Page 113

EVIE
“Idon’t care. I’m not leaving Birmingham until Grayson leaves with me. I’ll sleep on the street if I have to.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Frankie tells me. “Mom was able to get a suite at the Marriott next door so you can stay there with her and I’ll be up between shifts.”
Frankie and I have been discussing what happens next. Where do we go from here? Pinckard is three hours south. I can’t make that drive every day to check on him and honestly, there’s no way I’m leaving him. Even if this surgery goes well and there are no more complications, Grayson’s still looking at another four weeks in the hospital from what Frankie tells me. No way I’m leaving him here.
Any minute Leigha is going to come into my room and tell me they’re going to wake him up to test his brain function. I know it’s not waking him up permanently, but the idea that he will open his eyes is all I care about. I just want to see those beautiful brown eyes.
“You have to eat,” Ethan says, barely looking at my face. He’s been in my room three times since Sunday night and has yet to make eye contact with me.
I stare at the IV in my hand. The one giving me yet another dose of antibiotics in hopes that I’ll be discharged tomorrow. I’m finally in a room with a window and I can see outside. It’s bright, too bright for my mood, the summer sun hanging low in the sky. I check the time again. It’s five o’clock. Why haven’t they come and got me yet? “I’m not hungry and every time I eat,” I tell him, “I can’t keep it down.” I look to Frankie. “It’s been eighteen hours. How come they haven’t come and got me? Do you think they did the test without me there?” I hadn’t seen Julia in a couple hours. Maybe she decided I shouldn’t be there. Would she do that?
“I’m sure they’ll be here any minute.”
“Eat,” Ethan growls, pushing crackers my way with a flick of his hand.
“I’ll just throw up again.”
“It’s the nerves,” Frankie notes, handing me the ice water on my tray. “Try some water.”
“Or the fact that she hasn’t been fucking eating and her body is going into shock,” Ethan grumbles, shifting his position in the chair. He’s been a dick all week. “You realize you’re borderline septic, right?”
Anger pulses through me. “Frankie, can I talk to Ethan alone for a few minutes?”
“What?” he barks, rolling his eyes as he slumps back against the chair he’s seated in, his cell phone lying on his stomach as he stares at the ceiling. “What did I do?”
Her eyes narrow at her fiancé as she reaches for her diet Coke. “You’re being a butthead lately.”
“Butthead?” he mouths to me, rolling his eyes again and tossing a wadded-up paper towel at her head as she leaves.
When Frankie closes the door, Ethan groans. “I don’t need a fucking lecture so if that’s what you’re doing, save your breath.”
I eye him suspiciously. “So she gave you one already?”
He still won’t look at me. “No, Mom did.”
“I’m not surprised she did. You’re being a turd. What’s your problem?”
That’s the moment he meets my eyes. At first, he doesn’t say anything. He stares at my face, more than likely the bruises I know are there. I’ve yet to look at myself in the mirror—afraid actually—but I can imagine what I look like isn’t good. Ethan’s jaw clenches, his eyes narrowing. “What the fuck do you think my problem is? Shanerapedyou. He tried to kill Grayson and news flash, it’s not looking good.” He flips his hand up, gripping his phone tighter, his voice chillingly cruel. “He keeps trying to die these last couple days.” I flinch at his harsh words, as if I wasn’t already aware of that. His callous words turn my stomach and flip my heart around in my chest. It feels like it does a somersault into my throat. “Do you want me to keep going? It’s fucked up, Evie. All this shit is fucked up and that motherfucker deserves to die, not jail. So excuse me if I’m not pleasant. I think I have a goddamn right to be upset.”
There’s a blip in my chest, heat rolling through me. I think about what he’s saying. I try to decipher the meaning behind it. A lot of Ethan’s frustration boils down to the fact that I’ve hidden so much from him the past year. I didn’t tell anyone Shane was hurting me and if I had, maybe all this could have been avoided, but knowing Shane, I don’t think he would have stopped. It would have been my life he tried to take. “So it really boils down to Shane going to jail, and not dead?”
His eyes angle back to mine, his jaw clenching and unclenching. Frustration digs a line into his forehead. “Yes!”
“Do you think this is better?” I ask when his glazed green eyes glare intently on mine, causing my words to falter on my lips. I let out a troubled breath. “Ethan, he has to live with this guilt his entire life.”
“Guilt?” He snorts. “You and I both know that piece of shit holds absolutely no guilt over this.”
He’s probably right, but I can’t think about that at themoment. I don’t want to. Shane is no longer my concern. He’s in jail, he confessed, I have to keep my attention on Grayson.
The door to my room opens and Leigha emerges pushing a wheelchair. “Would you like to take a little trip with me?” she asks, exhaustion heavy in her eyes. She’s going on a forty-eight-hour shift, as is Dr. Nehls, all to keep an eye on Grayson.
Ethan uses the moment to disappear from the room, Julia watching him with concern. She looks to me as he passes by. “Is he okay?”
I shrug, pushing myself out of the bed and into the wheelchair. “He’s being a brat.” My T-shirt I’m wearing slides off my shoulder as I sink down into the chair. I can’t imagine how much weight I’ve lost in the three days we’ve been here. I look up at Leigha, who is untangling my IV that wrapped around the arm of the wheelchair. “Have you woken him up yet? Did I miss it?”
“You didn’t miss anything. His temperature is up a bit, but not bad. It’s normal for patients with head injuries to run a temp because the pressure prevents them from regulating it.”