Jacked (Trent Brothers #1)(150)

I’d stymied him. “Ah…” He blew out an exasperated breath. “Is that with me or—”

“I don’t want kids with anyone. This is a problem.” I pulled on the door handle, flicking the interior lights on in the process. I’d had a few panic attacks before, but this one was full on. “You should have them. You’ll be a great dad. I have to go.”

“Wait. I’m coming in. We need to talk about this.”

Everything inside me was fragmented. Part of me already knew that this was going to end one day. Another part knew I was behaving totally irrationally but I couldn’t stop the avalanche. I was powerless against the anger and disappointment. “Please just go home.” I shut the door and ran through the rain.

“Erin. Come on.”

The keys shook in my hand. “Please, Adam. Just go home.”

“Erin, for f*ck’s sake.”

I shoved my thick door open and closed it just as quickly, feeling Adam’s fist pounding on the other side. “Erin. Open the f*cking door. What the f*ck?”

He was mad. The pounding became more vicious.

He didn’t have the right to be mad.

I didn’t cause my aunt and uncle to be sliced and compressed under thousands of pounds of tumbling steel. My family had been permanently scarred that night too. Me included. And he knew all along.

It was all too much; I was drowning in information overload.

“Just go home. Please.” I knew he didn’t hear me.

“It wasn’t my fault!” he shouted. “Damn it! Would you just talk to me?”

I could barely hear myself over the gasping sobs that finally broke free.

Children made women into homicidal maniacs capable of unspeakable things.

My cell rang while the random pounding continued. He was inventing curse words now, stringing many together. I swiped my face, smearing mascara and eye shadow, which instantly burned. I left everything at the door: my coat, my cell, the remains of my dignity.

A short while later I heard his tires squeal as he backed out of my driveway.

The unexpected surgery had been excruciating.





IT TOOK EXACTLY one hour for the onslaught of regret to hit. It was worse than the previous sixty minutes of uncontrollable sobbing. My cell eventually stopped ringing around two in the morning. It was close to three-thirty when the Valium kicked in.

It was quarter after nine when the need to pee woke me up. It was nine twenty when I took another Valium.

I moved to the couch at one thirty with a roll of toilet paper and an empty box of tissues.

I ate stale crackers around four.

I ate a tablespoon of peanut butter off my finger around five.

I cleaned up the remains of the antique candy dish that had somehow slipped off the table by the dining room window and shattered onto the floor. I didn’t recall bumping into it.

I called Jen at seven twenty. She listened to me cry for an hour then made me question my reactions.

There was one missed call from Adam—just one.

The damage I’d caused was irreparable.

A loud pop woke me up at ten thirty. My legs jerked, sending the sofa pillows that were between my ankles to the floor.

I turned the television off and went up to bed.





ALL DAY MONDAY I tried to keep busy, keep my head in the game, but the special meeting to review changes to hospital policy left me too much idle time to wander in my head while staring blandly at a slideshow presentation.

This was worse than when Randy told me he was seeing someone else. That had been an explosion of anger, followed by an attempted cleansing by piling his shit next to the door. My current state was akin to having a soul excision without anesthesia. I had zero energy and even less enthusiasm for breathing. I wanted to tell every whiny patient to f*ck off. Couldn’t they see I was broken too?

I hid in the quiet of Jamal Clement’s ICU room for a while, watching him sleep, thinking about how vastly different his problems were from mine. While I sat nursing a broken heart, he’d survived several gunshot wounds, had gone through major surgery, and was finally breathing on his own. His road to recovery was littered with hurdles, and I wondered how long after he’d be discharged until his life would be in mortal peril again. My mortality seemed to be contingent upon my own stupidity. At least I wouldn’t have to testify about who he’d said had shot him. Thank God that responsibility didn’t fall on me.



I spent the remainder of Monday night flipping through a sad array of Netflix movies, settling on watching Niecy Nash tell family after family that they lived in pigsties. I felt just as cluttered and disorganized inside. Maybe I needed a trio of well-meaning designers to come clean me out, drag my shit out into the yard, and put my shame on public display.

Maybe the shit inside my head was my version of their hoarding saltshaker collections? It was all stupid stuff that we clung to, useless crap we’d collected over the years that we gave power and meaningless value to.

I had too much crap.

I wanted to call Adam, tell him about my self-discovery, but it was too late. The pillow beneath my head scratched my face. Something was poking my cheek. I smoothed the fabric beneath, finding the frayed edge of a tiny hole with my fingertip. Great. Now my belongings were starting to decay along with me.

A chill shook my body; the cold, drafty desolation in my living room was too much. I wrapped my fleece blanket over my shoulders and turned up the heat. I’d allow myself to wallow for one more night and then tomorrow I’d get back into focus, get back into studying, and put my original plan in the forefront.