Oh fuck.
My gulp is audible as I swallow back all the bile that’s suddenly filled my mouth.
Please let this be a fucking dream.
Honey’s gaze darts up to me from her book, and it makes me hope even more this isn’t reality, that the way her eyes make me freeze so easily is all in my imagination.
‘Hey,’ she says softly, closing her book. ‘How are you feeling?’
Confused. Angry. Scared. What’s new?
I only manage a small grunt when I first try to speak, then have to clear my throat before I can ask, ‘What are you doing here?’
It comes out less polite than I planned, but I’m toooverwhelmed to apologise, my mind seesawing between the damn cast around my leg and my past sitting in a hospital room with me.
‘Oh.’ Honey drops her book into her bag beside her, lashes fluttering down. She gives herself a little nod before talking, like she’s psyching herself up. ‘Um, I was giving Miles a break—he’s been sitting with you for hours. He’s just getting something to drink. All your friends were here earlier too. The doctor told them to come back in the morning, but I thought I’d just check in to see how you were doing.’
I don’t get it. It must be the middle of the night. Why is she wasting her time here? With me?
She stands and brushes down her crumpled blouse—still in the same clothes as earlier—before resting her hands along the metal frame of the bed. ‘Are you in much pain? I can get the nurse if you—’
‘No.’ My head’s already muddled from whatever pain meds they’ve got me on, I don’t need anything stronger. Dealing with the pain in my leg and the throbbing that’s been building in my head is child’s play. I’ve felt worse.
Besides, I don’t think the nurses have anything that can stop the painful reminders that spring up with Honey being here, even though we haven’t seen each other for nine years. It doesn’t make sense. Especially when she’s got a family waiting at home for her.
I bet they’re the kind of family that have dinner altogether around the table, hold hands while saying grace, and fill the room with warm laughter. The kind of family neither of us had growing up. At least one of us finally got what we wanted. She probably deserved it more than me.
Speaking of—‘Where’s the kid?’
‘Noah? Oh, he’s with my mom.’ A breathy chuckle slips from her lips, quieter than the joy that sparks in her eyes from talking about him. Must be nice to have someone think about you like that. ‘He was surprisingly upset that he couldn’t come see you.’
If my head didn’t feel so heavy, so spaced-out, I might laugh too. The kid’s only spoken to me for barely a few minutes. Though, I can’t say I’m not intrigued by the lack of mention of his father …
‘He’s not with his dad?’ Apparently my drugged up self has lost the ability not to say my thoughts out loud. Though, I always was pretty good at saying things I shouldn’t. Honey can attest to that with the amount of times I got kicked out of class.
Honey scoffs, rolling her eyes without even an attempt to hide it. Not like she used to. ‘No, his dad is in New York right now and has been for a good four years.’
It makes me wonder how he got the privilege of being the father of her child when he clearly doesn’t stick around. What was so special about him? What made her stay?
When I wasn’t enough to keep her.
My eyes fall back to my cast and it’s a potent reminder that I’ve always been broken. That I’m reckless and useless. That just like everyone else does when I show them the cracks in my life, Honey ran. Because I wasn’t enough—not like whoever Noah’s dad clearly is.
My eye twitches, her words from my truck cab nine years ago echoing through my mind.
There’s a reason I keep riding, why I don’t stay grounded for too long, why I don’t settle. I can’t let them see my scars or the pain I carry.
Fuck knows how I’m going to be that Sawyer Nash with my leg in a goddamn cast. I can practically hear the drain gurgling as my bull-riding career slowly starts to pour down it. Pressure builds between my eyes at the thought. At the panic of what the fuck I’m going to do.
I can’t deal with this right now. Not with Honey in the room. My mind barely manages to focus on a normal day, but with everything that’s happened, seeingher, it’s in overdrive.
I need her to leave.
So, I give in to the frantic emotions crackling under my skin. I sneer through gritted teeth, ‘You finally found someone grown up enough for you, huh?’
Hurt registers across her face—bottom lip dropping, freckled nose crumpling slightly, but even as she fights her reaction, her eyes give the majority of the pain away, a shine taking residence in them as they flare.
To anyone else, it wasn’t mean, what I said. If anything, it was rude to me. But I know she must remember that conversation, the words she said, the way she quickly built back up the distance between us we’d broken down over the year. She must remember, because even after years of trying to scourge my memory of her, that’s the one moment that always lingers.