Page 71 of Reckless Love

“You could try telling me,” she says. “Staying here. Supporting Mom. Helping me make a decision about care homes. Those are all things you could do.”

“I’m not asking you to make that decision alone. You shouldn’t. We need to talk about that as a family. But there are other things… I will still be in the hospital, but I need to deal with the fallout from this accident.”

“Work first,” she says. “I get it.”

“Yeah,” I say, pointedly, “I suppose you do.” With a sigh of frustration, I rub my temples. “You’ll text me if she’s going into surgery or if she needs me?”

“Sure,” Vanessa says.

Our mother will understand why I put work first tonight, even if my sister doesn’t. “I will explain all of this to you later,” I say.

“I won’t hold my breath,” Vanessa says. “We’ve all learned to keep our own counsel.”

I let out a huff of frustration, but I don’t stay to argue with her, exiting the stairwell and heading back to Landon’s room.

She’s not wrong. Taking the job with Owen all those years ago meant that Ava and Celia couldn’t reach me, but it also meant I put up a barrier with my family. They heard from me when I remembered to reach out. There was no two-way communication.

My accident made things more complicated because I couldn’t talk about what happened, where I’d been, and why I returned, so I’ve held myself aloof. Putting a permanent roof over everyone’s heads and making sure they had the materials to survive was all I focused on.

Tonight has made me realize I’ve been avoiding the emotional work. Hiding from it, maybe. If I looked too closely at how things have been going, I may have realized, as my father has claimed, that I’m not happy. None of us are.

And that makes me feel like a massive fucking failure. What am I doing if none of my choices have made my life or their lives better? How long can you live in misery with the carrot of happiness just out of reach?

If none of these choices have gotten me where I want to be, maybe it’s time I start making different ones.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ava

Asteady beeping penetrates my consciousness, and then I become aware of familiar voices talking around me. But it feels like I’m coated with a thick substance, struggling to peel it off, so I can open my eyes.

I groan.

“Ava?” Maren’s voice comes close. “Ava?”

“She’s awake again?” Gage asks.

Someone takes my hand, which is heavy like a boulder on the end of my arm. With tremendous effort, I crack open an eye. Light streams in from the large windows, and I rear back at the brightness.

“Where am I?” I ask, groggy.

“The hospital,” Nathaniel says, peering over me. “Still the hospital.”

The accident comes back in a rush of crunching metal, screams of pain, and my desperate attempts to hold onto… “Landon,” I cry. “Oh, my god. Where’s Landon?”

“He’s okay,” Sawyer says. “He’s in the children’s wing of the hospital, but he’s okay.”

“If you’re all here,” I say, looking around at my siblings, “who’s with him?”

“Ember and Stephen,” Gage says. “But we’ve all been rotating through. Stephen’s hardly left the kid’s side except to be with his mom after her surgery.”

“Why is Stephen… Was his mom in the accident?” I ask, unable to connect the dots. “Did she hit us?”

“Ava seems a lot more alert this time,” Maren says.

“They don’t know who hit you yet,” Nathaniel says. “Owen and the police are working on it. Stephen’s mom fell at home the same night as your accident.”

Slowly, I draw my hand up to my forehead that’s lightly pounding. Right, Stephen left my mother’s house in a hurry. Oh, god. After he pinned Raul to the wall. The memory is fuzzy. Did that happen?