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“Hmm.” His gaze slid to the potted plant with renewed interest.
“I think my sister sent them,” I started hopefully, needingsomeoneto believe me. “Somehow,” I added with less certainty. “From, you know, the other side.”
The guy slid his gaze from the flowers and back to me. “After my parents died in a car crash, I kept thinking they left me little gifts.” Pushing to his feet with a sigh, he bluntly added, “But they never did.”
I swallowed thickly, not especially a fan of his hard truth. “Kinsey might have, though.”
He didn’t answer, merely reached out and touched my hair sadly. “I’m sorry about your sister,” he said. “I wish like hell that I hadn’t had any part in her death.”
“You didn’t,” I assured him, feeling my eyes mist. After all the crying I’d done lately, I wasn’t sure how my tear ducts hadn’t dried up by now, but here came more. “It was my fault,” I explained as I wiped my cheeks. “I’m the one who just had to go meet some stupid guy on the other side of town.”
“He’s not stupid,” I was told.
When I looked up in surprise, my guest shook his head. “He’s among the best people I know. And he’s worth a second chance. You should give him one.”
I blinked at him, not sure what to say.
He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with my silence, and he stuffed his hands back into his pockets. “Anyway, I just wanted to give you my condolences and let you know you don’t have to worry about any hospital bills.”
I straightened in surprise. I actually hadn’t thought about how much all this was going to cost, butnowI was. And there was no way one person could just take care of that kind of bill.
Was there?
“See you around, Red,” he told me with a bob of the head as he turned away and started out the door.
I touched my hair, still adoring it when someone acknowledged the red in it, only to call, “Hey. I don’t remember your name.”
“Probably for the best,” he said and left the room without even glancing back.
I dropped my hands into my lap lamely and looked around me at the light blue walls. Then I cried some more.
33
FOSTER
Raina had been out of her coma for a week now and in a private room for two days. And I felt as if I wanted to claw my way out of my own body; I was that anxious to just…go see her again.
The night before, I had lain in bed, drumming my fingers on my leg and repeating over and over to myself that it would be bad to sneak into the hospital just to peek at her sleeping. But Parker had given me her room number and told me she sounded regretful about banishing me, so the urge to try one more time to visit her had damn near consumed me.
But I restrained myself.
Barely.
I had no idea how I was going to keep this up for the rest of my life, though. A week of it had nearly driven me crazy.
Thane told me he had coped after losing his first love by keeping himself busy. But training had started back up for football; I’d taken on more hours at Duke’s; I spent twice as much time with my family and friends; and I was up to date on all the papers I had to write for classes. This was probably the busiest I’d ever kept myself, and yet it wasn’t enough. I still lay awake at night, staring over at the other side of my bed, just trying to will her ghost back into existence.
I couldn’t figure out how mere weeks with her spirit had managed to leave such a huge, gaping hole in me. But it seriously felt as if I’d lost a piece of myself.
What was worse, I knew she was out there, still hurting. Not from missing me, but from her grief and recovery. I hated not being there for her or helping in any way.
When I had to deliver a pizza to an apartment located across the street from the hospital, I sat in my truck—chewing on my thumb knuckle and staring at the huge Red Cross symbol on the side of the building—for too long before I was able to put the vehicle into drive and return to the pizza parlor.
As I pulled into the parking lot of the pizzeria, my truck filled with the scent of pepperoni and mozzarella, I glanced over to the passenger seat. But no one was there.
I sighed, depressed, and cut the engine before climbing from the truck, only for my phone to ring.
It was Amy.
