Page 7 of Forever & Always You

I hate hospitals.

The sterile atmosphere, the overpowering smell of disinfectant, the incessant beeping of pagers. It’s utterly depressing, and the fluorescent lighting in this treatment room will be enough to trigger one of my migraines.

“This is so unnecessary,” I say the second the nurse leaves the room, sinking back into my chair, pressing an ice pack to the back of my scalp. It’s difficult to even reach the nice big gouge through my mound of curls, the blond now tinged with dried blood.

Austin leans back against some cabinets, his hands gripping the edge of the countertop, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows to reveal muscular, tanned forearms. A rather grand-looking watch sits on his wrist. “Absolutely necessary when you do, in fact, have a concussion,” he says, then points to the ice pack I’m holding against my scalp.

“That cut? Trust me, you’re much better having the nurse stitch you up than me.

I get shaky hands when I’ve had too much caffeine.

” He cracks a smile, like he wasn’t just kicking me out of his office an hour ago.

I sigh and drop the ice pack from my head, toying nervously with it in my hands. “I’m sorry about the table.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I can pay to replace it.”

“I said don’t worry about it.”

The nurse returns to the room, tools in hand. She’s been very lovely to me, despite chuckling at first when I told her the cause of my injury. Diving headfirst into a glass table is not one of my finest moments, I’ll admit.

“This will be easier if you lie down on your front, so hop up on the bed for me please, Gabrielle,” the nurse says, and I follow her instructions and awkwardly climb up on the bed.

Face buried in the paper, I suck in a deep breath.

It’s only some sutures and those don’t bother me, but the numbing injection?

Yeah, that’s a problem. I close my eyes when the nurse scoots a chair up close to the bedside, laying her tools out on a small tray table and snapping on a pair of latex gloves. Maybe if I don’t look .?.?.

“Okay, Gabrielle, I’m just going to move your hair out of the way and apply the anesthetic.”

“Great,” I mumble into the bed.

“You’ll feel a small pinch and then it will sting for a second or two.”

“Amazing.”

“Ready?”

“Wait,” I hear Austin say, and my eyes ping open.

He crosses the room toward me, stands above my head, and reaches for my hand. He interlocks his fingers around mine and I stare up at him in wild confusion. What I don’t do is pull my hand away.

“She’s scared of needles,” Austin tells the nurse.

“Let’s do this quick then,” she says, and I squeeze my eyes shut tight as my scalp nips with an intense burning, like the sting of a hundred wasps.

“Ah, fuck,” I hiss through clenched teeth, and I squeeze Austin’s hand harder.

“Can you feel this?” the nurse asks, and I don’t know what she’s doing, because no, I can’t feel anything. “Good. I’m going to begin those sutures now, so stay very still for me, please.”

Austin slips his hand free of mine and settles back into his position against the cabinets, but I keep my eyes open now and study him carefully, albeit sideways.

When we were kids, I would have my annual meltdown when it came time to get my flu shot.

I wouldn’t eat for days beforehand, my stomach too knotted with fear, and I’d become a very reserved version of my usual bubbly self.

Every year, Austin tried his best to help me through it.

He would sneak up on me, pinch my arm, and say, “See? You can do it.” Even when I was in high school and Mom expected me to be over my childhood phobias, Austin never made me feel like I was being unreasonable.

One year, he came by my house on the morning of my appointment and left a small gift basket on the doorstep.

And for a kid with not much money, that gift basket cost him a lot.

I can’t believe he still remembers I’m scared of needles.

Shit. He was so fucking nice to me, and I blew it.

I close my eyes again because I can’t bear to look at him for another second.

“All done,” the nurse announces after a while.

Rather ungracefully, I push myself up from the bed and stagger to my feet like a baby giraffe discovering its legs for the first time.

“Now it’s very important that you rest,” the nurse reminds me, tossing her gloves into the trash can. “Tylenol for any headaches. Definitely no sports, and maybe take some time off work if possible?”

“That’s okay. I don’t do sports and I don’t have a job.”

Austin tries to catch my eye, but I refuse to meet his. I thank the nurse for stitching me up as good as new, then head out the door with my ice pack. My steps are quick as I attempt to navigate my way out of this maze of hallways.

“Wrong way,” Austin says.

With a sigh, I pivot on the spot and brush past him, still never meeting his eyes.

He trails behind me and I get the sense he finds amusement in my obvious attempts to evade him, but by the time I find my way out of the building, it dawns on me that I can’t actually recall how I got here.

All I remember is feeling super dizzy as I swept glass off my clothes right up until the nurse gave me some anti-nausea tablets and everything gradually stabilized.

I spin around to look at Austin, only because I have no choice now. “Did you drive me here?”

“You certainly didn’t walk,” he says. Pulling a set of keys from the pocket of his suit pants, he spins the keyring around his index finger with a nonchalant whistle. “Car’s this way. You’re concussed and I won’t be held responsible if you spin into traffic, though I’d learn to live with it.”

“Ha-ha,” I say dryly.

I expect Austin to laugh, or even smile just a little bit , but his expression is poker straight. At over six feet, his strides are wide and he takes off across the hospital campus without so much as a glance back in my direction. I power walk to keep up with him.

“Didn’t the nurse just tell me to avoid sports? I’m breaking a sweat over here,” I call out to him.

“Maybe you should work on your fitness then.”

I glower at the back of his head. My Austin was shy and stumbled over his words.

Now he’s back-talking me? Now he’s witty ?

I shouldn’t expect him to be the same guy he was years ago, but hell, it’s jarring.

And not only jarring, but kind of intriguing.

I love men who can deal with my sarcastic mouth, though I’d love it a lot more if he clearly didn’t despise me.

“How’d you get to my office, anyway? Did you drive? I’ll take you back to your car,” Austin says, then slows to a halt next to a— of freaking course— Porsche 911. Dark green, exactly like the toy in his office, exactly like my father’s.

“This is yours ?”

Austin soldiers on with that blank, disinterested stare of his. “God, you really do have a concussion. I drove you here in it. Now get in, Gabrielle.”

The headlights of the car stare me down menacingly as I circle around to the passenger side.

I am no stranger to luxury cars, and yet when I climb into Austin’s, I find myself running my hands over the leather dash in appreciation.

Yellow seatbelts, embroidered Porsche crests on the headrests, a panoramic sunroof.

As he gets in next to me, I eyeball him suspiciously out of the corner of my eye.

“How much money do you make?”

Austin pushes a button to start the car, and the engine roars to life with a throaty growl, turning heads in the parking lot. “You can’t ask me that,” he says, then gives me a pointed look. “Seatbelt. Now.”

I roll my eyes as I pull the yellow seatbelt over me. “Why not? You clearly have lots of it. Your office building? Bougie. Your car? Bougie. Your suit? Don’t even get me started. You’re rich rich.”

“And?” He looks at me hard.

“And .?.?. I don’t know. I guess I’m just impressed you made it,” I say, but as soon as the words leave my lips, I realize how backhanded the compliment is.

Shoot. I’m terrible at this. Maybe I’m the one stumbling over my words these days.

“Not that I didn’t think you could make it.

Fuck. I’m sorry. I’m concussed.” I bury my head into my hands, rubbing my temples as though to work some sense back into my dumb brain.

“I get it,” Austin says, eyes set forward as he drives, the car moving sleekly toward the exit. “It’s a lot to expect the broke kid to climb out of his poverty hole, huh? Please just sit there quietly, Gabrielle, and don’t say another word. It’s better for both of us.”

His words are enough to silence me, anyway.

The guilt seeps through my veins gradually and painfully as we head back to the office.

I don’t know where to look when my thoughts are so loud, and it doesn’t help that Austin hasn’t even turned on the radio.

It’s just cold silence. I steal a few glimpses at him as he drives, one hand on his knee, the other on the wheel. His shirt sleeves are still rolled up.

I can’t bear the silence for one more beat, so I say, “I’m sorry.”

Austin fixes me with a look that’s borderline threatening. “Didn’t I say don’t talk?”

The callousness of his tone stings, but I guess I have no right to feel his attitude is unwarranted, because quite frankly, he has every right to treat me like shit. I treated him a lot worse and now I’ve come barging back into his life and disrupted his workday.

There’s a small private parking lot behind Austin’s office building that we pull into, and the car is barely shut off before I’ve released my seatbelt and stepped out.

At this point, I’ve decided to entirely scrap the idea of brandishing our signed agreement in Austin’s face.

We were twelve. It means nothing over a decade later.

“Okay, well,” I say, hands on my hips, staring across the roof of the car at him as he straightens up and unrolls his sleeves. “I’m sorry for ruining your day. I’m sorry for ruining high school for you. I’m sorry for everything, and I wish you good luck in life.”