She meets his eyes for a moment, and it seems to give her the courage she needs because she takes a deep breath, "Blaming ourselves for the ones we love hurting doesn't accomplish anything. It's just a way for us to make ourselves feel better," Jane says, eyes flickering to hold eye contact with me for a beat before flickering away.
"Punishing yourself isn't control—it's surrender. Sophie needs you to be steady. You cannot be steady while drowning in guilt."
The words strike me like a bolt of lightning because she's right. What will sitting here wallowing in my own guilt accomplish besides making me feel better for being miserable? Why not channel that energy into positivity, action, and movement? Sophie's sick, I cannot change that, but I can focus on her recovering, on making things easier for her when she does feel better—because she will, she must.
There's no other possibility beyond that.
My throat is too tight to speak, so I nod and smile in thanks at Jane. Her face lights up, and she shares a warm smile with Atticus, who leans down to tenderly brush his lips against her forehead. I have to turn away from that, wishing desperately that I could do that to my girl right now.
I want her awake and in my arms. I want to feel her drooling against my chest. I want to feel her giggle against my mouth.
"Anyway," Tonya says, snapping us back to reality, "we stopped at your place on the way."
"We brought you clothes," Jane adds. "And Atticus handled the generator. Oh—also, we fed Plot."
That gratitude flushes me again as I take the bag from Tonya's outstretched hand. I'm suddenly very aware of how gross anduncomfortable these still-damp clothes feel on my body. I hadn't even gotten a chance to change after I took care of the generator, focused only on Sophie.
"Oh, shit—here," Tonya mutters as she digs into the pockets of her jacket and pulls out two phones—mine and Sophie's. "Grabbed both just in case."
"Thank you," I sigh in relief, taking them from her. I totally forgot about my phone, and I'm lucky my wallet was still in my pocket.Thank Christ for Tonya.
"You call her sister yet?" Tonya asks, and I shake my head.
I shake my head. "No. I didn't have her number before." I slip my phone into my pocket, but keep Sophie's in my hand. "I will now."
When I tap Sophie's phone, and the screen lights up, I freeze—and then I can't help the smile that spreads across my face. Sometime either last night or this morning, she changed the background photo to a selfie of us at the zoo. We took the photo before we left the otter exhibit. In the picture, I'm wrapped around her from behind, my chin tucked over her shoulder, our faces smushed together, as we smile without a care. I can practically hear her joy-filled laugh when she looked at the picture after.
We look so happy, so normal, and stupidly, completely, overwhelmingly in love. That was justyesterday. She was fine, she was glowing, happy, and healthy, and now she's... not.
How can everything just go to hell in such a short amount of time?
I enter1-0-1-8,my birthday, to unlock it. She had changed it last month and blushed adorably when I had to open her phone to change the music. She mumbled her password, as if she were confessing a deep secret. I still feel her soft cheeks under mypalms when I had kissed her after, and then promptly changed my own password like a lovesick teenager.
0-8-2-0, the day she walked into my store—the best day of my life.
Scrolling through her contacts, I find Tess' number and feel a flash of nerves. I haven't had the chance to actually speak to Tess yet, though I know she knows about me. Sophie always talks about her older sister with such pride and love, and I know how protective Tess is of Sophie.
Briefly, I wonder if she'll blame me, but I push the thought away—Jane is right, guilt will get me nowhere, and Tess needs to know about her sister.
I press the call button and bring the phone to my ear. It rings twice before she answers, "Hey, Soph."
The voice makes me jump. From pictures, Sophie and Tess don't look alike at all, but their voices are eerily similar. The cadence is slightly different—Tess speaks with more authority, and Sophie is a little more soft-spoken. "What's going on?"
I clear my throat, "Tess?"
There's a long pause before she asks, "Callum?"
"Yeah, hi," I answer, suddenly feeling very awkward. This isn't really how I wanted to officially talk to Sophie's sister for the first time.
"Hi," she huffs a laugh, "Well, it's nice to meet you finally... kind of. What's going on? Where's Sophie?"
"Tess, Sophie's sick..." My voice breaks pathetically, and I have to clear my throat before I force the next words out. "We're at the hospital. She's being stabilized right now, but I think she caught a cold and her fever suddenly spiked."
There's another pause, and it feels like I'm on the chopping block, the axe hanging above my head.
Her voice comes through flat and firm, "Tell me from the very beginning how this happened."
And I do.
