By himself, the years hadn’t seemed to matter so much. But back here, he could see just how essential each and every one had been. Now that it was too late.
“Why doesn’t she think you should go to the hospital?”
“Probably because me being around is still a little bit of a problem. Colton is mad because I’m the one that Dad put in charge of managing his affairs if he ever became an invalid or died. I think that pisses him off because he was here being the good son, and I was off doing God knows what. That’s fair enough. Except, I don’t actually think he wants a front-row seat to all of this. But, I don’t blame them for not trusting me.” He looked at her, at the woman he had just slept with. The woman whose virginity he had just taken. She looked rumpled, warm and soft, and a hell of a lot more tempting than the problems that were laid out in front of him.
The prospect of taking Rebecca back to bed was much more appealing than walking through this field of emotions that he had a feeling was full of a hell of a lot more burrs than wildflowers.
“At a certain point you’re going to have to start going,” she said, her tone maddeningly matter-of-fact. As if this weren’t a complicated issue.
“No,” he said, “I don’t. I’m not going to stay in town. Nobody wants me to. Come to that, I don’t think I want to.”
“Plenty of people live out of town and still stay in touch with their families. Do you honestly think that coming back for a few months and laying out ultimatums and commands is going to heal a rift? I mean, that’s what you’ve been doing with me. Burst in and tell me how it’s going to be, then expect me to thank you for it.”
“You didn’t mind being told what to do a few minutes ago,” he said.
He couldn’t read her expression in the darkness. But, he had a feeling that it wasn’t a pleasant one. He was comfortable with that, though. Comfortable with her being angry with him. More comfortable with sex than he was with the complicated feelings surrounding his family, and his sister giving birth.
“How old was she when you left?” He hadn’t expected that.
“Six,” he replied.
He remembered her clearly. An impish little girl with wide blue eyes and almost white blond hair. And of course, he’d been a teenager, so he had found her mostly boring. He’d been so wrapped up in his own life, a life that he had been convinced the universe revolved around. What else mattered except for his own comfort? His own happiness?
He had never, not once, considered that his actions might affect other people. He had never particularly cared. The entire world—in his mind—had existed to bring him happiness.
He wished he would have cared about her then. When it would have mattered. It was all a little bit too late now.
“That must be hard,” she said, speaking slowly, as though it were foreign to her to say something comforting.
“Yeah,” he said, bracing himself on the window, staring out into the blackness beyond his front yard. “You could say that.”
“Let’s go.”
“Where?” he asked, turning slightly to face her.
“To the hospital. I’m driving you. No matter what Madison says, if you don’t go, they’re going to hold that over you. Better to go and have them be unfriendly jackasses when you get there.”
“You care whether or not they’re mad at me?”
She shrugged one bare shoulder, then moved across the room, fishing around for her clothes.
“Now suddenly you don’t have a comment?” he asked.
“I don’t know why I care,” she said, straightening, pulling her dress over her head. “Maybe because there’s no chance ever that I’m going to make up with my mom? Maybe because I never even knew my dad, and also maybe because my brother is one of the most important people in the world to me? Maybe it’s just the fact that your family is right there, and you could fix it. But you aren’t.”
“Our situations aren’t that easy to compare,” he said.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“You have a lot of maybes.”
She growled. “I’m sorry, I’m fresh out of certainty. I just did about the craziest thing I can think of with the last person on earth I ever should have done it with. You want certainty? You should damn well be at the hospital with your little sister. No matter what. Even