As a kid, her voice was the last thing I’d hear before I fell asleep every night during the summer trips my mother and I took to Florida. Weird that my own mother wasn’t the one singing to me, I know. But that’s not who my mother is. If she’d been the type to sing her kid a lullaby, maybe I wouldn’t be so messed up.
I’d listen to Maria sing until sleep took my hand and swept me away. But now, as I lie with my eyes closed and my body numb, the voice that was once upon a time so reassuring is filled with a pain that could make the coldest heart ache.
“Winter, my poor baby. I’m so sorry. It’s going to be fine. You’re going to be okay, I promise.” Her voice is weak, faint.
My eyes fly open.
“Thank God.”
I sit up straight. My sight is blurry. My thoughts, too.
Maria immediately pulls me into her familiar arms, holding me like it’s the last thing she’ll ever do.
“What the hell happened?” I blink repeatedly.
“I’ll tell you everything, I promise. Just… let me have this moment.”
When she pulls away, I glance around the room and wait. That’s all I can do: wait for my senses to come back to me. But along with my senses comes the worst part.
The memories.
I remember the fight at the Downside, watching Haze and Kendrick beat each other to a pulp, getting kidnapped, figuring out that Tanner, Haze’s brother, was behind the whole thing and that Blake was—sorry, is—a traitor.
I remember our escape and cutting my leg open with a piece of glass. Haze carrying me in the chaos. His panicked voice in the dark. But most importantly… I remember the last words he said to me. The words I will never forget.
I love you, Kingston.
That awkward moment when your crush tells you he loves you because you’re dying.
My vision clears up, and I take in my surroundings. I know I shouldn’t be sad when I’m hit by the cold hard truth, but it doesn’t stop my heart from crumbling.
He’s gone.
Of course he is.
The pain in my leg is almost as bad as the disappointment that courses through my veins when I stop searching for his face. I’ve been slipping in and out of consciousness for a while. I think I fainted. They must’ve put me to sleep while they removed the glass from my leg. I could hear snippets of conversations here and there—let me rephrase: snippets of arguments—but I couldn’t move or talk. Like my mind was awake, but my body wasn’t.
We’
re not in the clinic I heard them talk about earlier, that’s for sure. They must’ve had no choice but to move me.
We’re in a crappy motel room. A sad shade of blue covers the walls, and an orangey lamp sits on the nightstand next to me. On my left is another bed and a desk.
“What happened?” I ask again.
My aunt draws in a breath. “Kendrick called. He said you needed help, and they couldn’t take you to the hospital. He…” She pauses, her eyes full of pain. “He told me everything.”
It takes my brain a while to digest the piece of information it’s been fed.
She knows.
I’m pretty sure this isn’t how Kendrick intended for his mother to find out about his street fighting secret.
“I called an old friend of mine. He’s a doctor. He told us to take you to his clinic. All you need to know is you’re going to be fine. We managed to remove the glass from your leg. You are so lucky it wasn’t fragmented. It wasn’t deep enough to do any real damage, but you’ve got a fracture. It’s not going to be fun, but you should be able to walk again in six weeks.”
I look down at the heavy blanket weighting on me. If the pain tells me anything, it’s that this is not going to look much better than it feels.
“Do I even want to see my leg?” I ask, well aware that I’m not going to like the answer.