Trouble in Sudden Falls: A Sudden Falls Romance (31 page)

Maddie had him halfway down the hall him away before Donna could do much more than nod.

“An accident? What was that about?” Eli asked.

“Rogan told me Amy’s mom was seriously against him taking Amy out,” she said. “How do you think she’d feel if she found out that Rogan had been in a fight?”

Eli nodded. “Good point.” With everything else that had been revealed that evening, that point hadn’t even occurred to him.

They stopped in front of room 18. “Are you ready?”

Eli nodded, opened the door and went in. Rogan sat up in the hospital bed. His cheek had two butterfly bandages on it and his lip had several visible stitches. His eye looked even worse, but Rogan met Eli’s gaze with his good eye.

“I’m so sorry, Dad.”

How ironic that
now
was the first time Rogan called him “Dad”? He heard Maddie sniff behind him.

He leaned one hip against the side of the bed and took Rogan’s hand, noticing it was entirely without bruises or scrapes.

“What happened?” he asked Rogan.

“I took a little too much offense to someone bad-mouthing Amy.” He shrugged then winced. “His buddies jumped me.”

“What did he say?”

“I won’t repeat it.” Rogan’s voice was firm. “It was too awful.”

Eli felt pride swell in him.

“Can we go home yet?” he asked.

Eli shook his head. “They want to keep you overnight… make sure that conk on the head didn’t jar anything loose.”

“No. Please let me come home,” he said. “I want to go home.”

Rogan was nearly crying and the way Rogan kept repeated the word home broke Eli’s heart. He suspected highly that Sudden Falls was probably the first time Rogan had ever experienced “home”. Eli sat in the chair next to Rogan’s bed, his legs nearly ready to give out.

“What about if I stay with you?” he asked.

Rogan sniffed, the look of hope on his face a punch to Eli’s gut. “Really? You’d do that?”

Eli nodded. “Sure.” He looked up at Maddie. “You don’t mind taking the truck back home do you?”

She smiled so sweetly at him as she rubbed her hand between his shoulder blades. “Not at all.” Maddie leaned down and gave him a kiss on his crown before leaning over Rogan’s bed and smooching him on the forehead. “Give me a call tomorrow and I’ll come back and pick you boys up.” She waved as she backed out of the room.

“You ought to marry that woman,” Rogan said.

“I’m workin’ on it, kiddo. I’m workin’ on it.”

Rogan woke up feeling like he’d had the tar beaten out of him. Which seemed about right. He groaned and rolled to his side.

“You’re awake.”

Rogan opened his eyes to find his dad stretching in the hard plastic chair next to his bed. “Yup.”

“They didn’t make these chairs to encourage overnight guests, that’s for certain.” His dad rolled his head around and wincing.

He couldn’t believe his dad stayed all night. He also couldn’t believe he’d been so pathetic as to ask him to. Or if not ask him to, then to agree when he asked.

“How are you feeling this morning?”

“Good.” Okay, so he was a total liar. “Think they’ll let me go home this morning?” He needed to check on Amy. It was so weird that she hadn’t been there when he came to pick her up. Even Darlene had thought so.

His dad raised an eyebrow. “You look like the exact opposite of good.”

“I’ve been worse.”

His dad winced. “I fear that you’re telling the truth.” The caring that he saw on his dad’s face was so unfamiliar it made him squirm. Not that he didn’t think his dad was a caring guy, only that no one ever had that level of… could it be…
love
?

He realized that for the first time, he was thinking of Eli as
his dad
. Somehow, his offer to spend the night with Rogan changed everything.

“So… about going home?”

“They’re working on your discharge papers as we speak. Dr. Stark came in a bit earlier.”

Right then, the nurse came in and handed a sheaf of paperwork to his dad. “Dr. Stark noted a comment about this blood work. Did you need me to explain any of this?”

His dad’s face drained until he was pale. “No!” His reaction was definitely overkill. “No,” he said again, more quietly, but the look on his face was still pure terror.

Rogan wondered if he were worse off than anyone was letting on. He’d heard stories about people having a minor traffic accident, going in for x-rays and finding out that they had cancer. He rolled his eyes at himself. If he had cancer, they’d be keeping him in the hospital, not letting him go home. Besides he felt fine. There was one way to find out.

“What’s up with the bloodwork?” Rogan asked.

Eli shook his head. “Nothing,” he said without meeting Rogan’s eyes. Something in his world tilted a bit to the left and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like that Eli was clearly lying to him.

Before he could say anything else, Maddie knocked on the open door frame and stepped in, carrying a small pink, flowered duffel bag. “The reinforcements are here,” she said with a big smile. “Or at least the supply wagon.”

She opened the bag and pulled out a pair of his jeans, one of his favorite black T-shirts which read, “Chaos, Panic, Disorder. My work here is done.” Then she handed him a pair of his boxer-briefs and socks, before setting his favorite boots at the end of the bed. She took out a Ziploc baggie with his toothbrush and a few other toiletries.

“Thanks,” he said, not sure else to tell her how much he appreciated it.

“I raided the bathroom and did the laundry. I didn’t want you to think I invaded your room or your privacy,” she said. “I only went in to check on Fluffy.”

“How is she?” he asked.

“Missin’ you. When I left her this morning, she was sitting on the bed with her chin on her paws and a pitiful look on her face.”

“Thanks, Maddie,” Eli said. “Above and beyond the call.” He pointed at the door. “Shall we take our leave so he can get ready to go?” He turned back to Rogan. “You need any help?”

Rogan tried stretching a bit. He hurt. A lot. But not as much as he would have expected. His ribs were the worst, but he could lift his arms so it wasn’t that bad. “Nah, I think I got it.”

He managed to get out of his hospital gown and into his clothes with only a few words mumbled under his breath. His right side was definitely the worst. He went to brush his teeth in the small attached bathroom and caught a glimpse of his face. The Meathead Gang had definitely worked him over. He looked like he belonged on the set of a horror movie as bad as his face was misshapen. It was a miracle they hadn’t broken his cheek, jaw or nose.

Feeling less like a patient and more like a human, he opened the door to let Maddie and his dad back in.

“Ready to go?” Eli asked.

“More than.”

An ancient hospital volunteer—who looked like he needed the wheelchair a lot more than Rogan did—pushed him down to the lobby. Maddie pulled the car up and Eli helped him into the front seat while Maddie hopped out and got in the back. Rogan waited for the other shoe to drop. Eli could have really lit in to him about fighting. He
did
start it, after all. Even if he got his ass kicked.

Something was going on. Eli and Maddie had exchanged no less than three significant looks, one when Eli handed her the hospital paperwork for safekeeping. He wanted to ask again, but he was pretty sure they wouldn’t tell him the truth.

“I take it you’re going to stay home from school tomorrow?”

Rogan looked up. “Uh, I hadn’t planned on it.”

“Rogan—” Maddie started from the back seat.

“I’ve worked too hard to keep my grades up this quarter. I think I’m going to end up with straight As at both the high school and at the college. I want to take classes over summer quarter and I won’t be able to do that if I get an incomplete in anything, and if I take any time off, I’ll have less than two weeks to catch up.”

“After the way you’ve pushed yourself since you got to town, I’m not sure that taking summer classes is the best thing for you. Don’t you want to have some time off?”

Maybe what Eli knew is that Becca was coming back. Not that Becca would have anything to do with hospital paperwork. Unless he was somehow sick and Eli tracked her down because of that. He should probably ask.

On the other hand, maybe Eli didn’t think he could handle it. “Is it that Becca is coming back or that you don’t think I can hack it?”

“What? Neither.” He shook his head. “I haven’t heard from Becca at all and of course I think you can handle it. I’m so proud of how well you’ve done and how much you’ve accomplished. I think it would be good for you to take some time to actually be a kid. You’ve been working your can off for the past four months.”

“If I don’t take summer classes, then I can’t graduate early,” he said, wiping his hand over his face before he remembered that it was a bruised disaster. He grunted from the pain, but tried to keep Eli from hearing it.

“I don’t understand why it is so important that you graduate early.”

“I really don’t want to go back to the high school next year,” he said. He didn’t tell Eli what a reject he was at the high school and how—for the first time in his life—he managed to find a level of acceptance at the college. Not that he had any close friends—besides Amy and Tinkas, that is—but at least he didn’t feel like a reject from the planet Weirdia.

“What if I talk to Mrs. Scarpa about you taking all your classes at the college, even if some of them you have to take for high school credit?”

Rogan sighed. He’d be willing to bet any amount of money that Eli knew he wouldn’t be around by Fall. “Fine,” he said, his throat tight.

Figures. Right when this place was starting to feel like some semblance of…
home
. Not that he had any idea what home was supposed to feel like.

They pulled up to the house, to find Amy and her mom sitting in the driveway. Great. Now he could find out why she blew him off, since clearly, “Run over by a bus” wasn’t an excuse she could use.

He slid out of the truck a little faster than he should have, feeling angrier than he’d felt since he’d arrived. He’d forgotten how shitty it felt to be this pissed off all the time.

As Amy got out of the car slowly, he caught the disapproving look on her mom’s face and ground his teeth. Like he hadn’t been through enough in the past fifteen hours.

Amy stood at the side of the car, her hands clasped before her, fidgeting like she was nervous. He stepped toward her and she finally looked him in the face and gasped.

“Holy mike! What happened to you?” She took him by the arm and led him to the patio furniture at the side of the house. From his peripheral vision, he noticed Maddie and his dad stop to talk to Mrs. Goodman. Amy was such a “good girl”. That she kept them in view of the adults at all times proved it. Either that, or she didn’t trust him.

God, he was down on himself today. Guess that’s what having the crap kicked out of you did for you. Not only beat up your body, but also your self-image.

He tried to shake it off as Amy sat down on one of the chairs. Rogan lowered himself into a lawn chair across the table from her.

She gave him a long look. “I really like what you did to your hair and stuff,” she said. “But what happened to your face?”

“Got on the wrong side of Shane Grundin and his buddies.”

“How?” He wasn’t going to repeat what Shane had said about her. It was too hateful and it wouldn’t make anything any better.

“He said something stupid and I tried to challenge him over it. I was an idiot.”

“He’s a complete—
jerk.
And by that you know I don’t really mean jerk.” She grinned, which, as always, made his heart speed up. That girl had some killer dimples. Then her smile faded. “Please tell me he didn’t rip your rings out of your face.”

“Nah. I took them out for the dance.”

“Wait—you went to the dance without me?”

He was still waiting for an explanation. “When you weren’t home, I went there looking for you.” He refused to ask her why she’d blown him off.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t home. I—” She hesitated a long moment.

Rogan could see Mrs. Goodman pacing along the edge of the driveway, giving him the evil eye.

“I don’t normally tell people this ‘cause it tends to freak them out, but… I’m diabetic. I got diagnosed in first grade. Sometimes, even when I take very good care of myself, my blood sugar goes out of whack and I pass out… It seems to happen when I’m excited or nervous and not paying enough attention. Last night I went a little high. I didn’t pass out or anything, but my mom dragged me to the hospital. She said she saw your folks there.”

Well, she had a good reason, at least. “So you have to take shots?”

She shook her head. “I have an insulin pump. But I have to check my blood sugar several times a day.”

“That sucks.”

She shrugged. “You get used to it.”

Amy Goodman was…
nice.
Definitely too nice for the likes of him. Too nice for the kind of guy who’d get into a fistfight at the school dance. So much for pulling his life together and cleaning up his act.

Amy fidgeted with the bug-away candle on the table. “Maybe we can… that is, if you
want
to, maybe we can… go out some other time?” She blushed and he was struck again by how adorable she was. He knew he couldn’t see her anymore. If the glares he was getting from across the lawn from her mom were any indication, she wouldn’t be allowed to anyway.