The Sunshine Chronicles: Forgotten Flare, page 10
A single tear rolled down my face as I stared at the spot in the room where Mitch’s bed had been. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt him…” I trailed off, not knowing what else I could say.
Jordin wiped the tear from my face and tucked my hair behind my ears. “I know, sweetheart, I know. This has all been very traumatic. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.” She kissed me on the head and pulled me in for another hug. Her words seemed odd, but I didn’t have the brainpower to process them.
“Doctor Smiles.” The nurse who stood in the doorway was jarringly loud for a hospital. “The car for Rayleigh has arrived.” I pulled away from Jordin and swung my backpack over my shoulder, but the nurse wasn’t done with her announcements. “Mitchell’s arm has been set, and he is on his way back.” She left without waiting for a response.
Jordin put her hands on either side of my face and kissed my forehead before finally letting me go. Her sudden affection bothered me, but I wasn’t about to call her out in the hospital. She held out a small bottle to me, shaking its contents with her movements. “Please remember to take these before you go to sleep.” She pursed her lips as I took them from her. “I don’t want to hear about nightmare tantrums while I’m not around, understand?” There she was. This firm tone and rigid posture were more familiar to me. I nodded at her instructions and put the pills in my backpack. Jordin tried to give me another hug, but with the look I gave her, she let her hands fall to her sides as I stepped into the hallway and out of reach.
Mitchell’s bed rolled down the hallway. Smiles put a hand out to stop me from walking in that direction to exit. Tears welled in my eyes when the bed rolled past, but I blinked them back. There was no new cast, but a sling held his arm in place across his chest. I was used to hospitals and being cast up myself, but seeing someone else I loved in a hospital bed for an extended time was new and more challenging to deal with.
I closed my eyes, turned to the hospital exit, and tried to picture Mitch as he was the day before, aiming a Nerf gun at me from my bedroom door. How was that only yesterday?
A loud car engine roared to life as soon as I stepped outside. Before I could turn to find the culprit, someone called my name from the opposite direction. Following the sound of my name, I saw a familiar SUV with its passenger door open, the driver patiently waiting next to it.
VIII
Gentle
Kaleb gave me a weak smile like he had no idea if he should be happy to see me or sorry that my brother was in a coma. I tried to smile back, but my lips started to tremble as tears built up in my eyes again at the sight of him waiting for me. I held them back as I walked up to him.
“So you got stuck being my caretaker, huh?” My voice was weak and raspy from screaming, but his smile grew.
“I guess you could say that, yeah.” He held out his arms, and I walked into his embrace. He pulled me close, and I buried my face in his chest, squeezing him back. I couldn’t hold the tears back anymore, so I let myself cry as he rubbed my back, soothing the tears away as the minutes passed.
When I finally caught my breath, I pulled away to wipe the tears from my face. He led me into the passenger seat and closed my door before walking around the car. I buckled my seatbelt, and he hopped in, doing the same. Aside from my sniffles, the first few minutes of the car ride were quiet, but I didn’t like the silence once we were on the main road home. It made my thoughts go too dark. “Why did Chief Bass call you, of all people?”
Kaleb glanced at me sideways and smiled a little. “I went to your house during my free period since you hadn’t shown up in Chemistry and weren’t answering your phone. Ken and Leigh told me something had happened to Mitch, and I knew I had to check on you. Chief was at your house when I pulled up. He said he was getting something for your mom. I asked where you were, and he told me you hadn’t left Mitch’s side.” He gave me a knowing smile. He was one of the few people who knew how close Mitch and I were and knew I wouldn’t willingly leave his side, considering his state. “I gave him my number and asked him to update me on everything. He called me thirty minutes ago and asked if I’d be willing to care for you for the next couple of days. I was already in the car and on my way here before I hung up.” He gently grabbed my hand, rubbing his thumb against mine.
I stared at our hands and briefly considered pulling mine away, but the comforting contact felt like it kept me from completely breaking down again. The gesture made things a little murky between us, but the way he made me feel safe with such a simple act… It wasn’t the first time he’d done something like that. As I thought of the times he was there for me, it reminded me how vulnerable I was with him—allowing him to see the broken parts of me. He never shied away. He kept coming back. Always gentle. Always patient.
So I let him hold my hand and gazed back up at him again. He clenched his jaw as if he were restraining from saying something. The act defined his face, making his cheekbones pop and his nose flare. His curly brown hair fell just above his eyes, shining like a rich copper in the sunlight. My insides started to churn as I stared at him, not seeing the boy I grew up with but a man.
He was watching the road but glanced my way when he felt my eyes on him. I averted my gaze to the road but asked myself how I never realized how attractive Kaleb was— and how no other girls had seen it. Aside from Bell, I hadn’t seen or heard about any girls approaching him. Or maybe he didn’t tell me if they did…
Self-consciously, I removed my hand from his and pretended it was to turn the radio on. The music helped fill my head with something other than the confusing thoughts mingling around there. His mention of my phone had me reaching for it in my backpack, if only to keep me from grabbing his hand again. I pulled it out to find it dead. Of course. It made sense. I’d been at the hospital all night and hadn’t thought of anything outside of Mitch, including my friends.
“Do you have a charger?” I asked, holding up my dead phone for him to see. He opened the center console and pulled a cord from inside, plugging it into the car before handing me the other end. “Thanks.”
As my phone started, I noticed several messages from the twins and Kaleb. Ken had texted me to let me know she and Leigh were dropping off my homework and to tell me Kaleb had been asking about me. After reading that, I gave a nervous glance toward him, unsure what to think.
Leighton decided it was necessary to tell me Kyler asked about me in Chemistry, then disappeared for the rest of the school day. I mentally rolled my eyes, not understanding why he would even care after his actions yesterday.
Kaleb’s texts started last night, inquiring how dress shopping was going, asking about the rest of my night, and then turned into asking if I was okay and if I needed anything. My stomach flipped again, and I tried to ignore it, scrolling to the following missed messages, realizing they were the ones from Mitch last night. My throat constricted as I clicked on his thread. The first one said he passed his English test, which he gave me credit for helping him study the night before. The second was asking if I could get him something from the mall. The third was where it got strange. It came around the time he would have been walking to Gram’s house.
I have this weird feeling that I’m being followed. Can I call you, just in case?
The blood drained from my face. I switched to my voicemail to check the time of his last call. It came shortly after the text. I found the voicemail he left and put the phone to my ear.
“Hey, Ray!” His voice was chipper but laced with panic. “What’re you doing?” He paused. With confusion, I waited for him to go on. “Oh right, I forgot you were going to the mall…” He trailed off. He was trying to make it sound like a conversation instead of a voicemail. “Well, since you’re there, do you mind getting me a few of those cookies from that one place? I’ve been craving them since the last time we went.” Again, he paused, chuckled as if I said something funny, and said, “Yeah, well, coach can deal with it because I’m not giving up sugar for swimming.” He laughed again, and in the background, I heard a loud engine quiet to an idle. Faintly, I heard a man ask him which way the falls were. “Just follow this road for about a mile, and on the right, you’ll see a rock with ‘Wisteria Falls’ painted on it with an arrow. Turn there. You can’t miss them.” The guy responded with a thanks, and the sound of the car engine trailed off. “Well, that was weird.” Mitch’s voice addressed the phone again. “I could have sworn that was the guy following me,” he whispered.
Chills ran down my spine. Had the person who hit Mitch talked to him moments before they ran him over?
“Anyway,” Mitch was back to his conversational cadence, “Have fun at the mall with the girls. I’ll probably end up playing Scrabble with Grams until Mom gets there. See you tonight. Love you-” He cut off as the roar of an engine blared through the phone. My hand flew to my mouth as I heard him yell something that was instantly cut off by the sounds of the car slamming into Mitch. The cracking of bones echoed in my ear as the crunch of his phone hitting the pavement followed. The voicemail ended with the car engine disappearing in the background and a sudden silence to end the call.
Shaking, I pulled the phone from my ear and looked at Kaleb, who had been eyeing me from the driver’s seat. “Ray. What’s wrong?” He could see the panic in my eyes. The horror of what I’d just listened to. My eyes felt like they were bulging out of my head, tears flooding my vision. My breathing was coming too quickly. I felt my heartbeat against my chest. My head felt light as dizziness set in.
Kaleb turned the wheel sharply, pulling onto the side of the two-lane highway. He jumped out of the car, rounding the car impossibly fast, and wrenched my door open. He knelt in the ditch outside my door, unbuckled my seatbelt, and twisted my legs to be outside the car. When I fully faced him, he straightened on his knees to make his face level with mine and said, “Rayleigh, I need you to look at me.” My eyes were unfocused. I couldn’t think past the noises of the car slamming into Mitch. “Rayleigh!” Kaleb grabbed my face, turning me towards him. His nose was inches from mine. “I’m with you.” His thumb caressed my cheek. The crunch of bones echoed in my head. “Right here.” The feeling of his thumb made me focus on his words as the echo of a car engine roared in my mind. “You’re safe.” His eyes came into focus—warm, honey-brown eyes. Mitch’s last I love you whispered in my head. “Breathe,” Kaleb instructed as he noticed my eyes focus on his. Tears had formed in his pretty eyes. “In.” He demonstrated for me, and I followed his lead, the panic slightly leaving his voice as he heard me take a staggering breath in. “Out.” I did as he did, and he walked me through it several more times. Each time I breathed in, the sounds from the voicemail faded. I listened to our synced breathing, focusing on his eyes as I did. It grounded me.
Kaleb kept his hold on my face, and our breaths mixed between us as I inhaled again, this time through my nose. A mix of spearmint and cedar filled my nose. I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead against his, breathing in his scent as I relaxed my shoulders with an exhale. “Thank you…”
His head moved slightly against mine as he let out his breath. “You haven’t had a panic attack like that since the weeks following your dad’s accident.” He pulled back to look at my face, eyes darting back and forth between mine to see that I was still with him. “What were you listening to?”
I took another deep breath, reaching up to pull his hands away from my face. My eyes followed as I laid our joined hands in my lap. “It was a voicemail.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “From Mitch.” Kaleb took another long breath, squeezing my hand to urge me on. “He called because he thought he was being followed.”
Kaleb sensed it before I could, “Breathe, Ray. In.” We did it together. “Out.”
When I released my breath, I continued, “He pretended to converse with me when some guy pulled up and asked him for directions. When he drove off, Mitch said he thought that was the guy following him, but went back to his fake conversation and then…” I choked back a tiny sob and followed Kaleb’s silent lead into another deep breath. “Then all I could hear was the accident.” I sniffled before taking another deep breath.
Kaleb squeezed my hands again, cursing under his breath. “That’s not something anyone should ever have to hear.” He lifted my chin with a single finger. His eyes darted between mine again, and his hand traveled to cup my face. “I’m so sorry you had to listen to that, Rayleigh.” He used that hand to pull me into a hug. My body shook, but I didn’t realize how bad it was until he wrapped his arms around me in a bear hug. He didn’t say anything else. He just held me until the trembling slowed. I pulled back a little, giving him the sign to sit back on his heels, and moved his hands to my knees. His eyes were full of determination. “Let’s get back to my place, and we can send that voicemail to Chief.” When I scrunched my eyebrows together, he clarified, “It could help with the investigation.”
I nodded, and he pushed back from my knees, intending, I’m sure, to stand up, but he must have forgotten we were next to a ditch. The force of his little push made him lose his balance, and he fell back into the small ditch, doing an awkward backward somersault, landing with his legs in a v-shape in front of him. He threw himself back, laughing, not embarrassed in the slightest, causing me to let out a little laugh, too. The event was ridiculous enough to pull me from my panicked moment. Kaleb met my eyes as I laughed, and a sparkle shone within the rich brown, making my stomach flip as he gazed at me.
He stood and walked back up the small, steep hill toward me. “Well, that was unexpected. I’m glad it made you smile, though.” He smirked and nudged my legs to push them back into the car before shutting the door. He slid into the driver’s seat a moment later and resumed our drive back to his house.
I stared at him, taking in what he had just done for me, and said, “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me for that.” His eyes showed such understanding, and I didn’t want to acknowledge how it made me feel, so I pressed on.
“No one else has been around to witness my panic attacks. But you have. Where did you learn… that?” He’d helped me through so many after Arabella and Dad, but I never thought to ask him that until now.
He sucked in a breath, “Honestly?” I nodded, and he let the breath out. “The first time you ever experienced it.” Those first few times after Arabella’s death were brutal. He went on, “You probably don’t even remember me being there… but I came to visit you when you were in the hospital after your accident with Bell.”
I couldn’t hide the shock. The slight pink in his cheeks made me turn and watch out the window as he spoke because he was right. I didn’t remember. Everything around her death blurred together or disappeared from my memory altogether.
He took a deep breath, turned back to the road, and went on, “The day I visited, you were sort of out of it with all the medication. Everyone else had gone to get something to eat or some coffee. While I was alone with you, you woke up in a panic and started screaming Arabella’s name. It scared me so bad I almost ran to get someone else. But you looked so terrified…” he trailed off, lost in the memory. “You weren’t looking at anyone. Your eyes were wide with terror at whatever you were seeing. You stared at a wall but weren’t focused on anything. You were seeing things that weren’t there. So I did the only thing I thought would help you—I jumped on the bed, careful to avoid your injuries, and grabbed your face, making you focus on me like I did just now. Only that time, I was straddling you on the hospital bed with our faces very close together.” He paused long enough that I turned to look at him and saw his cheeks had turned a deeper shade of red, but the smirk on his face told a different story. “Your heart monitor went off, beeping loudly because of your elevated heart rate. How the nurses heard that but not your screams never made sense to me, but one of them rushed in to see what the problem was. I knew what it looked like at that point. You had calmed down, you were looking at me dazed, and your heart rate had gone up.” He pursed his lips briefly before continuing, “I climbed off that bed so fast and ran out of the room with my tail between my legs.” I suppressed a chuckle as I pictured Kaleb straddling me on a bed and a nurse finding us. Kaleb laughed at my expression. “Luckily, I didn’t have to explain what happened to anyone, and no one ever brought it up again, but boy, was I red when I left that hospital room.”
His laughter made me break into a genuine smile, and a weight lifted off my chest. I had no idea he was at the hospital after the accident. The thought of him seeing me in that state, so vulnerable, was scary, but hearing that he hadn’t hesitated to bring me back from wherever my mind had taken me cracked something open deep inside me. I focused on him again, taking in the soft smile that played on his lips while he focused on the road. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you were there?”
The smile slowly faded. He didn’t look at me when he said, “Because I didn’t think you would care.” The blow hit low. I sagged in my seat. “Or maybe you would think I wasn’t there for you.” The second blow was worse than the first.
“Kaleb…” My hand found his forearm, which rested on the console between us. “Why on earth would you think I wouldn’t care?”
His eyes fell to where my hand was on his arm, but he still couldn’t meet my gaze. Instead, he lifted his eyes back to the road. “We were just buddies. Friends.” When he realized his wording, he quickly said, “We still are! But it's… It’s different now. We’re closer. I didn’t think we could have that before without someone thinking there was… more.” His voice lowered slightly, and I rubbed my thumb on his arm for encouragement. “So I didn’t tell you I came to visit because it didn’t matter that I had. You didn’t remember it, and obviously, no one else cared to tell you, and I just… didn’t feel like it needed to be known.” He shrugged again and finally met my gaze.
