“How’d you know I was a Fed?”
“The shoes.”
Jolie cracked a smile. “I knew I shoulda worn my Chucks today.”
Paramedics swarmed in, getting Joel onto a stretcher first. I reluctantly eased off Amelia so she could get checked out, but she didn’t react. No tears. No shaking.
She might as well have been a corpse.
Her eyes—always cheery like spring bluebirds—were completely void. She was rigid as she was loaded onto a stretcher of her own. The paramedics peppered her with questions—her name, date of birth, if anything hurt—but she didn’t answer.
My girl was gone.
Saturday, August 30 | 4:08 p.m.
Three days had passedsince I found Amelia and Joel at the Four Horsemen. Three days of trying to give statements and reports while refusing to leave the hospital because Amelia refused to leave the hospital.
She also refused to talk to Joel, which made the whole thing even more of a mindfuck.
She was doing what she always did—looking out for him. Protecting him—but she had hit a wall with how much she could handle. She had sacrificed every ounce of herself for him and had nothing left.
Amelia didn’t eat. She didn’t sleep. The nurses threatened to readmit her if she didn’t start doing the bare minimum while she waited for Joel to recover from yet another knee surgery.
The only thing she had communicated was a bare-bones email requesting a temporary leave of absence from her position at Alcott. Given the media maelstrom, they had agreed immediately.
No matter what I did, nothing seemed to pull her out of it. Cole had taken my place to keep an eye on the Hawthornes while I went to New Haven to get Amelia and Joel some new clothes and toiletries, took care of business in New York, and grabbed my own necessities from my apartment in Newark.
After this summer, I was done driving up and down the East Coast. I had a feeling Amelia was too.
If I never saw the New Jersey Turnpike again, it would be a good fucking day.
I strolled through the hospital’s sliding glass doors and checked back in at the front desk.
Amelia was still in the thick of her darkness, but I had shirked off some of mine and felt incrementally better for it.
I slapped the adhesive visitor’s badge on the front of my T-shirt and jogged to the elevator, anxious to get back to her.
Waiting for it to rise to the floor Joel was recovering on was excruciating. By the time the doors opened, I was running.
I knew Amelia was safe. She was with Cole; of course she was safe. But I needed toseeher. I needed to hold her. I needed her to talk to me.
Three days and she hadn’t said anything. Not a fucking word.
I understood shock. I had seen it. I had felt it. But with her, I couldn’t stand idly on the sidelines.
Cole was seated in a cluster of chairs meant for family, speaking to someone on the phone. The door to Joel’s hospital room was propped open and he was gone, which meant he was probably undergoing imaging or having a physical therapy session. Amelia was sitting on a couch that was pushed up against the window, knees pulled up to her chest as she stared aimlessly at the glass.
“Hey, little fox,” I said as I let myself inside, setting the bags I had brought in on the long countertop opposite the hospital bed.
She glanced at me, then turned her eyes back to the window. I bit back a sigh as my heart twisted.
I unzipped the toiletry bag, grabbed her hairbrush, and slid behind her on the couch. Amelia stiffened as I began to brush her hair, starting at the ends and working my way up.
Even after three days, it wasn’t tangled. Someone would have to sleep to have bedhead. Amelia hadn’t.
Her taut muscles began to loosen as I brushed her hair, then combed back through it with my fingers.
“Close your eyes for me,” I said softly.
