She eyed me, distrustful, as she settled back against her pillows, and I forced my gaze to remain fixed on her face instead of the wires attached to her. Seeing her like this always brought me back to the first time we met, seven years ago. I was the passenger in Madison Clyde’s car when Maddie jumped the curb and struck Runa.
Maddie fled the scene on foot, leaving me behind to deal with the fallout. While I called 911 and tried to save Runa’s life, Maddie called her parents, who called their family lawyer, who immediately started the process of pinning everything on me. I’d stolen the car from the party we’d been at, they claimed, and Maddie had never even been at the scene.
The only other witness to the accident was Runa, who’d been walking home from a late-night work shift, and she, understandably, couldn’t recall anything but the car rushing toward her and then excruciating pain. Paramedics arrived after Maddie fled, testifying that I’d been the only one there. My parents’ lawyers had fought tooth-and-nail in court to clear my name, but all they’d managed to do was cast doubt on who’d been driving. Maddie had refused to be interviewed by the cops or testify, so the judge had no choice but to dismiss the case due to lack of evidence, leaving no one liable to pay Runa’s mounting medical bills.
Against my parents’ and lawyer’s advice, I’d decided to step in and take responsibility, admitting guilt in a civil suit that ended with a ten-million-dollar settlement covered by my family’s private insurance policy. I was deemed responsible for paying any medical bills Runa accrued related to the accident. So now here we sat, back in the hospital, and I prayed her TMR surgery had worked. Not because I was worried about having to cover the cost of another treatment—I would happily do so—but because I just wanted Runa to be free from pain.
I hadn’t been driving that night, but I felt as guilty as if I had been. Because it easily could have been me. I’d had close calls before. Drank too much and thought I was okay to operate a vehicle when I wasn’t. And I’d done nothing to prevent Maddie from driving, even though I’d known better. Complacency would be a nice way of looking at our behavior, but that wasn’t it; it was privilege, pure and simple. Nothing bad had ever happened to us. Despite all the stupid shit we’d done before the accident, there’d never been any real consequences. A night in the drunk tank, maybe some community service if we were unlucky. Our lawyers or parents got us out of everything else.
Shame burned through me every time I thought of my younger self. I’d been reckless, careless, so hell-bent on chasing the next high—whether it came from alcohol or drugs or adrenaline—that I never paused to consider my actions. I’d been a bored, spoiled, entitled bitch, an absolutely insufferable human being, and memories of my past behavior would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Everything changed that night seven years ago.
Fuck, Runa had almost bled out and died right there on the sidewalk because I’d been so drunk that I kept fumbling the tourniquet the 911 operator instructed me to tie.
“Stop,” Runa said.
I blinked and came back to myself.
Runa’s gaze was censoring. “You’re doing it again.”
“I’m not,” I lied.
“You literally just started crying.”
“No, I—” The words died on my tongue as I lifted a hand to find a tear streaming down my cheek. Whoops. I sent Runa a tentative smile. “Sorry.”
“I’mfine, Stel. The doctor said everything went as well as could be expected.”
“I know,” I told her. “I just... worry.”
Her expression softened. “I know you do.”
Our gazes locked, and there was so much I wanted to say to her. Apologize, again, for my role that night. Ask her how shereallywas, beneath the brave face she always put on. I wanted to reassure her that even if this surgery didn’t completely fix her pain, I would pay for another one, and another. As many as she needed or was willing to endure.
She must have seen the words bubbling up in me because she quickly changed the subject. “How’s Blake?”
I grimaced.
Her eyebrows rose. “Oh? The golden boy not so golden anymore?”
“He gambled away his inheritance.”
Runa’s jaw dropped. “No.”
“Yes, but I managed to get his debt transferred to me, so now I owe a bookie three million dollars.”
“You’re joking, obviously.”
I shook my head.
She leaned forward. “Tell meeverything.”
I opened my mouth, and the whole sordid story poured out. Runa and I had been through so much together that we’d developed this weird kind of relationship where we weren’t, like, besties, but still told each other absolutely everything. More than you would tell a friend. I’m talking the worst of the worst, things you wouldn’t even say to your therapist—the kind of shit you usually took to your grave.
I blamed all the late nights sitting awake in hospitals. In the early days, we didn’t know if Runa would make it, and I’d been almost like a priest to her, a way for her to admit to her sins, tell me all her last confessions and life’s regrets. I hadn’t liked how one-sided it felt, so I started reciprocating, and now, all these years later, every time we were in a hospital room together, we dredged up forgotten memories or horrors and visited them upon each other. It was trauma bonding at its finest, but afterward, we both felt lighter, closer. Less lonely.
So I held nothing back, telling Runa everything, and out of all the details for her to pick up on, including all the awful threats and the fight in my father’s study, of course she chose to zero in on the first kiss.
