Long Way Down (Calloway Sisters 4)

To have

one more day to see her—means more to me than I can fucking express. Words fail me more often. Come out wrong most of the time.

We’ve never needed many in our relationship.

While we rest in silence, pages are being written between us. Telling the story of a crazy, sad girl and a fucking dangerous, lonely guy. I thought I lost her one last time.

I trace the long line of her scar with my thumb, and her fingers disappear into my thick hair, her chest rising raggedly.

We draw closer, her warm breath against my neck. I press my lips to the top of her head, her golden blonde hair tucked behind her ears. I slowly kiss her temple, then her cheek, her nose and lastly her lips.

She kisses back just as fucking feverishly, with as much fucking force. I stroke her hair, her tears mixing with my tears. Her lips swelling beneath my lips. My heart beating against her heart.

I break apart so she can catch her breath.

More of her tears begin to pool. “I love you,” she murmurs, her voice cracking. “I really love you.”

She’s my wife. My sun.

The person I thought about. In the end.

“I’m not fucking leaving you.” I cup her face and before she asks, I say it again. “I’m not fucking leaving you, Calloway. You’re stuck with me.”

She smiles into her tears. That smile. I pull her into my chest, hugging her carefully, unsure of her maladies. She’s just as careful of touching my leg.

I kiss her all over again. “I fucking love you. I’m not going anywhere.” I repeat it a couple more times, her tense joints beginning to loosen against me.

She combs a strand of my messy hair back, her smile toying with her lips, only briefly staying. I run my fingers down her spine, where her dreamcatcher tattoo is inked. I remember these moments I spent with her, and I just fucking think, we’re going to make more.

It’s not over. Not yet.

We keep examining each other, and I can tell that she’s seconds from lifting the blanket off my leg. And I’m a fucking heartbeat away from looking under her hospital gown.

Then a red paper flower flutters. Landing between us.

Distracting us, for at least another second.

“Rose bought me paper yesterday, when you were admitted,” Daisy explains softly. “The nurses asked if they could tack them to the ceiling this morning. I think they were worried I’d disappear beneath all of them.”

I have to fucking ask now. “What happened, Dais?”

“You first?” she says like a question.

I can’t fucking say it yet, and I’m too impatient and too concerned about her to wait. I sit up a little more, and she follows suit.

Before she protests, I lift the bottom of her hospital gown and see unfamiliar, oversized white underwear that reaches her belly button.

“I’m okay,” she repeats what she said earlier. “We’re okay.”

My jaw hardens and brows cinch. “We’re? You mean—”

Her lips part. “Ryke, you didn’t think that the baby…” Realization washes over her. “When I said everything was okay with me, I meant it.”

She used to always fucking say that when it wasn’t okay. “Then why the fuck are you in a hospital gown? And don’t sugarcoat it for me.”

She almost laughs, her gaze watery. “I thought you like when I go off on tangents. You’re missing out on a great tale about panda bears and pirates.”

“Fuck your panda bears and pirates.” My darkened fucking gaze only invigorates her smile. It brightens something deep inside of me, something that’s still fighting to stay alive.

I can’t hold onto the fact that the baby is okay when I’m not sure what’s wrong with her in the first place. I love Daisy too fucking much.

“I bled a lot,” she suddenly says. “I thought I miscarried and the doctor did too when I arrived.”

My stomach is in fucking knots, and I reach down, holding her hand. I wish I could’ve been there, hating that she dealt with this while I was in surgery while Sully—I tighten my eyes closed, shutting it out. For one more second, for fuck’s sake, one more second.

“It was a tiny hemorrhage, not fatal to the baby or me. Apparently some women can have them around ten to twelve weeks in, and I’ve been told to take it easy for the next fourteen days. The bleeding stopped this morning though, so it’s looking up, really. I feel better.”

It’s hard to be really fucking happy after everything, but I’m glad. I’m so fucking glad that we’re all here. All three of us.

I set my hand on the top of her head. “How much fucking sleep have you gotten?” She looks like hell. Her cheerfulness is also a little fucking fake so that I won’t worry about her, and she knows I can tell.

“It’s been hard these two days.” She rubs her cheeks and groans a little in frustration. “I can’t stop crying.” She looks up at me with a tortured gaze. “I thought you died.” Pain spikes her voice.

“I’m sorry—”

“No,” she says, “I really thought you died. GBA rushed to break the news about your accident, and they misheard their source. They announced, to the entire world, that you were dead, Ryke. And then other media outlets ran with it too.”

I rake a hand through my hair, digesting the gravity of this. What she must have felt because of GBA’s inability to take second place in a fucking war for ratings, for the first to break the story. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I almost yell, and then it slams against me. My brother. “Lo,” I breathe.

He thought I died too. They all did.

“Is he…?” I can’t even say it. I can’t even ask if he broke his sobriety. I can’t fathom a fucking world where that happens because I’m gone.

“He’s doing better. He’s been with Lily for the past two days. They haven’t left the hospital or each other, and Moffy has made him smile a lot.” At the mention of our nephew, Daisy starts crying again and presses the heels of her palms to her eyes. “I hate that I can’t stop.”

“I don’t,” I tell her. “It’s fucking human, Dais. People cry. I cry. It doesn’t make you pathetic or weak, alright?”

She drops her hands and sniffs. Then her eyes sweep me, as though making sure I’m really here, talking to her like this.

“I fucking hate that you thought I died.” If our positions were reversed, I’d be inconsolable. “Who was with you?”

“Lo.”

Fucking fantastic.

“And Connor,” she says.

I relax some, my hand still on her head. “So you haven’t slept in two fucking days, have you?”

“I’ve tried,” she breathes. “Does that count?”

“Not fucking really. Take a nap with me later?”

She nods repeatedly and I kiss her head again, then I mess her hair with a rough hand.

Her smile is gone before it really appears. “If it takes you days or months or even years to tell me what happened on that rock, I understand,” she says. “Or if you never share at all, that’s okay too.”

I nod, but I plan to share as much as I can right now. Which may be very fucking little. I just have to start speaking. First, I ask something important, “Is everyone still here?” She knows I mean my brother, Lily, Rose, Connor, and Willow. Maybe even Sam and Poppy.

“I texted them when you woke, and Rose told me that they all wanted to give us an hour alone before they bombard you. I can go get them now if you want.”

“Not yet.”

Where do I fucking start?

The beginning or the end?

I decide to focus on the easiest part. “I smashed my fucking leg into the wall.”

She listens keenly, but I take a long pause, enough that she picks up the slack. “I talked to the surgeon when you came out. Good news is that you’re a bionic man.”

“Fucking fantastic.” I uncover my right leg, casted from my foot to my thigh. You shattered your lower femur, I just barely remember the fucking doctor telling me before surgery, hardly conscious. And obviously, I broke

my leg.

“There’s an eight-inch plate in your femur with eleven screws,” she says. “Your tibia has a rod and some pins. Also good news, he said the femur broke low enough that it shouldn’t affect your hip, just your knee.”

I don’t ask about physical therapy or timeframes to walk, timeframes to gain my strength. I just don’t fucking care.

She must sense this because she doesn’t offer them.

“We almost made it to the fucking top,” I suddenly say, leaning back against the bed. “We almost made it.” My nose flares, and I take a deep, pained breath.

Daisy leans back too, her knees bent. I put my hand on her kneecap, feeling her scar beneath my palm. From tripping on the wet concrete at a community pool, diving lessons in third grade, she once told me.

I know every one of her scars.

How and when and why. I’ve told her every one of mine. Every memorable story, pieces of my history, I’ve given to my wife. The only one.

“It was a rock fall,” I say lowly. “He was hurt, badly, and we had to tandem rappel if he had any chance…” I fucking falter again, and she helps me out.

“You already hurt your leg by then?”

“Yeah. We started rappelling once the rocks stopped.” I squeeze her knee, one of them swinging back and forth like a pendulum. It’s weirdly fucking calming. “We were about a hundred feet before the ground…”

This part is so vivid.

I replay it over and over, the rope slipping through my hands as I try to brake.

My palms are red and raw now—nothing to fucking complain about. I have both hands still.

“I thought we decked,” I tell her, my eyes burning at the memory. “I thought we slipped off the end of the rope and we hit the fucking ground, falling a hundred feet. But my knot held.”

Like a miracle. Because that thing shouldn’t have supported that much weight. I was so fucking careless tying the end of the rope. I could barely even see straight.

“So you made it to the bottom before rescue arrived?” she asks.

I nod. “We made it to the bottom.” I dragged Sully away from the crag and then called Search and Rescue. “He was unconscious by then,” I say vaguely. “I tried to wake him up. I squirted water on him, tapped his face, screamed at the top of my fucking lungs…”