I remember asking Caroline if Ellie was going to be okay, and she wouldn’t answer me. But here she is, offering this information unprompted by me. “She is?” I need hope.Please give me an ounce of hope to hold on to.
“Hunter!” a voice cries from the door. “Hunter.” Charlotte runs in and throws her arms around my neck as if we dothis sort of thing—hug when in need of a hug.
I’m still looking at Caroline, though, as well as the small smile unraveling across her lips. As the wrinkles on her cheeks smooth out, a happy gleam encompasses her face. She places her hand on my back and stands up. “I’ll give you two a moment, and I’ll check on Olive.”
“Thank you,” I tell her, then turning to Charlotte with what I’m sure is a puzzled look, I ask, “How did you know I was here?”
“When you left my house so quickly after you got that phone call, without even saying goodbye, I suspected it might have been the school calling about Olive, so I called them. I was with you at the school but… Anyway, I heard what happened and I followed you here because I thought you might need me. And I didn’t want you to be alone. I would have gotten here sooner but I was looking all over for you,” Charlotte says, breathlessly. It washerhands trying to embrace me at the school. It’s Charlotte who is always here for me lately. And yet, I get scared when she tells me I’m a desirable man.What the hell is wrong with me?“The administration desk wasn’t entirely sure where you might be and I called your phone a dozen times. As I was running through the halls, I thought security was going to escort me out, but instead, they helped me find you. How is she? Is she okay? Are you okay? Do you need something? I was so worried about her.” Charlotte sounds wild and out of control. The worry in her voice is pure and full of honest compassion for Olive—for me. It’s something I haven’t heard in a while since I’ve pushed everyone away—everyone including my own parents. I wouldn’t allow the presence of compassion in my life because it made everything worse. AJ is the only one who I haven’t burned, because he isn’t compassionate. He’s an asshole like me, just in a different way—a way I can tolerate most of the time.
“Thank you for coming,” I tell her, honestly. “She’s getting a CT scan, but she is still unconscious.” Charlotte’s arms remain around my neck as she whimpers into my ear. The sympathy-coated knife I usually feel stabbing into my chest when someone is trying to “make me feel better” is more like a senseless dull puncture this time and I have no energy to put up my protective wall. Instead, I close my eyes and try to ignore everything around me but the sensation of Charlotte’s arms encircling my neck, and for the first time, I don’t force myself to imagine Ellie on the other side of this embrace. For the first time, I feel a comfort I haven’t imagined ever feeling again. But it’s uncontrollable, and leaning into Charlotte, I allow it. I allow it because I am in such desperate need of consolation that I suddenly feel dehydrated from the drought of affection that I now realize I desire. I think I need Charlotte to quench my thirst for closeness.
Surrendering all restraint, my arms find their way around Charlotte’s slim waist and I pull her down to my lap, burying my head into her shoulder. “Why?” I groan.
“She won’t let anything happen to her,” Charlotte whispers into my ear.
“Who?” I reply, knowing what I want to hear, but also understanding that no one thinks the way I do.
“What is your wife’s name? You haven’t told me.”
You haven’t asked. “Eleanor. Ellie.”
“Eleanor Cole,” she repeats her name in only a breath of a whisper, one that makes Ellie’s name sound as if it, too, were nothing more than a ghost. Following a sharp breath and a shaky exhale, Charlotte softly utters, “Ellie is yours and Olive’s angel. She won’t let anything happen to either of you. I believe that.”
My arms tighten around her as her scent infiltrates my senses. The scent I have refused to inhale in fear of loving it—seeps through the sealed cracks of my cold heart. The fight I have fought to keep an emotional distance from Charlotte has been lost.Flowers.She smells like the vanilla from a Clematis. I inhale as much as my lungs will allow, surprised at how much I’m able to breathe in at once. For years, my lungs have felt deflated, as if I were unable to fill myself with enough oxygen, but right now, I can breath freely.
The momentary relief in my chest is quickly clouded over as the doctor comes through the door. He doesn’t draw out his words or thoughts, or even look at me with any type of concerned grimace as he likely conjures up the appropriate words needed to reach down into a person’s throat and rip a heart out of its chest cavity. Again. Charlotte moves from my lap over to the chair, as if she senses the space I desperately need.
“Charlotte Drake,” the doctor says, interrupting the information he needs to give me right this second. “How unusual to see you around here again. It’s been a couple of years, has it not?”
“How is Olive?” Charlotte yields the focus back to where it should be.
The doctor breaks his momentary shift of attention from Charlotte back to me. “It’s a moderate concussion, but she woke up right in the middle of the CT scan,” he says with a soft chuckle. “She’s quite a spitfire, huh?” The release of agony, fear, and all other emotions pulls me from my seat and over to the doctor where I restrain myself from lunging at him with open arms.
“Is—is she going to be okay?” I stammer.
“She’s going to be just fine, Mr. Cole.” He looks down at his chart and back up at me. “I want to keep her overnight for more observation, however. We’re still waiting for a couple more test results, but I’m sure everything will come back as I expect.”
“I’m staying with her,” I tell him, demandingly.
“And that’s completely fine.” The doctor turns back for the door. “We’ll have her settled in a room within the next few minutes and you can go be with her. It was nice to see you again, Charlotte.” He waves from over his head, disappearing into the haze I’m staring toward.
When the door closes, I turn back to Charlotte, who appears to be sending someone a message on her phone. “Just asking Rosy—” one of the bus stop moms, “—to grab Lana from the bus.”
“You don’t have to stay,” I tell her. I’m used to being alone and internalizing my fears and pains, relying on no one but myself to move forward from one moment to the next.
“I know I don’t.” She holds her phone up, watching the screen for a few seconds before placing it back down onto her lap. “Lana will be picked up, so I’m all yours if you want, but I can go, too. Whichever you need right now.”
I don’t get it. I don’t understand what this is. “Why? Why do you continuously want to be around me? I hardly know how to form a smile, let alone release a joke worthy of laughing over. I push you away. I’m not a very good friend, and quite frankly, I’m an asshole to you more often than not. So why, Charlotte?” There has to be a logical reason for this outpouring of undeserved kindness.
She lifts her chin and narrows her eyes as a faint smile takes form over her lips. “This may sound a little cocky, but I’m an excellent judge of character. I like to think I have an ability to look into a person’s eyes and know exactly who they are inside. Everything you portray on the outside is a mask so no one knows who you truly are or what you’re feeling.”
I feel like laughing, not because it’s funny, but because I want to tell her what she sees is what she gets. There is no difference from the coldness I show on my face to the chill that has permanently frozen my heart into stone. “Inside, there is a hopeless, lost soul with no direction. That’s what is inside. So if that is what you’re seeing, it still doesn’t answer my question as to why you would want to be friends with someone like me.” I’m not sure I want to hear her answer. I’m not sure I know how to pry open the lid of my lonely world to make room for someone who cares about me.
“I’m aware,” she says. “I don’t want to fix you, and I don’t want you to change,” she says, looking away from me and down to her candy-red chucks. “So don’t go thinking that either.” She only breaks eye contact when something is stirring inside of her or when she’s uncomfortable saying what she’s trying to say. “You are this incredibly strong person who takes weeds and turns them into beautiful flowers—literally.” She laughs and looks back up at me, her cheeks now a little pink. “Look, Hunter, I don’t have an honest answer, but there’s a pull I feel toward you and I’ve followed my gut. Like I said, I don’t wish for you to change every time I see you. I only wish for you to gain the ability to heal. I know I won’t be any help in that department, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be around you as it happens. Because, whether you want to or not, you are going to heal.” With a smirk, she goes on to say, “We’re also neighbors so we’re sort of stuck with each other. We might as well make the best of it.”
Normally, I’d feel anger when someone tells me this pain won’t last forever. I think I might actually be a glutton for the pain I won’t let fade. I hold onto it like a lifeline, but as Olive grows older and more aware of who I am, I think I might have to allow some of my pain to ease, even if only for her sake.
“Okay,” I tell her. “Fair enough.” I guess. I’m not sure what I just agreed to, though.
