Page 58 of Dear Future Husband (The Dearly Written #1)

Trey

Life.

For the most part, life and I were friends. At one point, I positively considered life a kind, worthwhile experience. Then my best friend died and the girl I loved fell asleep.

I felt betrayed by life. I thought we had a solid understanding of feasible hardships and meaningful rewards. But it took something irreplaceable to me.

Two people I loved and considered family.

Then when my trust was broken, and I was at my weakest, life tricked me into a false security.

It gave me back the girl I remained patient for.

I could handle the ups and the downs, the rejection and the back and forth because Maybelle was awake.

That was the most important thing, that she was awake. She was alive.

Life was good in re-gifting me the presence of the girl I fell for through the words of a precious book. It was gentle in letting me hold her again, letting me keep her. But it was ripping my trust apart all over again by trying to take her back.

“Hang in there. We’re close,” Williams said from the back seat. Nodding, I held to the door handle of the truck, ready to dive out as soon as we arrived.

“What else did Penny say?” Larson demanded from next to Williams. “Did the guy have a gun? Is that why she went with him?”

“No,” Bear answered for me as he wove his truck through traffic. “She said that Maybelle willingly went with him.”

Twenty minutes ago, I disembarked the plane home with my brothers after a couple of won away games. The moral was high. I was feeling really good, thinking I was headed home to be with the girl I loved.

Just as we exited the elevator into the parking garage, my phone started to ring. Penny was on the other line. She was in tears, and I instantly knew something was wrong with Maybelle.

My heart hadn’t stopped dropping since. All rational thought left me. I was a problem solver. I fixed things. I protected. I was organized but as I listened to Penny sob on the other line… I was lost.

My mind scattered like water droplets on a searing pan.

Thankfully, Bear overheard the call. He explained to Williams and Larson, and they knew what I wanted—what I needed. In seconds, we were piled into Bear’s truck and racing down the road.

“Turn left up here,” Williams directed.

Bear obeyed.

“How far are we?” I managed to choke out.

Larson leaned up from the back, pointing past the windshield. “We’re here.”

The truck swerved up next to the closed off road. Red and blue lights lit up the night. Bear didn’t park. He slowed, letting Williams and I jump out as he came to a stop.

I rushed forward, ignoring the signs, tape and vehicles, standing between me and my forever.

“Hey, you can’t be here!” I heard someone holler, but I paid them no heed. Williams trotted up behind me. That’s when I saw the wreck. There was a massive semitruck… and a small car. The right side of the smaller vehicle was crushed.

Not again , I thought as I sprinted past cops and paramedics.

“Trey.”

I slowed as Williams jogged up next to me.

“Is that her?”

I followed his pointing. Three paramedics surrounded a gurney, raising it in through the back of an ambulance.

I took off.

“Maybelle.” I lunged for the gurney, not sure what my plan was. The air was knocked from me as a hand caught my chest.

“What the hell are you doing?” A big man, a paramedic, judging by his uniform, pulled me away.

My mouth wouldn’t work as I ripped his arm off me. In my head I was screaming. While on the outside all I could do was stare wide-eyed as they settled Maybelle inside and one of the medical personnel yelled, “Shut those doors. We gotta move.”

“That’s my girl,” I finally got out over the chaos.

The man’s eyes strayed from me to Maybelle then back to me.

My mouth formed the word, “ Please .” But I wasn’t sure any sound came out.

Despite that, the paramedic asked, “Can you keep out of the way?”

I nodded fervently.

He gestured me forward, showing me a seat in the corner of the ambulance. “This one’s family,” he shouted but the others barely spared me a look. They were yelling stats and commands at each other.

Just before the vehicle doors closed, I caught sight of Williams.

“We’ll meet you there,” he said, and I nodded.

The doors clapped shut and the ambulance jostled off with us inside. She was right there, just within reach, but I never felt so far away.

Blood painted her face. Her beautiful hair was matted, and her eyes were closed.

“We got you, sweetheart,” one man said as he charted out on a clipboard. A woman rummaged around, pulling supplies from a side cubby.

I was helpless. Watching, waiting, praying.

Air evaded me as I stared. I lowered my head between my shoulders, desperately trying to pull breath into my chest. My eyes caught onto a purse sliding across the floor with the momentum of the ambulance. It shifted toward me and spilled out a small black book.

My journal…

I swallowed hard and grabbed at the book. My head rolled back against the wall behind me as I opened the heavily scribed on pages. I flipped past entries she talked about Liam. Entries, she cried. Entries she told stories and entries, she dreamed of a beautiful, love-filled existence.

I opened to the first page. The first page I read and the first page that changed my life. My eyes fell on the last words of that first passage.

My greatest wish is for you to love me as much as I love you.

“I-I do,” I stuttered under my breath as I looked up at her in the gurney. “I love you that much and more,” I admitted lowly.

A shrilling mechanical beep sounded through the space. The woman lunged toward Maybelle, checking lines and pulse points.

“Shit,” she hissed.

My heart free-fell into my stomach.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. Neither paramedic acknowledged me.

The man checked his papers, glanced at a handheld screen. “Start compressions,” he ordered over the ruckus and wailing of the sirens .

Quick to answer, the woman climbed up over Maybelle, put her hands to her chest and began to pump.

I gripped the journal in both my hands. Kissing the cover of the book, I closed my eyes and held it to my lips as tears cascaded down my face.

“Stay,” I whispered. “Stay with me, Mayhem,” I prayed into the leather of the book.

I’d never prayed. Not to a god at least. But every word out of my mouth was filled with depths of my soul. It was fitting that the only prayer ever uttered from my lips be for her—to her.

“ Don’t leave me ,” I pleaded in my head, watching as the paramedics worked to keep her here.

“I can’t get a steady rhythm,” the man grounded out.

I dropped my forehead to the book. “ I can’t do this without you. We had a deal. ”

“Let’s shock her,” ordered the woman.

“ I told you, ‘No more walking alone’. I promised you I would walk with you every day. Morning, night, rain or shine. I meant that forever .” I pulled back and swiped at the tears that fell to the leather of my book.

“ Don’t leave me to walk alone, please—please.

I can’t walk without you, May. I need you . ”

I dropped my head back against the wall, my tears streaming back into my hair while Maybelle’s body jolted with each pump.

“ Stay, May. Please stay with me, baby. Please. ” I continued to beg into the void of my subconscious.

I was being devoured from the inside out. My hope, my faith, my joy was being stripped from me, and I was powerless to stop it.

Life was no friend of mine. It was a cruel reality, and I wasn’t so sure I would survive it as I closed my eyes.

“ Come back, May. Come back home to me .”

***

Beep. Beep. Beep .

I held to that constant noise like a lifeline. I settled back in my chair, eyes wandering over the sleeping girl in the bed.

“Trey?”

Peering over my shoulder, I saw Penny squeezing in through the half-open hospital room door. In her hands was a tray of food from the cafeteria.

“I thought you might be hungry,” she explained in a hushed tone.

I couldn’t eat. The adrenaline from the last several hours had hardened like a stone in the pit of my gut. But when I looked back at the golden-haired girl asleep in the bed, the weight eased a fraction.

The doctors said she was a miracle. They insisted she was fine. That she should wake any minute now. I wasn’t sure what I believed, what I could trust. I knew I wouldn’t feel sure until I saw those beautiful blue-green eyes look at me.

It’d only been a couple hours since we arrived. Maybelle slept but she was stable. Apparently, she’d been awake earlier, but I missed her. I was preoccupied with an officer.

I had white-knuckled Maybelle’s journal in one of my hands as the police officer explained to me who took her. My eyes fell to her neck. Discolored fingerprints marred her skin.

Luckily for that bastard, Maybelle was the only one to survive the crash.

Penny placed the plate on the small table next to Maybelle’s bed.

I mustered up a smile. “Thank you.”

She nodded. Her eyes weren’t on me though; they were on Maybelle. Maybelle was beautiful. Even with a large bandage across her forehead, the bruising around her neck and her pallid complexion .

Penny cautiously perched herself on the edge of the bed in front of me, her eyes still studying our girl.

“I’m so sorry, Trey.”

Tears fell then, and she swiped at her eyes.

“I keep replaying what happened in my head.” Her hands fidgeted together, and her eyes trailed back to Maybelle.

“I should never have listened to her when she told me not to move. I should’ve run to her.

I should’ve done something.” Her head bowed.

“I’m so mad at her for leaving, for not letting me help, but more than anything, I’m furious with myself. She needed me and I didn’t move.”

My heart cracked, and I reached for Penny, putting a hand on her knee. “Penny.” She didn’t look up at me as she continued to cry. “You did nothing wrong. You’re not to blame for what happened.”

When she continued to look elsewhere, I finally said, “Penny, look at me.” When she did, tears stained her cheeks.

“This is not your fault,” I reiterated.

Squeezing her eyes closed, she nodded, sniffling as she twisted to Maybelle. “I just wish I could’ve done more.”

I had never related with anything more. This feeling of complete helplessness. This uncertainty and lack of ability to do anything was enough to drive me mad with grief.

“I understand.”

She shook her head and placed a hand on Maybelle’s, that rested at her side. “I wanted to wait until she woke up but—Daniel is here to pick me up.”

“Good,” I said. “You should go home, get some rest.”

She still didn’t tear her eyes from Maybelle as she asked me, “What about you?”

There was no me without Maybelle .

“I’ll be fine.”

She stood, leaning over the bed to place a kiss on Maybelle’s brow as she whispered into her skin, “I love you too.”

Penny wasn’t the only one who had sat here with me and Maybelle. Earlier, my brothers had been here. My eyes turned to the side table and bundle of forget-me-nots Larson had insisted on picking up for Maybelle.

After I called and updated them on the situation, they showed up

It was odd and remarkable comparing this time to last. Maybelle wasn’t in a coma, but it wasn’t just me waiting for her to be okay. There was a whole family waiting and hoping.

I rubbed my fingers over the worn book in my hands. Thankful for answered prayers.

***

I startled awake.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but that’s not what startled me.

It was the empty hospital bed in front of me that had me shooting up.

My eyes scoured the room, but they quickly found her.

She stood in a hospital gown on the other side of the unlit room.

Looking out the window that peered over the city and the darkly lit sky.

Speechless, I remained in my chair beside the bed, watching the girl that admired the twinkling city lights.

Her face was solemn as she studied the sights below, and her hands were folded to her chest. Her hair was a mess of tangled coils falling down her back.

Her skin had more color to it from what I could make out against the limited light reaching in through the window.

She was like an angel, glowing in the dark of the night. My heart was racing in sporadic, life-threatening rhythms as I waited and watched. Unsure if my grief had broken my ability to see reality or if this beautiful miracle was mine to keep.

Tied up in the hands she had pressed to her chest was the book I’d been clutching to for dear life. Maybelle held to the journal like I had, like it was the only way to breathe.

When her eyes finally slid to me, I couldn’t read the expression in them. She was quiet as she took a couple of cautious steps toward me.

My whole body was screaming at me to throw myself at her. To touch her, make sure she was real, that this wasn’t a dream, but I held still in my chair. I didn’t know all that happened to her after she got into the car with Richard.

Besides the accident, I sensed that those long moments in the vehicle took much from her. I hadn’t been able to be with her then, but being with her now, there was one thing I had the power to give her.

I wanted her to have the choice of what would happen next. I wanted her to have the control here.

Maybelle stopped at the foot of the bed, her blue-green eyes piercing into me with a thousand emotions. Relief soothed the tension in my shoulders at the sight.

“Trey,” she rasped.

“May.”

She sighed, hugging tighter to the book as she said, “Can you take me home?”

Joy had me leaping from my chair to her. I was ready to cradle her in my arms all the way home. Except Maybelle fell back a step, halting my approach entirely.

“Sorry,” I whispered, and that had her body loosening with tension and my heart aching. “Of course I can take you home. My mom will be happy to see you,” I said, trying to soothe her.

“No,” she said in a barely audible voice. “I mean, my home.”

My heart ceased pumping. My soul caved in on itself. “You—you remember? ”

Maybelle pulled the book from her chest. Again, I couldn’t discern the look in her eye as she answered, her attention locked on the journal.

“I remember everything.” When she looked back at me, silver lined her eyes. “Take me home, Trey. Please.”