“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 ass**le 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?”