Emily

Logan hasn’t woken up since his last round of pain medication. The doctors say that he should have more and more periods of lucidity as the days pass, but it has been hours since his lashes last fluttered. I am tired, so tired. And to think that I showered for this.

“You should take a nap,” Sam says. It’s his turn to stay with me.

“Do you think he’s ever going to wake up?” I ask.

He nods his head. “I know it.”

“What makes you so sure?”

He shrugs. “I just know.”

I wish I felt as sure about it. “Have you talked to Pete?”

He shakes his head. “They won’t let us see him. Your dad is working on it, though.”

My dad has been helping with Pete’s defense. He hired a criminal attorney and has paid for him to have the best representation. But that may or may not help him when they go to trial.

“Your dad’s a pretty cool guy,” Sam says.

I nod. “He can be. He can also be an ass.”

“He’s trying. That’s better than nothing.”

My dad is like a pit bull all of a sudden. He’s loving and affectionate and playful, and yet there’s a tiny little part of him that will fight to the death. And he’s fighting for the Reeds. He fought for Logan, bringing in the best neurologist he could find. He fought for Pete—and is still working on that—and he’s fighting for me. He comes by every day to talk. He’s on crutches, but he’s getting better. He has a lot of guilt where Logan is concerned.

Sam sits down and puts his feet up on the edge of the bed. He slumps in the chair and crosses his arms, closing his eyes. The room is dark, and no one is moving around. He’s asleep in moments. The boys are all so tired. I look down at Logan and touch my finger to his lips. He doesn’t stir. I look over at the recliner a nurse brought in just for me, and I don’t want to use it. I pull the covers back and slide into bed with Logan. Pete opens his eyes and looks at me when he feels the bed shift. He shakes his head and grins. “If you try to defile him in his sleep, I’ll have to tell him about it when he wakes up,” he teases.

I settle my head on Logan’s shoulder, careful of his wires and tubes and bruises. “Do you think he’d mind?” I ask.

Sam chuckles. “I think he’d f**king love it. Are you kidding?”

I settle against Logan’s side, relaxing as I take a deep breath. I let sleep overtake me, and I dream about Logan.

Logan

I’m walking in a field of flowers. They’re life-size and black haired with a blue streak down the side, and they reach out to caress my arm as I walk by. I grab for one, and it skitters out of my grasp, running away from me. I reach for another, and it does the same thing.

I stopped dreaming in words a long time ago. I only dream in sign language, but I hear a voice. “Logan,” it says. It’s a voice I know, and the field suddenly smells like my mom. The flowers part, and she stands there in the open space, her great, white robes billowing around her. She’s not signing to me. I can hear her voice, just like I did until I was twelve. I can hear it as clear as day.

She doesn’t approach me. She wraps her hands around her mouth and says, “Logan! It’s time to go back.” I’m supposed to come home from the park by the time the streetlights come on. If I’m not home, she’ll come and find me, and I never like it when she comes to find me. It’s embarrassing. So, I always make it home before the streetlights.

Until today, apparently.

I can’t find the stoop for all the f**king wildflowers that stand in the way. If not for those, I’d have been home a long time ago. The flower closest to me crooks a petal at me and beckons me forward. It doesn’t speak. It opens its mouth, but it doesn’t have a voice. My mom does, though. She cups her hands around her mouth again. She’s growing impatient. I had better hurry.

“Logan, it’s time to go back!” she yells.

The flowers fade, sinking into the air like pretty, rainbow-hued cigarette smoke, until there is only one left. My mom yells for me again.

I blink my eyes and stare upward. There’s a dim light above me, and machines light up on my left in time with my heartbeat. I wiggle my finger. My nose is itching, and I need to scratch it, but when I try to lift my arm, it’s heavy. It’s much heavier than I can ever remember it being before. I groan, struggling with the weight of it, until I pick it up. But it’s unwieldy and it falls on my chest.

There’s a gentle hum against my throat, and I tip my head to look down at it. It’s not my blue-haired girl. I blink my eyes again. It hurts just keeping them open. I look at the form next to me again, and it’s my Emily, snuggled into my side. She’s just blond now.

Thank God. Of course she wouldn’t be anywhere else. I force my arm up and lay my hand on the side of her face. Unfortunately, I kind of tap her cheek heavily, and she startles in my arms. She sits up and looks down at me.

“Oh my God!” she says. “Are you awake?”

I try to nod, but it hurts. “I think so,” I say. But my throat is raw. She leans over and picks up a cup, lifting a straw to my mouth. I take a sip, and then she steals it from me.

“Not too much,” she warns. Her eyes are filled with tears. “Are you really awake?” she asks again. She leans over and shakes Sam’s leg. It’s propped on the edge of my bed. He jumps in surprise and nearly falls out of the chair as he fumbles to right himself.

“Logan?” he asks, sitting forward.

Emily says something to him, and he rushes forward. He looks down at me and says on a huge exhale, “Thank you,” as he looks up at the ceiling.

“What happened?” I ask.

A tear rolls down Emily’s cheek, but I can tell underneath it, she’s pissed at me. “You did something so stupid. And I thought you were going to die.” She takes my face in her hands. “Are you really back?”

“Back from where?”

She laughs. “Wherever you’ve been for ten days.”

Ten days? What the f**k is she talking about?

“You got hit by a car.”

Memories crash into me like the car did that night. That’s why I hurt. That’s why I’m in this bed. “Your dad?” I ask.

“He’s fine, numbnuts,” Sam says.

I nod. “Good.”

“If you ever do something so stupid as try to get yourself killed again, Paul’s going to murder you,” Sam warns. But he reaches for my hand and grips it tightly, our thumbs crossing the way they do when people shake hands. “I’m glad you’re back,” he says. His blue eyes, so much like mine, stare into my face. “You broke your head. And your leg.” He leans forward like he wants to tell me a secret. “And I heard that you broke your dick, too. Emily’s all upset about that part. She doesn’t give a f**k about your leg.”

Immediately, I want to check my parts. He laughs, though.

“Emily can check it out for you later.”

“She really doesn’t spend a lot of time down there,” I say. My head is swimming from the pain meds.

Sam turns away so he can laugh. “He’s pretty f**ked up,” he says. Emily’s face colors profusely.

“I can’t believe you said that.” She pokes her bottom lip out, and all I can think about is kissing her. But I can’t even lift my head, much less anything else.

“Sorry,” I grunt. “I hurt,” I say, moving my arm.

Emily kisses my cheek. “Let me see if the nurse can bring you anything,” she says. “They wanted to know when you woke up anyway. Be right back.”

She walks out of the room. “That’s the first time she’s left you since this happened,” Sam says. “Well, except for the funeral.”

“What funeral?”

His face is solemn. “The boy driving the car that hit you. He died. She’s been here every day except for the funeral.”

For ten days, she hasn’t left? “Why?”

“She wouldn’t leave. I don’t know. Matt had to make her take a shower,” he laughs. “She was pissed for hours.”

“I’d love to have seen that. I thought Matt could do no wrong when it comes to her.” I moan—I’m really hurting.

“The honeymoon period is over,” he says. “You can only get a pass for having cancer for so long,” Sam says, like what he’s saying is a fact. “Then the girls start to treat you like you’re a normal as**ole again.”

“Where are Matt and Paul?” I ask.

“Paul has Hayley tonight, and Matt went home to sleep.”

I nod.

“Pete?”

Sam’s face falls. “Still locked up.”

My heart twists in my chest at his words. A nurse walks into the room, and she’s carrying a needle. Thank f**king God. She smiles but she doesn’t speak to me. Hearing people always worry about how much I can understand, so they avoid communicating with me unless they have to.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” she finally says. I feel a burn in my arm, and then the pain starts to ease.

My head swims, but there’s one thing I need to know. I look at Sam. “Did I really break my dick?”

The sight of Sam’s laughter rocks me back to sleep.

Emily

Logan drifts back to sleep within moments of waking, but I’m pretty sure he’ll be back. I’m not as worried as I was before he spoke to me.

“Where are his hearing aids?” I ask Sam.

He shrugs. “Did you check his belongings?” He points toward a cabinet across the room. In it there’s a bag with everything Logan had on him when the accident happened. I look through it but can’t find the hearing aids.

I pick up a small silver bar. “What’s this?” I ask.

Sam’s face flushes. “Piercing,” he mumbles, not looking me in the eyes.

“Oh,” I say, and I bite back a snicker. All of Logan’s jewelry is in the bag. They removed all of his piercings and stored them for him. Even the one from the base of his johnson. Goodness.

I open his wallet, just because I’m nosy. There’s a charcoal drawing of me that he has in his driver’s-license window, and there are a few dollars in cash in the bill compartment. There’s a folded-up note, and I open it. I can’t help it—the curiosity is killing me. I realize immediately that it’s the note I wrote to him when I finally told him my name. Tears burn my eyes. He saved it. He had it tattooed on his butt, too, but he carries my note around like it’s important to him. “There are no hearing aids in here.”

“They may have been lost in the crash.”

“We’ll have to see about getting new ones before he needs them.”

Sam blows. “Do you know how much those things cost?”

I look up. I have no idea what they cost. “A lot?”

“Like way more than we have.” He growls low in his throat. “I’m tired of being f**king poor. It blows.”

“Your family is rich in all the ways that my family is not,” I remind him. I look at him as he swipes a frustrated hand through his hair. “Is that why Pete did what he did?”

He nods. “I think so.”

“I told him not to get involved with Bone. That it would only get him in trouble.” I told him that months ago, when he first started talking with the man. I hate to say I told you so, but when I do…

“I was there that night,” Sam blurts out. He rubs the back of his closely shaved head.

“What night?”

“The night Pete was arrested. I was there. We were unloading the truck together.”

“Oh.” I don’t know what more to say. “How did Pete get arrested and you didn’t?”

“Pete looked up at me and told me to run. So, I ran, and Pete got caught. I’ll never forgive myself.” He bites his lower lip, idly tonguing his piercing. “He told me if I confess, he’d deny that I was there. Fucking moron.”

“Did you tell Paul and Matt?” I don’t know why that matters, but it does.

He nods. “They know.” He shakes his head. “I thought Paul was going to kill me.”

“What did he do?”

He kicks at a piece of imaginary dirt on the floor. “He hugged me.” He shrugs. “That’s all.”

“Why were you messing with Bone at all?” I ask. I can’t help it. Everyone knows who Bone is and what he does.

He sighs. “We wanted to be sure that we had enough money saved to pay for Matt’s treatment, if he needed one again. So, we started doing odd jobs. None of it was illegal.” He holds up one hand like he’s testifying. “I swear it. We wouldn’t have gotten involved if it was illegal.”

“What kind of jobs?”

He doesn’t look at me. “Delivering packages, letters. Collecting on accounts. Unloading trucks. That kind of stuff.”

The stuff that was illegal as hell, and he knew it.

“Pete’s paying the price.” He growls and runs a hand through his hair again. “I’ll never forgive myself.”

“My dad is working on it,” I remind him.

“Your dad’s a miracle worker now?” he asks, his brow shooting up.

I laugh. “Not the last time I checked.”

He gets quiet for a minute. “Hey, Em,” he says. I look up at him. “I never did thank you for saving Matt’s life.”

I wave a breezy hand at him. “It was nothing.”

His eyes narrow. “You love my brother, right?”