Page 113 of Before You Fell

I have been managing it alone for two months and my apartment probably looks less like a home and more like the crime scene of every bad decision I swore I had under control.

“How long would I need to stay in there?” I ask.

“At least a month,” the doctor says.

Mom’s fingers close around my arm.

Dad turns back to the window.

A month.

Thirty days in a place where everyone knows why I am there. Group rooms, check-ins, rules, strangers with calm voices, and me trying not to crawl out of my skin every time someone sees the mess I have made of myself.

I glance at Mom’s hand on my arm, then at Dad’s back as he stands by the window.

I never want to put them in this situation again. Where I dragged them into a hospital room and made them observe their daughter lying in a bed with machines around her. Never again will I wake up to see my mother trying not to fall apart and my father staring out a window because looking at me hurts too much.

“Okay,” I say even though my throat fights me on it.

The doctor gives me a brief nod. He tells me someone will come through to give me the details once the booking is made, and then leaves us with the word rehab suspended in the air.

Dad turns from the window. “I’ll drive you.”

“No.”

His jaw ticks. “Willow.”

“Dad, I want Phoenix to drive me.”

The room goes quiet.

Dad stares at me as if I had just asked him to drop me into traffic and wave goodbye.

“No,” he finally manages to say.

“It wasn’t a question.”

His face hardens. “Absolutely not.”

I glance through the glass. Phoenix has heard the raised voices and his eyes are fixed on my dad.

Dad steps closer to the bed. “After everything, you want him driving you there?”

“Dad.” My voice softens, even though the next few words are going to hurt to say. “This is on me. I was the one who took the pills. This is not on Phoenix. You can’t keep blaming him for all of it. I did this shit to myself.”

“No,” he says. “He was with you every day, Willow. Every damn day. He saw you. He should have seen you were spiraling.”

“I’m not a child anymore.”

Dad goes still.

I know he loves me. That he wants to protect his little girl from the world, from Phoenix, from me, and from every ugly thing that put me in this bed. But he cannot stand guard over every broken part of me forever.

Dad shakes his head. “You are not thinking clearly.”

Something hot flares in my chest, sharp enough to cut through the exhaustion. “Don’t do that.”

His eyes narrow. “Do what?”