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“Van told us everything.” Donovan stepped back, unsuccessfully trying to peel his wife off of me. “How you’ve been taking care of Kelly. How you ran to her when she asked for help and kept her alive until the paramedics arrived. I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t been there and called for help.”
Erin peered up at me, tears streaming down her cheeks. “And if you hadn’t had Joss call us…”
The words I didn’t were perched on the edge of my tongue again, but I was too fuckin’ dumbfounded to let them loose. I hadn’t done anything but wallow in my own fuckin’ grief since the moment I saw the shard of glass that was run through Kelly’s wrist.
Their words twisted in my head, slithering around and hypnotizing me the way their daughter had done.
Had Joss call us.
Called for help.
Kept her alive until the paramedics arrived.
I thought she was gone. I thought Kelly was dead. That glass. The way her body was limp in my arms. Her beautiful eyes wouldn’t open. Her fiery attitude was nowhere to be seen. I hadn’t done anything but cling to her body and grieve.
Until the paramedics had pried me off and torn her away from me.
Until Van had loaded me in my Jeep and driven me here.
I didn’t understand.
But then, I did.
Glancing up, I found Van. He was standing across the room, his cellphone in one hand and mine in the other.
Kelly had told me to hire him. She’d told me to hire Joss. And the two of them…
The two of them had done everything they could to help me out.
From calling the paramedics. To watching over Kelly when I couldn’t be there. To calling her parents when I was consumed by the loss that would have happened had they not taken action.
I dragged a hand over my face, then fell to the chair I’d been stuck in since Van led me to it and told me to sit.
Erin and Donovan took seats on either side of me. Erin grabbed my hand, holding on like I could save her the way she thought I’d saved her daughter.
If they only knew…
If they had any clue…
“Kelly called me this morning,” Donovan said, his face pinched, his bottom lip trembling. “She told me about you two.”
“She did?”
Erin squeezed my hand, and Donovan placed his on my arm. “She told me she’s in love with you. That she was doing good and was going to do everything in her power to get better so she could be with you.”
His words were a vice clamping around my throat. I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t. I could barely breathe.
“She said she was taking her meds,” he said, and I nodded, because I knew she was. She made a habit of taking them in front of me. Had alarms set on her phone so she wouldn’t forget. “She promised she was taking care of herself. She even mentioned—” He choked on a sob and pulled his hand from my arm to put it over his mouth. “She mentioned she was going to look for a job.”
I gave him a nod, then pressed my lips into a tight line as I stared up at the ceiling, trying to keep the flood of tears from coming again.
“She was trying,” Erin cried beside me.
“When we found her,” Van said, drawing our attention across the hall, “the water was on and the sink was full.”
Donovan squeezed his eyes shut, forcing his own tears to fall. “That’s one of the things her therapist told her to do. If she couldn’t pull herself out of a spiral, she was supposed to dunk her face in ice water to help calm her thoughts and set herself straight.”
“And the glass in her wrist,” Van continued. “It looked like it shattered in the sink. Like maybe she slipped on the water and broke the glass, and that’s how it ended up in her hand. It was an accident.”
