Daisy blinked, no words for the longest time before that sweet warmth came spilling out. “I would like that. I’ve spent so much time alone…I…I want it to be different here.”
Dread and apprehension spiraled through the middle of me, along with some other foreign feeling so far gone I’d almost forgotten what it felt like.
I forced out the one word I could manage around the barb in my throat. “Good.”
TWENTY-TWO
CASH
SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD
Cash stoodin the doorway of the hospital room, his heart in his throat, not knowing what the fuck he was supposed to say.
Matthew was in the bed, his right leg outside the covers with this huge metal brace with these big pins going all the way through his skin and into the bone.
His bone that had been crushed.
Their mother and father sat at his bedside, holding his hand while that rock rolled up and down Cash’s throat.
“I’m so sorry, man,” Cash muttered.
Cash had just started a new season. Spent the whole summer training to take his brother’s spot as starting quarterback since Matthew would be playing his first year in college.
Well, at least in the times when Cash wasn’t hanging out with Daisy.
And now…
Pain twitched the side of Matthew’s jaw. Cash wasn’t sure if it was from the injury or from the agony of getting his life goals ripped out from under him.
Matthew had been told he wouldn’t be able to play football again.
And football was Matthew’s life. Cash understood it on a level that he doubted many others could.
“It’s fine.” Matthew’s voice was hard.
Brittle.
Broken.
“You never know what’s gonna happen,” Cash chanced. “There are always all these stories about people overcoming the odds. Getting told they can’t do something and coming back and proving the doubters wrong.”
Matthew’s laugh was hollow. “Don’t feed me that shit, Cash. You know what this is. I’m finished.”
“Come on, don’t say that.”
“You know it’s fucking true.”
“Matthew.” Cash took a faltering step forward.
Matthew turned his head away. “Don’t need this right now. Just leave. All of you. I want to be alone.”
Cash shuffled up the main sidewalk of the school from the parking lot. A toil of things inside him that he didn’t quite recognize.
A vibration rolled through him, twitching his muscles into disorder. Something sticky and stagnant.
Anger.
Guilt, he guessed.
