“He’s anidiot,” Peyton hissed through angry tears. “How could he think the world would be better off without him? He’s freaking Ford Dupree.” She pounded her thigh with her fist. “I should’ve been nicer to him. He gets under my skin, you know? How he’s constantly making passes at me and gets irritated when I don’t cave,” she growled. “Like I should give in to him because he’s rich, famous, and hot.”
I rubbed her arm and released a heartsick chuckle. “I’m going to tell him you said he’s hot.”
“Don’t you dare.” She choked out a laugh. “It’ll make his fat head even fatter.”
Being angry was helping her, and it was distracting me from whatever was going on in the ambulance in front of us, so I rubbed her arm and prayed she’d keep going.
“But if I never see his stupid cocky smile again, or see him undress me with his eyes one more time…” She buried her face in my shoulder. “I can’t think it.”
I forced a slow exhale, grasping for something to say that would help. “Look.” I pointed to the ambulance, siren blaring. “The lights are still on. That’s a good sign. If he was…” I couldn’t say the word. “They’d turn the lights off, you know?” I didn’t even know if that was true, but it sounded like it could be.
She nodded and her expression was tinged with hope.
We rode like that for the next twenty minutes, Peyton hissing at the patient in the ambulance and me watching the lights strobe, blindingly, over and over as if the force of my gaze was keeping them on.
When the ambulance pulled into the hospital, I skidded to a stop right behind it, jammed the truck into park, and jumped out. Peyton met me at the front bumper and we jogged the fifteen feet to the back doors that were being opened.
“Is he okay?” I asked the paramedic. A middle-aged man with thinning blond hair.
He nodded as he yanked the door open. “Lucky sucker. Good thing we had plenty of Narcan.”
Ford’s toes twitched and I’d never seen a happier sight. All the love I worked so hard to suppress, filled my chest until I thought I might explode. A second EMT stepped in front of us and helped pull out the stretcher. Ford was looking up at the ceiling. I hoped he wasn’t wishing his plan had worked.
The second the wheels were on the ground, I tackled him in a hug, chest to chest. “What were you thinking?” I pushed up and looked down into his sad, bloodshot eyes. “It would gut me if you weren’t on this planet. You might drive me crazy, but you’remyannoying little brother. I can’t be here without?—”
I was shoved out of the way by an angry Peyton, whose five-foot-nothing frame suddenly had the strength of an NFL linebacker. “You’re being way too nice,” she hissed at me, her accent twice as thick as normal. Then she jammed her face right in front of Ford’s. “Oh, you're awake now? Good. Look me in my raccoon eyes, Ford Dupree. My mascara's halfway to Georgia thanks to you. And you know how I feel about mymakeup. I oughta take a switch to your behind.” She gripped the stretcher rail as they rolled him, her knuckles white.
“Ma’am.” The paramedic tried to get her to step back.
She waved him off like he was nothing more than an annoying gnat, and kept on fussing at Ford. “I swear on my granddaddy’s grave if you ever do that again, I won’t speak to you for the rest of my life.” Her shoulders shook. “Do you h-hear me?” Tears dripped off her chin, landing all over his face. He just stared up at her, stunned.
The sliding doors of the E.R. came open. “Ma’am,” the paramedic tried again. “I don’t want to smash you.”
Rather than falling back, she hopped up on the stretcher, not slowing in her rebuke even a little. “Ask me what it was like, finding you half-dead on the bathroom floor?”
His mouth pressed tight, his eyes glued to her like he’d never seen a woman cry before.
“I had to touch your cold, blue lips with mine. It was worse than dissecting a frog in tenth grade Biology! My therapist is gonna need a therapist." She sniffled hard. "And you're paying for both of them, by the way!”
I couldn’t help it. A snort escaped my mouth.
“Your life was literally in my hands, and all I could think was 'Dear Lord, please don't let him die before I can kill him myself!’" She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "And I still might, Ford. I still might.” Then she wailed, pounding him in the chest. “Don’t you ever do that again!” She choked. “Promise me!”
He reached up and wiped her tears away, looking sick. “Oh, Peyt, I’m so sorry.” He pulled her against him, and she kept right on crying, her cheek smashed into his nose.
“Promise me,” she whimpered.
“I promise.”
twenty-four
ASHTON
The love of brothers is sweet and good, for it tempers the heart in the fire, and makes it mellow.
— THE NIBELUNGENLIED
Isat in a chair protectively next to Ford, who was propped against the inclined hospital bed, while we waited for the doctor to come talk to us. Peyton, who’d cried off all her mascara and wouldn’t stop feeling self-conscious about it, was on the bed next to him, snuggled into his side like they were a couple. Maybe they were.
