Falling into You (Falling #1)(21)

I forced the fingers to fall open, revealing a silver band with a sparkling diamond. I tried to put in on my left hand, where the ring should go. I would tell Kyle when they let me out of the hospital. I love you, yes, I’ll marry you. But first I have to wear the ring. A thick hand, black hair on the knuckles, took the ring from me and slid it onto my third finger of the right hand, the wrong hand. Something red stained the silver, and I wiped my hand on my lap, on the wet dress. There, the redness was gone.

A kind face, pale blue eyes set deep in a fleshy face. Mouth moving, but no sounds. He held something out to me. A phone. My phone? I pressed the circular button with the square symbol. There was Kyle, so handsome, his face pressed to mine as we kissed. My phone.

I looked from the phone to the man. Confused. The man seemed to want something from me. He pointed at the phone and said something.

My ears popped, and sound returned.

“Miss? Is there anyone you can call?” His voice was deep and throaty.

I stared at him. Call? Who did I have to call? Why?

“Can you hear me?”

“Y-yes. I hear you.” My voice was faint, distant, slow.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?”

My name? I stared at him again. He had a pimple on his forehead, red and angry and needing to be popped.

“Nell. My name is Nell Hawthorne.”

“Can you call your parents, Nell?”

Oh. He wanted me to call my parents. “Why?”

His face twisted, and his eyes shut slowly and then opened, as if summoning courage. “There was an accident. Remember? You’re hurt.”

I looked down at my arm, which was throbbing distantly. Then to the man again. “Accident?” My mind span and whirled, hazy and fogged. “Where’s Kyle? I need to tell him I love him. I need to tell him I’ll marry him.”

Then it all came back. The tree falling. Me, unable to move. Kyle, his eyes turning vacant as I watched.

I heard a scream and a sob. The phone fell from my hands, and I heard a voice speaking far away.

Darkness swept over me.

My last thought was that Kyle was dead. Kyle was dead. He saved me, and now he’s dead. Sobs echoed, echoed, wrenched from a ruined heart.





Chapter 5: Liquid Heartbreak

Two days later





I swept the last lock of hair back and fixed it into place with the bobby pin. I barely recognized myself in the mirror. I was pale, ghost-white with dark rims under my eyes. My eyes looked back at me from the mirror, pale blue like the sky and just as empty.

“Nell?” My mother’s voice came from behind me, soft, hesitant. Her hand closed around my arm. I didn’t pull away. “It’s time to go, honey.”

I blinked hard, blinked back the nothing. I felt nothing. I felt no tears. I was empty inside, because empty was better than agony. I nodded and turned on my heel to sweep past my mother, ignoring the bolt of pain when my cast bumped the doorframe. My dad was holding the front door open, eyes watching me carefully, as if I might explode, or crumble.

Either was possible. But it wouldn’t happen, because you had to feel for that. And I didn’t feel. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing was best.

I descended the steps, clicked across the blacktop driveway to my Dad’s boxy Mercedes SUV. I slid into the back seat, drew the buckle across my torso and waited in the silence. I saw my mother stop in the doorway facing my father, watched them exchange worried glances at me. After a moment, my dad locked the front door and they both got into the car. We drove away in silence.

My father’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “Do you want some music on?”

I shook my head, but couldn’t find the voice to speak. He looked away and kept driving. My mother twisted in her seat to look at me, opened her mouth to say something.

“Don’t, Rachel,” Dad said, touching her arm. “Just leave her be.”

I met my dad’s eyes in the rearview mirror, tried to express my gratitude silently, with dead eyes.

Rain fell. Slow, thick drops through still, warm air. Nothing like the storm that stole Kyle. Gray, heavy clouds, low in the sky like a broken ceiling. Wet cement, glinting grass and puddles on the sidewalks.

I clutched a crumpled, folded piece of paper in my hand. The note. I had it memorized, now. I’d read it and reread it so many times.

The viewing, a small room filled with too many people. I stood next to the casket, refusing to look in. Stood next to a tastefully-created collage, pictures of Kyle, of us together. Strangers in the pictures, I thought, seeing happy me, happy, living him.

Words spoken, empty condolences. Hands squeezing mine, lips brushing my cheek. Weeping friends. Cousins. Becca, hugging me. Jason standing in front of me, not speaking, not hugging me, his offered silence the best thing he could have given me.

Then, oh god…Mr. and Mrs. Calloway, standing in front of me. They’ve been here all the while, but I couldn’t see them. Couldn’t bear to meet their eyes. But now they’re here, hands clasped and threaded between them, two sets of brown eyes so much like Kyle’s, pinning me, searching me. I said little about what happened. There was a storm, a tree fell. Kyle saved me.

Nothing about the proposal, the ring on my finger, the wrong finger. Nothing about the fact that we were arguing. That it should have been me.

That if I had done…god, so many things differently, their son would still be alive.