Underneath It All (The Walsh Series #1) (33 page)

As I fell asleep in the corner, I wondered about the roof at Saint Cosmas. This was the kind of snow that would bring it all down, and part of me wanted to see the wreckage. I couldn’t be the only thing destroyed right now.

LAUREN

17:45 Shannon:
I know my brother’s on your shit list but I need my friend right now.

17:45 Lauren:
of course. what’s wrong?

17:46 Shannon:
My father had a stroke this morning, and I’m keeping it together but just barely.

17:46 Lauren:
where are you? I’m on my way.

*

Shannon’s directions pointed
me toward the waiting room, but she didn’t mention it resembled a miniature Walsh Associates command post. Power adapters shot out from every outlet and tangled in the middle of the room. Shannon and Patrick huddled around a laminate table-turned-desk where they were furiously typing. Sam and Riley were busy writing all over the windows with dry erase markers, and Matthew was nestled on the floor, asleep in the corner.

How was it supposed to be now? How was I supposed to see him without dissolving into a mopey puddle of regret?

It was awful to admit but I considered ignoring Shannon’s initial text today. She sent several last night, but I turned off my phone on the walk between her apartment and mine, and didn’t power up until after an hour-long bath this afternoon. She wanted to know what went down—I did scramble out of her place like my hair was on fire—but I couldn’t explain the words Matthew and I shared in that kitchen. Or the car. Or his bedroom last week.

And now, with everything in ruins around me, I knew there was no point in trying.

Where Shannon sent her share of texts while I was unplugged, I received none from Matthew. For all my pushing, I hoped for just a bit more pulling from him, just this once. I hoped he’d find a way to make it work, a way that didn’t force me to choose.

Shannon’s friendship was important to me, but I didn’t know how to balance it with the wreckage of Matthew and me. Seeing him now, his long legs extended before him and his arms locked over his chest, the recognition that he wasn’t a treat, an occasional indulgence on par with expensive underwear and decadent cupcakes, settled in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t lull myself into believing I could manage any amount of moderation, and I couldn’t prevent myself from falling for him.

My head belonged in the mission, and not sidetracked with fanciful activities or growly, bitey boys.

He looked terrible, a gray cast to his skin and an IV in his hand. I knew touching him was a gateway to so much more, but I couldn’t help it. He was frigid, his cheeks ice cold. “Oh, Matthew.”

“Get out of my dreams, woman,” he rasped, and his eyes inched open.

“Not a dream,” I said. “You’re freezing.”

Groaning as he stood up, he braced his hand on my shoulder, and took a wobbly, limping step. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he grunted.

“What happened to you?”

Flattening his hands on the wall, he shook his head, and dropped his chin to his chest. “I don’t know, Lauren. You tell me. You’re the one who walked out.”

Okay, so that was how it was going to be. “I mean why are you limping?”

“Went for a long run last night.”

“Last
night
?” I cried. “In the
blizzard
?”

“Yeah, if you want to yell at me, get in line behind the rest of them.” He nodded toward his siblings, and shuffled down the hall, his IV bag tucked under his arm.

“He’s fine,” Sam said, jerking a thumb at Matthew and motioning for me to follow him in the opposite direction. “Just dehydrated. And temperamental. How did you hear?”

In worn jeans and a Cornell hoodie, he looked young and unassuming. Gone was Sam’s smooth charm and composure, and in its place was the vulnerable, neurotic man I knew. “Shannon texted me. How’s your dad?”

“
Angus
,” he corrected, “is in a coma, but he’s had a few seizures since we’ve been here. They think he’s been having little strokes for weeks, maybe months. They’re worried about…” He wrapped his hands around the back of his neck and shrugged. “There’s a lot to worry about.”

“And how are you?”

He pushed his glasses up his nose and frowned. “I don’t know yet.”

“Oh thank God you’re here,” Shannon called as she rounded the corner. She ran up, pushing Sam away and folding her arms around me. She squeezed hard before pulling back. “Can we get some coffee?”

We walked the hospital halls, and Shannon was silent for several minutes before the dam broke. For as close as she was with her brothers, she was also stoic. It was up to her to hold it together for them, and after all these years, I doubted she knew how to face them with anything less than complete composure.

“It doesn’t even bother me anymore when he calls me a cunt,” she laughed as she wiped tears from her chin. “It’s like nothing.”

Sitting face to face on the floor of a quiet stairwell—really, they were the best places for semi-private tears—we cried together as the story of her father’s reign of terror poured out in a ragged, sobbing mess.

“You know what I thought when I got the call this morning? I thought, thank God. I thought, I hope it was quick and I hope it was painless, but please let that miserable bastard die.” She sniffled, and wiped the edge of her sleeve over her tear-stained face. “I guess that probably makes me just as much of a miserable bastard.”

“No,” I said. “I think it makes you human. You make mistakes and you hurt people, and you try to survive, and that’s what makes you human.”

*

My red Hunter
boots squeaked against the gleaming new floors, and despite my thorough inspections, there was no slant to be found. Even though I didn’t have the first idea of what I’d say to him if our paths crossed, I had been lurking at Trench Mills most of this week, just hoping to see Matthew again.

When I wasn’t here, I was crying over every random memory of him, and the universe was blasting them all in my direction. A tie he left in my closet. A lonely Heineken in my refrigerator. The take-out menu from our favorite Spanish restaurant shoved into my mailbox.

But in reality, he was everywhere, all over my apartment, all over this city, all over my school, and all over me.

The raccoons and water heaters were gone, broken windows replaced, and it didn’t feel like the same button mill anymore. I had to look closely to see the places where Matthew and I had been, to call the memories of that September day to the surface. In the gray December light, those moments seemed foreign, distant, unimaginable.

But I remembered the wanting—wanting to touch him, be close to him, taste him—and I remembered denying myself. And I’d denied myself so much of Matthew these past months. Too much.

“It’s looking good,” Riley boomed over my shoulder. His deep voice echoed through the space and I startled, my hand flying to my mouth to conceal a yelp. “Just another couple of months, and you’ll be ready to roll.”

“Yeah,” I murmured, rising on my toes to look over his shoulder.

“He’s not here,” Riley said. “It’s his turn on deathbed duty.”

Their glib treatment of Angus’s condition made sense as a coping mechanism when considered alongside their personalities and his heinous nature, but it wasn’t my favorite Walshism.

“Oh, okay. I mean, I wasn’t—”

“Here’s what you need to know about my brother,” Riley said. “Even if something isn’t broken, he likes to take it apart, figure out how it works, and then break it. He’s not a sadist, he just likes trying to put it back together better than it was built. Don’t give up on him, even if he broke it and doesn’t know how to fix it yet. He won’t stop until he finds the solution. He doesn’t know how to give up.”

Inside my head, something new started forming, a link between all these words and thoughts and emotions, and I nodded, speechless. Synapses fired, neural pathways connected, and I felt the pieces pivoting, aligning, snapping into place.

Riley wandered off with a comment about checking on the heating and ventilation progress while I stared out the window, the mechanics in my mind sapping all of my cognitive processes while this hot ball of awareness pushed up and out, spreading through my cells.

If I had known four months ago that I’d be in love with Matthew, I would have fought for him, for us, and like every other challenge I accepted, I wouldn’t have surrendered until there was nothing left on the road.

Hindsight was a bitch.

In a burst of jagged, blurry consciousness, I understood it all.
Finally
.

I never gave up, never gave in, and always gave everything I had, and I’d always fought on the side of right.

Until now.

I gave up on Matthew—on us—the moment I crawled out of his bed in the middle of the night. I bunkered down, conceding everything to my work, and neglecting myself, my relationship, my Matthew. And it wasn’t just neglect, it was a refusal to acknowledge the challenge of living my life while simultaneously kicking ass in my career. The two were never mutually exclusive.

Sometimes I cried in stairwells and smothered my stress in chocolate, but I was standing in the middle of my school, the one I dreamed up and formed into reality. And I loved Matthew. Those words lived inside me all along, and I should have said them every time my heart ached to reach out and squeeze him. And none of that required a neat, sequential plan.

In a frenzy, my squeaky boots carried me down the stairs and to the curb where I found Riley talking with the crew.

“Are you headed to the hospital?” I asked.

“I can be,” he said. “Let’s go.”

*

I bolted through
the halls, half running, half stomping, and never determining what I intended to say. Rounding the corner to the waiting room, I found Matthew hunched over his laptop, deep grooves of irritation carved into his face. It was the same expression he wore that day at Saint Cosmas, as if he was annoyed to find a building that didn’t live up to his exacting specifications.

“Hi,” I said, breathless and flustered.

It had been six days since seeing him last, and if the scowl, thick beard growth, and dark bags under his eyes were any indication, he was about as miserable as I was.

“Shannon’s not here,” he said, his eyes meeting mine over his laptop’s lid for a moment, and then refocusing on the screen.

I wasn’t sure what I expected from Matthew, but it certainly wasn’t dismissive indifference.

“I’m not looking for Shannon. I’m looking for you.”

He glanced up, his expression turning pinched, bitter. “What can I do for you now, Lauren?”

Okay, so he was pissed off at me. That was fair. We weren’t going to throw our arms around each other and let kisses speak all the apologies necessary and promise to work it out, and I probably deserved every sour scowl he tossed my way.

“I’m here because we have things to talk about,” I said.

“As you’ve pointed out already, it’s all been said.”

Why couldn’t he sit still, shut up, and let me tell him I felt the same things?