Page 26 of A Summer Thing

Chapter Fifteen

Declan

His stare is violent. Crashing into my ribcage, taking my heart hostage, and constricting its beats. But his words—his words are like vines around the very same heart, thorns piercing into my organ and watching my blood spill free.

A single tear tracks down my cheek, too quickly to hold it in.

“Fuck, Declan—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.

I swear to God, I—” I’ve been called hundreds of names before.

Dozens of ugly slurs thanks to my own two parents.

So it doesn’t make sense, why that single word hurts more than I can remember those ones hurting.

Distraction. They were knicks on the surface of my skin, but that one word, from Jude’s mouth, feels like a laceration through my soul.

Which is entirely fucking pathetic, I realize.

But despite only having known him for a matter of weeks, I also realize that I— shit.

I press an open palm against my chest, pushing back against the chaos of churning feelings.

I realize I had grown to truly like him.

Admire him. Trust him. Trust that he would never intentionally hurt me.

I was drawn to the darkness inside him because it reminded me of my own—the fissure in his heart that matches mine completely—but he’s turned out to be no better than me, no better than the demons I already know.

It’s when we crack beneath the pressure of life that our true colors shine through.

I shouldn’t be surprised his bleed as dark as my own. And yet still, his dismissal hurts.

I wipe my tears from my face and pull back my shoulders, straightening my spine.

I made a mistake. But it doesn’t mean I’ll keep making them.

It doesn’t mean I’m destined to continuously fuck up, placing my trust in the hands of the wrong people.

It doesn’t make any of the things my parents have said about me true, despite my mind screaming the opposite.

I’m the one who asked Jude to leave that party, and look what happened.

I’m the one who—

“Declan, please,” Jude tries again in earnest.

“No, it’s fine,” I cut off his words, holding up a hand between us, urging him not to step any closer, not to tread any further over the heart that’s inexplicably splintering into pieces behind my ribcage.

“I don’t need an explanation. I get it. Go make sure your friends are okay. I just want to find—”

“Declan! Declan!” Addy screams from the opposite end of the hospital, severing the moment in two—divided, rupturing right down the middle.

One, where I leave a conversation in shattered fragments behind me, a stormy stare ripped from mine and landing on my retreating back.

And the other, where I race toward my devastated best friend, mascara painted in lines down her cheeks where a river of tears carves through.

When I see her, nothing else matters.

Not Jude’s hurtful words, or my twisting heart, or my raging thoughts.

Nothing matters more than the feel of Addy’s body crashing into mine, our arms locking tightly around each other. Sobs wrack her body, and her tears fall onto my shoulder. I drag her in as closely as I can, crushing her inside my embrace.

“You’re okay, right?” my words come out in a rush.

I pull away and hold her at arm’s length, scanning her from head to toe and back again.

She looks entirely unscathed, save for the mascara running down her cheeks, her eyes puffy and red from crying.

Relief immediately floods through me, and my own tears threaten to spill free yet again.

“I’m okay,” she confirms quietly, validating my assessment, and for the first time in too many minutes, my heart begins to calm.

What about everyone else, though? The thought filters through. I swallow thickly, too afraid to ask, but I need to know before we walk through those doors. If walking through them is something I even think I can do. I haven’t been inside a hospital in five years. Not since my accident.

“Addy, what the hell happened?” I finally find the courage to ask. “Everyone was at the party when we left, and everyone was supposed to stay, or order an Uber home. What happened?”

She glances down at her hands that are twisting together.

“We all decided to head over to Boss’s after all,” she pauses, pulling the long sleeve of Boss’s sweater over her hand to wipe more tears from her face, “do something a little more lowkey. So we could drink some more and not have to worry about driving ourselves home. And I know— I know —but I promise no one had had too much to drink at that point. But the guys… They were messing around and driving too fast down the highway, and this cow—a fucking cow, Declan—comes out of nowhere, and Parker nearly slams into him, throwing his truck sideways just to miss him. They flew off the road and into a ditch, and it was like watching the whole thing happen in slow motion. It was terrifying, Dec, and I…”

The sound of crunching metal and shattering glass stabs at my mind, and I cringe, my fingertips digging into Addy’s forearms as my hands tighten around her of their own volition.

Releasing her abruptly, I take a step backward.

“I’m sorry,” I say, digging my fingertips into my palms instead as I force the rush of embarrassment down.

“Are they okay? Are they going to be okay? Jude was… I don’t know, Addy.

He was freaking the fuck out. And he wouldn’t say anything the entire ride here, but they’re going to be okay, right? Parker and Williams?”

“I don’t know.” She shakes her head, and my heart plummets into my stomach.

“But Boss is inside, and he’s not leaving until he gets some answers.

The EMTs didn’t seem too worried, though.

But there was a lot of blood on Parker, and Williams seemed really out of it, and—I’m not sure, Declan, but I think they’re going to be okay. ”

I swallow past the lump in my throat, holding onto that hope, my vision swimming.

I spot Jude through the waiting room window, pacing, talking to Boss, the lines of his body rigid and his features tense.

He rakes a hand through his hair and pulls at it with a desperate grip before his shoulders fall—disappointment, or disbelief, creasing the corners of his eyes.

His misery feels like my fault.

That is what he was trying to say earlier, wasn’t he? His words echoing my own ugly fears. That I was the one who asked him to leave and look what happened.

Look. What fucking. Happened.

Tragedy. Chaos.

I sit down on the curb outside the emergency room, and push my face into my hands, fighting against the breaths attempting to suffocate me.

After far too many tries, I finally pull a deep enough one into my lungs.

And then another, and another.

And another.

Five, four, three, two, one. Five, four, three, two, one, I repeat again and again and again.

“Look around you, Declan! We’re all fucking miserable, and it all leads back to you! Misery will follow you wherever you go,” my father’s cruel, hate-filled words scratch at my mind. “So, good riddance to you. The day you leave this house is the day our misery ends.”

I clench my hands so tight they hurt. Pinpricks of panic stab through my body. My chest tightens, constricting my breaths, caging my erratically beating heart. I curl in on myself, hugging my knees to my chest.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

Not here. Not now. Not again.

“Whoa, Declan. Hey, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Dammit, I’m sorry, I wasn’t even thinking about…” Addy trails off as her hand meets my shoulder and rubs it in wide, soothing circles. “I’m going to call Mom and Dad, okay? I’ll let them know what happened, and then we can get out of here.”

I nod. Or at least I think I do.

I’m too busy counting backward from one hundred, following through with the grounding steps of Five, Four, Three, Two, One, to ease my racing heart, and the shakiness in my chest, and the flow of my breaths.

By some miracle, it works.

My heart calms, and my body settles, and my breaths start to slow.

It’s not too much later when Boss comes out to tell us the news. They’re okay. Bruised, and battered, and a little bit broken, but okay. They’re going to be okay.

I sag into myself further, releasing a weighted breath.

My mind has gone numb, my body lost to the exhaustion of tonight, my ears ringing, so I’m oblivious to the conversations happening around me—Jude on the phone with Cal as him and Stacy make their way to the hospital, Boss and Addy revisiting the details of the last hour or so, and a handful of the other guys showing up in support, too.

It’s a little while later that Cal and Stacy arrive, immediately pulling Addy and me into a deep, relieved, four-way hug.

“You two would be in so much damn trouble if I weren’t so terribly relieved.

” Stacy sighs, squeezing us even harder.

“Come on, let’s get you girls in bed— where you belong at this hour,” she says pointedly, and Cal plants a kiss on each of our foreheads before going inside with the guys.

We finally head home at three in the morning.

And by the time my body hits the sheets, I’m completely gone.

______

Tipping his head back in a dark thunderclap of laughter, vines sprout and crawl from his open mouth, creeping their way down his body before spilling onto the floor between us.

They bleed onto the ground in an inky mass.

I try to take a step backward, willing my feet to move, but they’re stuck, cemented to the floor.

The sound of grinding metal and shattering glass stabs at my mind—and I realize, with a bone-chilling clarity, that the sound is coming from him.

He’s dead, Jude laughs , and it’s all your fault.

A single tear tracks down my face.

And then I open my mouth, and scream.

______

It’s another dark, late night. Another sleepy wander down the hallway. Another quiet standoff—as I nearly crash into Jude.

It’s been one week. One week of silence. One week of staying in.

One week of avoiding Jude at all costs.