Gabriella hoped for Mia’s sake that Pete was doing much better, although the hospital staff had not given them reason to be overly optimistic this past week.
Clay wedged the phone under his chin while pulling on his jeans and boots.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes, tops. Tell Davis he can leave and I’ll make sure you get home.” He disconnected the call and grappled with his sweater as he turned to Gabriella. “Hard to believe, but my father is awake.”
“That’s great news.” She half wished Clay had asked her to go to the hospital with him, although that wouldn’t work so well since he only had his motorcycle and he would be driving Mia back here.
“Yeah.” Clay nodded, but his expression was somber. “Apparently he’s been asking for me ever since he opened his eyes.”
Gabriella wasn’t sure what to say. Clay had been so good about comforting her all week through the trial, but his relationship with his father was complicated. She knew he’d been dreading this conversation with his dad, and now the stakes were higher since Pete was dying.
She pulled a blanket around her shoulders and followed Clayton into the living area, her bare toes curling against the patches of hardwood between the area rugs.
“Good luck.” She kissed his cheek when he bent to pick up the keys from the kitchen island.
“Thanks. I’ll call you.” He kissed her lips. “Make sure you arm the security system when I leave. Sam still hasn’t made any arrests for those recent home break-ins.”
“Okay.” She followed him to the door and did as he asked before peering out the window to watch him fire up the bike and drive away, the red taillight fading.
Slowly she became aware of the clock on the wall ticking. It was early yet—not even 10 p.m. on a Saturday. And she’d never be able to sleep anyway, wondering how Mia and Clay were doing at the hospital.
Her gaze shifted to the house on the opposite side of the driveway, a few of the windows strategically lit thanks to her brother’s careful security measures. Gabriella had been putting off confronting her demon as much as Clay had put off confronting his father.
Was tonight a good time for them both to face the ghosts of their pasts?
Her eyes went to the window of her childhood bedroom. No light was on there. She felt chilled just looking at it. And yet, hadn’t she healed parts of herself this week? Put some of the broken pieces back together?
Clay had helped her to feel stronger. Braver. More calm in the face of her fears about Jeremy Covington.
Maybe there was no better time than tonight to conquer this last fear. To finally say goodbye to the frightened teen she’d once been.
Softly she padded back into the bedroom to retrieve her clothes and her phone that had the security information for the main house. Taking a deep breath, she dressed and stepped outside to pay her childhood home a visit.
Chapter Sixteen
Mia stared ather father in his hospital bed, praying she could hold it together in front of him. He’d already barked at her about sniffling, insisting “I ain’t dead yet.” The words—so normal for Pete—would have comforted her except that they sounded weak. His voice was scratchy and thin.
The machines around him even sounded as if they were taking their last breaths, with lengthy pauses between thebeep…beep…beep. The IV drip, drip, dripping some kind of heavy duty pain med into his emaciated body.
His complexion had gone from yellow to gray this week. And something about the better lighting in the hospital made Mia realize how paper-thin his skin had become. She could see it in the glare of the bedside lamp when the nurse came to check his vitals. For the moment, though, the light was off and Pete’s eyes were closed. The door to the room was open, and the nurses’sstation was busy just outside in the hall.
Behind her, Davis sat in a fat recliner chair pretending to be engrossed in a video game on his phone. She’d bewilling to bet he’d never played the candy game even once in his life, his score so abysmally low that Mia’s little foster sister Nicole had beaten it before she was eight years old. Davis only played so that her father wouldn’t notice him and he could stay by her side.
Funny how they’d been fake-dating for less than a week and she knew that about him. She’d gotten to learn a ton about him over the last few days together. All of which she liked. It broke her heart to think she might get booted into a foster home halfway across the state next month and never see Davis Reed, the Crestwood head drummer, again.
He glanced up at her now from where he slumped in the recliner, still dressed in the clothes he’d worn at the reunion event for serving drinks and pizza—black pants and a white long-sleeved shirt. The older guests had mostly eaten barbecue, but the twelve and under crowd had all flocked to the pizza tent, keeping him busy right up until his shift ended at six. Then they’d played with some of the little kids at the playground to help out parents who wanted to dance, finally squeezing in a few dances of their own. It’d been nice.
So nice, she’d almost forgotten about Connor’s text for long minutes at a time. With Pete in the hospital, she couldn’t ask him to change her cell number, so she’d left the phone off except for a couple of times to make outgoing calls. Connor had found her number before, but he’d never foundher. Still, it left her in a constant state of agitation not to have the cell phone on while Pete was fighting for his life. She’d been calling the nurses’ station hourly for days, probably driving them all crazy.
Davis set down his phone. “You want me to grab you a water or anything?”
“No, thanks.” She felt guilty he was here. He should bedoing fun, normal teenage things on a Saturday night. Like parking in hayfields to kiss without getting kneed in the crotch.
Or like sitting in a movie theater and holding hands with a girl who wasn’t the joke of her high school.
“You want to sit? You can use my cell.” He scrambled to his feet, extended his hand to give her his smartphone, the most recent model.
He knew hers was off-limits. She had to fess up to him about a crappy boy from the past trying to text her since Davis deserved an explanation for why she powered down her phone. He had wanted her to tell Mia and Clay, but backed off when she’d gotten upset about it. She hadn’t wanted to disrupt the peace in her house—a little slice of normal that she feared was going to end all too soon.
