Page 38 of Save the Last Dance (Take the Backroads #1)

Chapter Fifteen

L ess than a week after her own visit, Ally was back in the hospital.

Since shortly before dawn, she’d sat beside Rachel in surgical recovery.

Rachel had asked the hospital not to contact her mother, and, being eighteen, apparently she had that right.

As monitors beeped quietly and the medical staff wheeled patients in and out of the wide-open room separated only by curtains on metal tracks, Ally wondered what on earth had made the girl ask for her of all people.

Smoothing the blankets, she waited for Rachel to wake up.

Part of her was scared Rachel was still mad at her.

But that didn’t seem to fit. Until Ally had accused Ethan of flirting with her, she and Rachel had actually had fun outlining the straw maze.

Rachel was smart and efficient, impressing Ally with how organized she was.

Now that Ally looked back at the hours they’d spent together—knowing that Ethan hadn’t been hitting on Rachel—Ally realized that they would have never gotten the outline done if Rachel hadn’t called for help .

“She’s in here,” a nurse’s voice was saying just outside the curtain. “But you can’t stay long. We’re only allowed to admit one visitor at a time.”

The nurse opened the curtain but the only person Ally saw was Ethan. His gaze flicked to Rachel first, but then moved to Ally and…stayed there.

Tall and broad-shouldered, he’d always looked older than everyone else at school. Now, she could see a maturity that went along with his appearance. Underneath his good nature and easygoing smile, Ethan was a strong, capable guy.

“Thank you so much for coming.” Ally had texted him as soon as she’d arrived, too worried for Rachel to be concerned about whatever awkwardness or bad feelings lingered between her and Ethan. “You’re Rachel’s friend and?—”

“I am.” He met her gaze levelly, and she felt like a first-class jerk for giving him a hard time about his relationship with Rachel. “But I came for you.”

She rose to her feet, shaky from the hours of worry. Even before the hell of the accident, there’d been her dad’s revelation. Ethan’s show of support now—even when she didn’t deserve it—was about the nicest thing she could imagine.

Flinging her arms around him, she hugged him tight.

It wasn’t the kind of first embrace she’d imagined for them, but she needed it like nothing else.

By the time Ethan’s arms went around her, she was already crying against his shoulder.

Tears flowed like someone had turned on the faucets, all the stress of the past week overflowing.

“I’ve been so horrible.” She kept her voice low, knowing people in nearby curtain stalls could hear her if they cared to listen. She’d already eavesdropped on all kinds of drama going on in the lives of the faceless strangers on either side of Rachel’s tiny space.

“No, you haven’t.” Ethan eased back to look at her face, his expression so open and caring.

Easy for him when he hid no secrets.

Ally released him, knowing she needed to come clean, and the sooner the better. She wanted to smooth things over with him before Rachel woke up. Then maybe together they could figure out why the girl had asked for Ally in her delirium.

“About a week ago, I overheard Rachel say she had a date with you.” If only she could take back what had happened afterward.

She realized now that she needed more outlets than just Gram.

And if that meant regular therapy sessions, she was going to find a way to get them, even after she left Heartache for good. “And I didn’t handle it well.”

She shoved up her sleeves to show him the healing scratches. He’d noticed the bandages the day after, but now that she was letting them “breathe” as Gram had suggested, he could see exactly how revolting they were.

“What do you mean?” He stared blankly at the marks. For a second. Then he looked back up at her, his expression stunned. “You did that to yourself?” His voice was a shocked whisper.

She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see his face, but it showed up even behind her eyelids.

“I’ve done it other times, too. It’s a stress thing.” A dumb, embarrassing stress thing. Yet Gram told her she could fight it. She opened her eyes again. “But I’m working on it. I mean, I’m fixing myself. So I won’t do it anymore. ”

“Ally, I’m so damn sorry.” His hazel eyes were full of regret.

“You didn’t do this to me. I did.” She definitely didn’t want to unload her baggage on him.

“Does Rachel know about this?”

A voice murmured sleepily from the bed. “I do now.”

Whirling, Ally hurried over to her side with Ethan on her heels. “Hey, Rachel. How are you feeling?”

“They didn’t call my mom, did they?” Wide blue eyes stared up at Ally, and she noticed some of Rachel’s blond hair was stuck to the bandage at the top of her forehead.

She had a cut on her lip and a big splint on the leg that had been surgically repaired to fix a fracture.

Her leg was now propped on pillows and an IV full of fluids had been attached to one arm.

Ally couldn’t even imagine what a crap relationship Rachel must have with her mother that she didn’t want her here right now.

“No. You’re eighteen. The nurse told me they can’t call her because of privacy laws.” Ally picked some of the hair out of the bandage with gentle fingers, knowing she’d want someone to take care of her if she was in the hospital.

She’d had a few someones, actually. For all her issues with her parents, her parents had been there every second. It was a weird moment to realize she should text her mom and make sure she was okay after whatever had happened between her and Dad.

“I don’t feel so well.” Rachel ran a hand over her stomach. “The meds are—ugh.” She closed her eyes again. “Ethan, I was going to tell her. But will you, like, tell her for me?”

Confused, Ally turned to him.

“Yeah. Sure. Just focus on getting better, okay?”

“Right. Um. Guys, I need the nurse. And I totally don’t want you to see me gagging, so, like—go be in love somewhere.”

Ethan scrambled away fast. He fumbled with the curtain for a second and Ally could hear him calling to someone.

“Rachel, I’ll stay with you. You can’t be alone.” She had no idea what was going on between Ethan and the girl that Ally had been so jealous of, but she knew now that her jealousy had been very wrongly placed. “I’m so sorry we argued before you left the fair?—”

Rachel gestured toward the pan on the bedside tray and Ally passed it to her as Rachel’s skin turned sheet-white. Rachel threw up, but only a little, her color returning to normal as a nurse rushed in.

Ally gestured to Ethan to stay out and glimpsed a look of total gratitude on his face before she moved back to Rachel.

“It’s like you told Ethan.” Rachel smiled at the nurse as she poked a straw between Rachel’s teeth and ordered her to sip some water. “You didn’t do this to me. I did.”

“I shouldn’t have let you leave the parking lot. I knew you were upset.”

“Stop.” Her head fell back against the pillow, weariness evident in the slump of her shoulders. “Go see Ethan. I figured if I got you here, I’d get the two-for-one special and he’d show, too.” Her eyes slid closed. “I want you to know my secret. No more hiding.”

“But who will stay with you?” Ally thought about how she’d had her mom and dad by her side and her uncle in the waiting room with Nina Spencer.

No matter how bad her life sucked, at least she had people who cared. Now, just maybe, that list might include Ethan .

“As your elder, I order you to go home. You can visit tomorrow, okay?”

“Go on, honey,” the nurse chimed in. “We’ve got to move her upstairs to a bed and let her get some rest anyhow. We’ll take good care of her. You can leave your phone number with me if it makes you feel better.”

She jotted her number down on a scrap of paper and passed it to the nurse. Still, walking away with Rachel still in that bed with a cut lip and an IV made Ally feel two inches tall.

“All right.” On impulse, she edged around the nurse and planted a kiss on Rachel’s head, on the side opposite the bandage. “You’re going to be okay. We’re going to unveil that maze together next weekend, so get better fast.”

The nurse gave her a warm smile, but Rachel had already drifted back to drug-induced sleep.

A week ago, it would have seemed mega weird to be in the hospital with her former enemy classmate, wishing her well and slobbering on her hair.

But Ally was convinced there was a whole lot of hurt beneath Rachel’s designer clothes and perpetually perfect shade of blond hair.

Stepping outside of the recovery area and into the main reception room, Ally found Ethan waiting for her.

He was stepping aside for an older woman pushing an IV, actually, which was exactly an Ethan sort of thing to do.

He might hate farming and math, but he seemed really at home in small-town Tennessee in a way she hadn’t appreciated before.

Everybody liked Ethan. What right did she have to drag him away from Heartache because she was unhappy here?

He wasn’t just her crush anymore. He was a real guy with secrets, hurts and feelings, and she needed to get over herself and start treating him that way—as a person and a friend, not some object of crazy teenage adoration. She wouldn’t talk him into leaving just because she wanted to escape.

“Do you want to go—” Ethan looked around the entry area past the gift shop and toward the cafeteria. “—grab a soda?”

“Actually, would it be weird to sit in your truck?” She needed a ride home anyhow, since Uncle Mack had dropped her off. She hugged her arms around herself. “I’ve had more than my share of hospitals for today.”

“Right. You must be exhausted.” He pulled his keys from his pocket. “I actually got a great spot out front.”