The Resurrection of Aubrey Miller(57)

Tearing his eyes away from me, he signals again as he passes another car. “I’m too f*cking pissed at you right now to have any sort of productive conversation anyway. It’s just better if we don’t speak,” he adds, his tone clipped.
I close my mouth and grunt my agreement, turning to the window and setting my cheek on my knees as I watch the familiar terrain as it flies by. Mile by mile my anxiety grows exponentially until the point that when we finally pull into Linda’s driveway, my nails have dug into the skin of my palm, forming moon impressions tinged with blood.
Flexing my fingers, I set my bare feet back on the floorboard before turning to Kaeleb.
“How do you even know where Linda lives?”
He pulls the keys out of the ignition before reaching for the door handle. Opening it, he sets one foot on the driveway and offers over his shoulder, “Well, in a shocking twist of fate it seems we have become extremely close during your…absence.”
My face falls as he shuts the door and I quickly bound out of his car, following him to the entryway, surprised when he pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks her house. Glancing down at my attire, I begin to straighten my shirt and pajama pants when I realize I don’t even have any shoes. “You don’t need to worry about what you look like. She’s not here. You do need to take a shower before we go, however, because I refuse to take you to her in this condition. It would break her heart.”
“I can’t do anything about my hair, Kaeleb,” I respond, his condescending tone not helping with my agitated state.
He scoffs. “I’m not talking about your hair. You’ve got black smeared all over your face, Bree. You look like death warmed over, and if I weren’t so frustrated with you right now, I’d have a killer joke primed and ready, which kind of pisses me off in its own right.”
I lick my fingers and begin to wipe under my eyes just as he jiggles the handle, opening the door and waiting for me to enter. Black covers my fingers as I pass him by and say nothing, but that doesn’t stop him from speaking. Unfortunately.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” He grins a devious, toothy grin. “When I packed your clothes, I left the contact case. So, I guess when you take them out today, which you will, your freaky cat eyes will be a lost cause. Oops.”
I narrow my eyes and turn around. “What makes you think I’m taking them out?”
He mockingly replicates my expression. “Because I refuse to let you walk into that hospital – where that woman has been lying for a solid month now, waiting for you to call her, to check on her, to give her one single ounce of hope that you give two shits about her, all the while fighting for a life that you’re so quick to dismiss, and have her see you looking like…” He reaches forward and presses his thumb under my eye and slides it to the side before bringing it directly into my line of sight, “this. She wants you. Not Raven.”
Eyeing the black on the pad of his thumb, my throat constricts and I swallow slowly as I meet his glare. “I can’t go, Kaeleb.”
He drops his arm, exhaling his irritation and running his hand through his hair before answering. “You owe her this.” He tightens his gaze and his features harden. “You’ve already buried her Bree, but she’s still alive.” He shakes his head. “Look. I know we’re not in a good place right now, but one day when you wake up from this nightmare you insist on reliving, you’re going to realize what you’ve done. What you’ve sacrificed.” I watch as his face relaxes a smidge before he leans forward and whispers, “Regardless of what’s transpired between us, I care about you too much to let that happen.”
He turns his back on me, clearing his throat as he steps toward the door. “Take a shower. I’m going to get your clothes and I’ll put them by the bathroom for when you’re ready.” Placing his fingers on the handle, he jerks it open, adding before he steps outside, “And please, for the love of God, take the f*cking contacts out.”
The door slams shut and I stand there, completely taken aback not only with his obvious issue with my appearance, but the situation as a whole.
I know that Linda has been in and out of the hospital recently, but only because I’m usually forced to hear the first sentence of her messages before deleting them and texting her back. Kaeleb has a key to the house and knows his way around, which tells me he’s been here before. Possibly several times.
“…we have become extremely close during your…absence.”
Having Kaeleb bring me here and force me to come face-to-face with the situation, makes everything seem so real. I’ve managed to block the pain and detach myself from the harshness of this reality, but being here in this house with the loving memories of Linda everywhere I look, my barricade completely crumbles. I’m no longer safely secure inside its numbness. I’m suddenly thrust into feeling—for the first time in several months—every single emotion I’ve been avoiding.
My eyes fill with tears of frustration as I slowly drag my feet to the bathroom, my selfishness becoming painfully obvious. I know I disappeared when she needed me, but in my twisted mind I figured she was better off without me, that I would only cause more illness. I’d just hoped that, without me, her chances of survival would increase drastically.
Which, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to be the case.
My chin trembles as I flick on the light and glance to my reflection, watching the tiny droplets pool along the black smudges lining the bottoms of my eyes from the tears now being shed. My face is pale and drawn, my skin sallow, and the areas covered in black are swollen and puffy. I look like shit on the outside, but I feel even worse on the inside as disappointment begins to seep through my mind.