Page 72 of What You left in Me

I head for the door, hand on cold metal, and descend.

Chapter 22 – Ariane – The Weight of Waiting

The clock above the nurse’s station ticks and tocks like it’s chewing on bones: vicious, watchful, and unstoppable. I’ve been counting the strikes of each passing minute, because that seems easier than focusing on breathing. To focus on my breath would be to deal with what makes so hard to breathe—to face what time is counting down to.

The chairs in the waiting room are some kind of ergonomic nightmare. No matter how much I fidget, I wind up with my hips tilted forward. It’s like I’m being punished for existing.

Meanwhile, of course, Mom manages to sit ramrod straight beside me with her ankles crossed in the ideal position of repose. Her pearls gleam as if they have their own source of light. She looks like a portrait that would whisper “don’t touch the wallpaper” if it could talk.

“Hold yourself together, Ariane,” she hisses like clockwork. She barely moves her lips when she says it, which I respect on a technical level. Ventriloquism for the image-obsessed. “People are watching.” They aren’t, but experience tells me it’ll accomplish nothing to argue this point.

“Okay, Mom,” I say, because what else is there.

I keep my hands clasped in my lap until my knuckles ache.

If I let them relax, I’m afraid they’ll start shaking and then I’ll start crying and then there will be fresh hell to pay for embarrassing my mother.

Does it even matter, though? Any of this?

Somewhere behind those double doors, Richard is lying, prone between a surgeon’s steady hands and god’s sense ofhumor. It has a way of making all of this—my tears, just as much as my mother’s posturing—seem so, so stupid. Pointless.

Every so often, a nurse pushes through with a chart and a serious face. Each time, my heart throws itself against my ribs, ready to leap right out of my chest.

It doesn’t help that, across the room, Finn stands with his back to the window and his arms folded across his chest. He looks like a soldier on duty, if soldiers made a habit of dressing up so debonaire. He’s stunning in his dark slacks and charcoal button-down. There’s nothing unkempt about him, even with his sleeves up his forearms and the tendon in his jaw working like he’s grinding glass.

The fluorescent lights make everyone else look tired and human; they only make him look more carved. He’s still and volatile at once, a thunderhead embodied by a vicious, magnificent man.

I should be thinking about Richard. About Julian—oh, that’s hilarious—about how I used to believe in words likefiancéandsafe. But the truth is stupid and persistent: all I can think about is Finn. Finn’s mouth and the way I let myself fall like a girl who never learned that gravity hurts.

A pair of volunteers push a cart of coffee and cookies past us. The Styrofoam cups squeak against each other like they’re nervous too. Mom scowls until the offer her something and then thanks them without taking anything.

Apologetically, I take a cup just to make up for her antics.

“You shouldn’t drink that,” she says softly. “It makes you jittery.”

“I’m already jittery.” I smile in a way I hope passes for pleasant. “Might as well have a reason.”

Her eyes flick to my lap. For one beat, for two, for ten, I’m sure she’s seen it. The finger where my engagement ring has sat for months—until this morning, when I took it off. Defensively, perturbed by her cutting gaze, I curl my hand around the cup until the heat prints crescents into my skin.

“We must be strong for Richard,” is all she says. “He can’t have… complications. Stress aggravates recovery.”

“Mm,” I offer and then take a sip so I can say nothing else. It’s very strong, I’ll give them that.

“And we must keep the family’s dignity intact,” she adds, lower now, a private stage direction. “There are already rumors in town. You know how people are.”

“They’re bored?” I offer.

“They’recruel,” she says. She tips her chin toward a woman with a mauve cardigan and a decisive haircut. The woman is whispering behind her hand to a man in camouflage. “They like stories that end with a person like you in shambles.”

A person like me.Well, that’s one way to put it. What is a person like me? Weak? Oversensitive? A sick, depraved woman who let her stepbrother pleasure her until she wept.

Swallowing a bout of hysterical laughter, I put the cup down before my fingers decide to spill it all over me.

Mom keeps going, the way she does when she’s on a roll—careful, composed sentences that come with their own ironed edges. We can’t give people a reason, we must act with grace, your father needs calm around him. She’s not wrong about any of it. That’s what makes me feel like my bones are chewing on themselves under my skin. She’s so good at saying the reasonable thing that you forget to ask if it’s the truest thing. What I don’t remind her of is the man who was here once again because now he knows exactly where to find us. He came backto demand money, and I did what I do best: intervention. Every inch my mother’s daughter.

But it hasn’t bought us more time. He just came for the show. I could tell that.

As it turns out, my mom’s braver than I am. She doesn’t get crippled by paralyzing waves of anxiety and fear, not the way I do. I can’t even talk to her about the fear that pulls behind my ribs like a tide going out. Nor the love that makes my throat tight when I think of Richard’s lopsided grin and the way he claps after his own jokes. She would only condemn me for it, I know.