Grace for Drowning

The Apollo felt like a dream come true. I was a little shaky at the beginning, but after a few hours I found my rhythm and everything started coming back to me. It was so good to be back where I belonged. The sounds, the smells, the hustle and bustle — it all felt like home. The work was hard, but I'd been expecting that, and the other staff were all super friendly, which made it much more tolerable.

"You better not forget about little old me, slaving away back here at the bar," said Joy, when I was filling her in on my first day.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

She shrugged. "You're with your people now. Soon you'll be off having soufflé parties and dipping oysters in fois gras while laughing about micro herbs, or whatever it is you foodies do."

"Okay — first, if I ever do any of that, you have my permission to hit me."

"Noted."

"And second, you're being an idiot. Of course I'm not going to forget about

you! We broke ice cream together, remember? We're basically blood-sisters."

She grinned. "That's true."

The smile slid from my face. "Seriously, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your friendship, Joy. I don't know if I'd have gotten through all of this without you. We'll hang out just as much as we did before, I promise."

That seemed to mollify her, and before long we were discussing the finer points of The Bachelor and gorging on cooking chocolate. It felt good to know things weren't going to change too much. I liked the life I'd built.

I didn't get home most days until after eleven, but Logan made some adjustments to his training schedule, and true to his word, we still found a few hours for one another here and there. I think it might have been more difficult if he'd had any upcoming fights, but that asshole from TPW still hadn't let up. Logan was effectively locked out. He did his best to stay in high spirits, but I could see that it was weighing on him. I hated how powerless I was to help. He'd done so much for me, but now he was in trouble and all I could do was sit there and twiddle my thumbs. I resolved to talk to Charlie and try to come up with a plan.

When I'd been at The Apollo for a week, I decided that it was time to explore a little. There were a ton of cute little shops in the neighboring area, and it had been a long time since my wardrobe had received any sort of love. During my lunch break, I scoffed down a quick bowl of pasta and then headed outside. It was a warm afternoon, and the streets around me were thick with cars. I plugged in my headphones, cranked up some Rihanna and headed for the crosswalk.

There was a text from Logan waiting for me on my phone.

Movie at my place later? I have ice cream.

I smiled. He knew the way to my heart.

The pedestrian light turned green, so I began to cross as I replied. I got less than halfway before it happened.

If I'd been looking up, perhaps I'd have seen the car coming. If my ears had been free, perhaps I'd have heard it. As it was, though, the only warning I had was a brief moment of terror as the roar of the engine finally penetrated my music. I had just long enough to realize that the sound was far too loud and far too close to be an idling car, and then something slammed into me and the world went black.

Chapter Twenty One

Logan

I didn't remember the ride to the hospital. There was a phone call, and then everything just went dark. All I have from that period is an overpowering sense of terror. I've never felt something so all-encompassing before, like I was submerged in it a hundred feet down. I wanted to keep sinking, to go so deep that the darkness swallowed me, drowned me. Anything was better than what I was feeling at that moment. But, of course, it wasn't that easy.

Somehow, I got there without incident. The doctors couldn't tell me much. They used words like "critical condition" and "surgery," and a hundred others that all just blurred together to tell me that everything was fucked. "All we can do is wait," they said.

And so that's what I did.

Everything about the hospital was too bright, too vivid, like some horrible lucid nightmare. The sickly white of the walls seemed to leer at me, sucking the life from my muscles. Antiseptic stung my nostrils. I hate those places. I hate how haunted they feel, like there's an army of ghosts cursing and wailing in every shadow. Nowhere is closer to death.

Charlie was there with me. Joy too. I think maybe they took me there, although I couldn't be sure. They talked and tried to calm me, but they were dim and blurry and unimportant. Only one person existed for me at that moment, and she was fighting for her life somewhere in a room full of strangers. They wouldn't let me see her. I wasn't sure I could handle it if they did.

My stomach churned. I had an overpowering urge to do something, like I could talk or think or fight my way through this. I wanted to force my way into the operating theater and command the doctors to save her. I wanted to find the guy who'd hit her and beat him to a bloody pulp. But none of that would make any difference. This was out of my hands. It made me feel so impotent, so helpless.

Everything was coming full circle. I'd spent years drowning in death and blood and loss, more than any man should have to tolerate. And when it was all over, I promised myself I was done with that. I couldn't handle any more. People died. It was a fact of life. But I didn't have to be close to them. I didn't have to care.

And then she'd come along, and suddenly that wasn't true anymore.

I tried to fight it, God knows I did, but it was like wrestling gravity, a pointless battle. I think I was lost the moment I met her.

Part of me had been expecting this from day one. Nothing ever lasts, I knew that. The most painful thing wasn't that this happened. It was that I let myself believe that maybe it wouldn't.