Camden by Shey Stahl
It’s the longest two hours of my life. Watching River loaded unconscious in the back of an ambulance in a foreign land, that’s unbearable.
Nothing touches that kind of waiting.
Now here I sit, florescent lights flickering above me, next to a woman who’s wearing a bunch of fabrics draped over her body in what looks to be a dress, but I can’t recall the name of it. She’s also barefoot next to a man with no shirt and my signature across his back. The waiting room reeks of piss and there’s more holes in the walls here than the den in the Sawyer mansion when Roan and Tiller fight.
But there I sit, a haze of chaos in my head, going over and over the crash. The way she landed, the way her leg twisted, her head hitting the handlebars, to the gruesome way blood poured from inside her helmet.
I shake my head, try not to think about it and tell myself she’s fine. She has to be.
Is that the truth? Is that reality for me now?
Tears sting my eyes. I can’t… she has to be okay. She fucking has to be.
Shade sits next to me, Tiller across from him, glaring at me. “What?” I finally ask him, tired of him being an asshole. “Why the fuck are you glaring at me?”
His scowl deepens, his dark eyes intent on mine. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“Me?” I lean forward, my elbows on my knees. “I didn’t do it.”
“You didn’t stop her,” he points out.
“Neither did you,” I snap back, tired of this bullshit with him where he expects me to stop her from doing harm. Two years ago, she broke four ribs at a jump show in Seattle. He blamed me. I wasn’t even there. When she was twelve and did her first backflip, she landed it but fractured her ankle in the process. I carried her a mile back to the house and he blamed me for letting her do it. I’m never good enough in his eyes. Never enough to save her from herself.
But he’s her father. That responsibility should be on him, not me.
I stand up, at the same time he does and though he has a few inches on me, I square my shoulders. “I’m not in the mood for your psycho bullshit tonight.”
“Neither am I.” He gets in my face at the same time Roan does.
“All right, that’s enough,” Roan growls, his hand on Tiller’s chest and mine. “Now is not the time for this.”
Amberly is the next one beside us, the doctors with her, and they take off with Tiller down the hall. I’m left in the waiting room by myself because what am I? Technically not family. Hell, I can’t even call myself a friend now, can I?
Just about the time I’m ready to break the doors down and go find out for myself if she’s okay, Scarlet comes from down the hall.
“How is she?” I ask rushing toward her. She pulls me closer, down a hall to our left and away from the waiting room.
“She broke her leg,” Scarlet says, her face just as pale as it’d been when they loaded River into the ambulance. “No head or neck injury,” she adds.
Relief washes through me. “Is she awake?”
“Yes. Just a concussion and a cut on her face. I think from the handlebars.”
“Did they do a CT?” My heart feels like it’s going to explode in my chest. “It looked gnarly on the replay.”
“They did.”
I nod, running my hand through my hair and blowing out a breath. I lean back against the wall, my entire body trembling. “Fuck, Scarlet. That looked so bad. I can’t believe she’s okay.”
“Yeah, me either. It’s crazy.” And then she eyes me, carefully.
“What?”
“There’s more….”
Panic rises inside me. “What?”
Searching the hall, Scarlet yanks me toward her, raising up on her tippy toes to whisper in my ear. “She’s pregnant.”
Did I hear that right? She said that, didn’t she? No, she couldn’t have.
Not River. No fucking way.
