He must not be here.
Where is here?

The darkness beckons, and I fight
against it. I push and push and push, but it takes me in its greedy
grip and holds on tight.

Emily

Logan hasn’t woken up since his last
round of pain medication. The doctors say that he should have more
and more periods of lucidity as the days pass, but it has been
hours since his lashes last fluttered. I am tired, so tired. And to
think that I showered for this.

“
You should take a nap,”
Sam says. It’s his turn to stay with me.

“
Do you think he’s ever
going to wake up?” I ask.

He nods his head. “I know
it.”

“
What makes you so
sure?”

He shrugs. “I just know.”

I wish I felt as sure about it. “Have
you talked to Pete?”

He shakes his head. “They won’t let us
see him. Your dad is working on it, though.”

My dad has been helping with Pete’s
defense. He hired a criminal attorney and has paid for him to have
the best representation. But that may or may not help him when they
go to trial.

“
Your dad’s a pretty cool
guy,” Sam says.

I nod. “He can be. He can also be an
ass.”

“
He’s trying. That’s better
than nothing.”

My dad is like a pit bull all of a
sudden. He’s loving and affectionate and playful, and yet there’s a
tiny little part of him that will fight to the death. And he’s
fighting for the Reeds. He fought for Logan, bringing in the best
neurologist he could find. He fought for Pete—and is still working
on that—and he’s fighting for me. He comes by every day to talk.
He’s on crutches, but he’s getting better. He has a lot of guilt
where Logan is concerned.

Sam sits down and puts his feet up on
the edge of the bed. He slumps in the chair and crosses his arms,
closing his eyes. The room is dark, and no one is moving around.
He’s asleep in moments. The boys are all so tired. I look down at
Logan and touch my finger to his lips. He doesn’t stir. I look over
at the recliner a nurse brought in just for me, and I don’t want to
use it. I pull the covers back and slide into bed with Logan. Pete
opens his eyes and looks at me when he feels the bed shift. He
shakes his head and grins. “If you try to defile him in his sleep,
I’ll have to tell him about it when he wakes up,” he
teases.

I settle my head on Logan’s shoulder,
careful of his wires and tubes and bruises. “Do you think he’d
mind?” I ask.

Sam chuckles. “I think he’d fucking
love it. Are you kidding?”

I settle against Logan’s side,
relaxing as I take a deep breath. I let sleep overtake me, and I
dream about Logan.

Logan

I’m walking in a field of flowers.
They’re life-size and black haired with a blue streak down the
side, and they reach out to caress my arm as I walk by. I grab for
one, and it skitters out of my grasp, running away from me. I reach
for another, and it does the same thing.

I stopped dreaming in words a long time
ago. I only dream in sign language, but I hear a voice. “Logan,” it
says. It’s a voice I know, and the field suddenly smells like my
mom. The flowers part, and she stands there in the open space, her
great, white robes billowing around her. She’s not signing to me. I
can hear her voice, just like I did until I was twelve. I can hear
it as clear as day.

She doesn’t approach me. She wraps her
hands around her mouth and says, “Logan! It’s time to go back.” I’m
supposed to come home from the park by the time the streetlights
come on. If I’m not home, she’ll come and find me, and I never like
it when she comes to find me. It’s embarrassing. So, I always make
it home before the streetlights.

Until today, apparently.

I can’t find the stoop for all the
fucking wildflowers that stand in the way. If not for those, I’d
have been home a long time ago. The flower closest to me crooks a
petal at me and beckons me forward. It doesn’t speak. It opens its
mouth, but it doesn’t have a voice. My mom does, though. She cups
her hands around her mouth again. She’s growing impatient. I had
better hurry.

“
Logan, it’s time to go
back!” she yells.

The flowers fade, sinking into the air
like pretty, rainbow-hued cigarette smoke, until there is only one
left. My mom yells for me again.

I blink my eyes and stare upward.
There’s a dim light above me, and machines light up on my left in
time with my heartbeat. I wiggle my finger. My nose is itching, and
I need to scratch it, but when I try to lift my arm, it’s heavy.
It’s much heavier than I can ever remember it being before. I
groan, struggling with the weight of it, until I pick it up. But
it’s unwieldy and it falls on my chest.

There’s a gentle hum against my throat,
and I tip my head to look down at it. It’s not my blue-haired girl.
I blink my eyes again. It hurts just keeping them open. I look at
the form next to me again, and it’s my Emily, snuggled into my
side. She’s just blond now.

Thank God. Of course she wouldn’t be
anywhere else. I force my arm up and lay my hand on the side of her
face. Unfortunately, I kind of tap her cheek heavily, and she
startles in my arms. She sits up and looks down at me.

“
Oh my God!” she says. “Are
you awake?”

I try to nod, but it hurts. “I think
so,” I say. But my throat is raw. She leans over and picks up a
cup, lifting a straw to my mouth. I take a sip, and then she steals
it from me.

“
Not too much,” she warns.
Her eyes are filled with tears. “Are you really awake?” she asks
again. She leans over and shakes Sam’s leg. It’s propped on the
edge of my bed. He jumps in surprise and nearly falls out of the
chair as he fumbles to right himself.

“
Logan?” he asks, sitting
forward.

Emily says something to him, and he
rushes forward. He looks down at me and says on a huge exhale,
“Thank you,” as he looks up at the ceiling.

“
What happened?” I
ask.

A tear rolls down Emily’s cheek, but I
can tell underneath it, she’s pissed at me. “You did something so
stupid. And I thought you were going to die.” She takes my face in
her hands. “Are you really back?”

“
Back from
where?”

She laughs. “Wherever you’ve been for
ten days.”

Ten days? What the fuck is she talking
about?

“
You got hit by a
car.”

Memories crash into me like the car did
that night. That’s why I hurt. That’s why I’m in this bed. “Your
dad?” I ask.

“
He’s fine, numbnuts,” Sam
says.

I nod. “Good.”

“
If you ever do something so
stupid as try to get yourself killed again, Paul’s going to murder
you,” Sam warns. But he reaches for my hand and grips it tightly,
our thumbs crossing the way they do when people shake hands. “I’m
glad you’re back,” he says. His blue eyes, so much like mine, stare
into my face. “You broke your head. And your leg.” He leans forward
like he wants to tell me a secret. “And I heard that you broke your
dick, too. Emily’s all upset about that part. She doesn’t give a
fuck about your leg.”

Immediately, I want to check my parts.
He laughs, though.

“
Emily can check it out for
you later.”

“
She really doesn’t spend a
lot of time down there,” I say. My head is swimming from the pain
meds.

Sam turns away so he can laugh. “He’s
pretty fucked up,” he says. Emily’s face colors
profusely.

“
I can’t believe you said
that.” She pokes her bottom lip out, and all I can think about is
kissing her. But I can’t even lift my head, much less anything
else.

“
Sorry,” I grunt. “I hurt,”
I say, moving my arm.

Emily kisses my cheek. “Let me see if
the nurse can bring you anything,” she says. “They wanted to know
when you woke up anyway. Be right back.”

She walks out of the room. “That’s the
first time she’s left you since this happened,” Sam says. “Well,
except for the funeral.”

“
What funeral?”

His face is solemn. “The boy driving
the car that hit you. He died. She’s been here every day except for
the funeral.”

For ten days, she hasn’t left?
“Why?”

“
She wouldn’t leave. I don’t
know. Matt had to make her take a shower,” he laughs. “She was
pissed for hours.”

“
I’d love to have seen that.
I thought Matt could do no wrong when it comes to her.” I moan—I’m
really hurting.

“
The honeymoon period is
over,” he says. “You can only get a pass for having cancer for so
long,” Sam says, like what he’s saying is a fact. “Then the girls
start to treat you like you’re a normal asshole again.”

“
Where are Matt and Paul?” I
ask.

“
Paul has Hayley tonight,
and Matt went home to sleep.”

I nod.

“
Pete?”