“Hi, Max. Can you swing by my place tonight? I need to talk to you about some things. You’re right. I needed to make a decision, and I did.”
My stomach knots and I have to sink to my chair. She made a decision. I’ve wanted this, but I’ve dreaded it just as much.
I’m halfway through texting a reply w
hen my phone rings and Lizzy’s number pops onto the screen.
“Hello?”
“Max? Hanna…” I can’t make out her words. All I know is that she’s crying, sobbing, and repeating Hanna’s name and hospital.
“I’ll be there in two minutes.” I don’t bother putting away my files, shutting down my computer, or even telling anyone where I’m going. My mind is in such a fog that the drive to the hospital is a blur. I’m in constant motion until I make it to the hospital and I find her in a temporary room beyond the ER.
For the first time since I got Lizzy’s call, I stop moving. Hanna’s in a hospital gown, unconscious, her lip bloody, her face battered. “Where am I?” she murmurs, turning her head toward Liz.
“You’re in the hospital,” Liz replies. “You’ve been in an accident.”
“My head hurts,” Hanna whispers. Then she closes her eyes again.
Finally my feet obey my brain and I step into the room. “Is she okay?”
“Does she look okay?” Liz sniffs and doesn’t bother looking at me.
Then I see it. Right there on Hanna’s left hand—my grandmother’s engagement ring. She made a decision.
Present Day
THE AXE splits the wood again and again, the boom and crack comforting me, the burning in my arms and shoulders distracting me from the fucking aching in my chest.
How long can you fight for someone before it kills you inside? How long can you hold out before it isn’t devotion but pathetic desperation?
“I thought I’d find you here.”
I look up to see Will pushing through the gate to my mom’s backyard. He eyes my growing wood pile and raises a brow.
“Planning a fire?”
“No. Just…” My throat thickens, and I rest the axe on the trunk of a maple and grab my water bottle. I guzzle half of it before trying to talk again. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have a wedding to prepare for?”
Will shrugs. “I’ll pick up my tux on Friday, but we have a wedding planner who’s pretty much taking care of the rest.”
I grunt and start stacking wood under the awning by Mom’s back porch.
Will doesn’t ask any questions, just starts grabbing wood with me and adding it to the pile. We work together seamlessly, the only sounds the chirping of the birds and the rumble of the occasional diesel truck passing on the street out front.
I only speak when the wood is all stacked and my hands burn from handling the rough logs. “She thinks I want her for her money.”
Will coughs on his water. “What?”
“Yeah. Apparently Meredith planted this idea in her head, and she can’t let it go.”
“Tell her everything. Make her understand.”
I let out a long breath. Leave it to Will to figure that the truth will set me free and all that shit. “It’s more complicated than that,” I mumble.
“If by complicated, you mean she bruised the shit out of your ego, I’d believe that.”
“By complicated, I mean she’s pregnant.”