Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(63)
“Kyrs,” she murmured, clenching her jaw to try to stanch her tears.
“I’m Kyrstin,” she said to Erik. “You are . . .?”
“No one!” said Laire, springing up from the chair beside her father. She shifted her eyes from Kyrstin to Erik. “He’s no one. He’s just in the wrong room. You were leaving, weren’t you?”
Erik’s eyes shuddered as if he’d been sucker punched, and when they opened, they were glistening and heavy. He turned to Kyrstin. “Yeah. I’m . . . I’m leavin’.”
Kyrstin raised her eyebrows, taking a good look at him before shifting her stare to Laire, who stood with her fists clenched by her side. After a moment, she slid her gaze back to Erik. “Nurses’ station can help you find whoever you’re lookin’ for.”
Erik clenched his jaw, then swallowed, nodding at Kyrstin before looking at Laire.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and if those shards had any chance of repair, now they were blown to dusty smithereens with the deep sorrow, deep regret, she heard in his voice. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
He leaned forward to place the flowers on the table at the foot of her father’s bed, met her eyes one last time, then turned and left the room.
She watched him go, felt the burn in her lungs and in her eyes and everywhere he’d so lovingly touched. She’d never known pain like this. Not when her mother died. Not ever. And yet she blinked until her tears retreated. Then she lifted her chin and her gaze to her sister.
Laire and Kyrstin stood in silence, facing each other, neither of them saying anything.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Kyrstin pulled a chair to the opposite side of their father’s bed and sat down, taking their father’s right hand, and Laire, who’d made her choice, for better or worse, sat down across from her sister, and took his left.
Chapter 15
Three months later
Erik Rexford was drinking way too much.
His grades were shit.
He’d been benched from the Devils.
He’d been placed on both academic and social probation.
And the media was having a heyday.
There were rumors about why he’d changed from a golden-boy college athlete to a bad-boy, out-of-control drunk who’d been suspended for the rest of the hockey season after three fights on the ice.
Some attributed the change to his on-again, off-again relationship with Vanessa Osborn, who had been swept off her dainty feet by the British independent filmmaker Phillip Longfellow, known in peerage circles as the fifth Viscount Longfellow, during a summer sojourn in London while Erik remained at his family’s summer home in the Outer Banks.
Others wondered why Erik had kept such a low profile all summer. Instead of partying with his fraternity brothers in Durham or making the society pages at posh events in Raleigh, he’d been spied only once: with Vanessa, at a party at the Governor’s Mansion in July. Maybe he was depressed? Or on drugs?
There were others who waved his bad behavior aside as healthy college hormones, and still others who called him a spoiled brat who needed a firmer hand.
Only Erik, and his sister, Hillary, knew the true reason for the great change in his disposition:
Erik Rexford’s heart had been permanently and irrevocably broken.
Buzz. Buzz, buzz, buzz.
Buzz. Buzz, buzz, buzz.
“Fuckin’ shut up!” yelled Erik, throwing an extra pillow from his bed in the direction of his cell phone, which was probably still in the hip pocket of the jeans he’d worn last night.
Buzz. Buzz, buzz, buzz.
“Fuck!”
Squinting from the stream of bright light filtering through his bedroom window, he groaned as he flipped onto his back.
Buzz. Buzz, buzz, buzz.
Buzz. Buzz, buzz, buzz.
“Fuckin’ fuck, Hills!”
Scrambling out of bed naked, he grabbed his jeans off the floor and took out the offending phone. Hitting the Talk button, he pressed the phone to his ear.
“What?”
“Oh, there it is: the sweet voice of my darlin’ brother. Good mornin’ to you too.”
“It’s fuckin’ early,” he grated out, sitting on the edge of his bed.
“It’s noon.”
“So fuckin’ what.”
Hillary sighed, and he imagined her rubbing her forehead with consternation. “So it’s also Thanksgivin’ on Thursday. My classes end tomorrow. Are you goin’ out to Buxton, or what?”
Thanksgiving.
Fuck.
He hated the word. He didn’t want to hear it. He definitely didn’t want to celebrate it.
“No.”
“So you’re leavin’ me to the wolves.”
“Fancy’s furious at me. Daddy can’t look at me without explodin’. I’m sure they’d both prefer it if I wasn’t there.”
“I’m sure they’d both prefer it if you got your shit together.”
“Hills—”
“I know what happened,” she said in a rush, “and I know it hurt you. Bad. But you have to move on at some point. You can’t self-destruct!”
“Why not?” he asked softly, clenching his jaw and swallowing over the giant lump in his throat.