Cinderella Steals Home (24 page)

    But I have to know if he's okay.

    "He's -- ?"

    "Fine. He's fine."

    I look up and over and here he is, standing in the door leaning up against the frame like he used to do in my bedroom.

    I can see a small scratch above his left eye but that's it. No bruises. No broken bones. No hospital bed. I look down at my own wrist in a cast and narrow my eyes.

    "Glad to see it," I say, the panic about him being okay fleeing and being replaced by a flooding sense of irritability.

    How the heck am I supposed to throw a baseball and play the guitar with my hand all wrapped up in this thing?

    "Yeah, I don't care about me," Doan says, taking a step into the room. "How are you?"

    "She's going to be okay," Dad answers for me. "Just a broken wrist. She's lucky."

    I don't miss the anger in his voice, and I can't say I'm surprised.

    But I don't really feel much of anything.

    The nurse walks in and ushers Dad, Justin and Doan out. She takes my vitals and talks to me about my wrist and says I can go home in the morning because they just want to make sure I'm not concussed or anything like that overnight.

    I'm not really listening. I want her to go away.

 
  And I want Doan to come back.

    But when the nurse leaves, it's just Dad and Justin who enter the room.

    "Visiting hours are almost over," Dad tells me, and my eyes widen.

    "Can you send Doan in? He didn't leave, did he?"

    Dad looks agitated, but he just nods and Justin walks out into the hall and then Doan is in my room.

    Dad and my brother make no move to go.

    "Can we have a minute?" I ask them pointedly.

    They look startled, but hurry out of the room, closing the door behind them.

    And then it's just me and him.

    "So," I say, sitting up in bed. "Hi."

    "Holly, I'm so sorry."

    "For what?" I ask.

    He furrows his brow. "For the accident. For landing you in here. I never meant to hurt you. I was driving too fast but I was so confused, I didn't know what I was doing. You know how I am but it's not -- "

    I hold up the broken wrist that I can't barely feel right now. "You think this is what hurt me?"

    He stops, mid-sentence. "What?"

    "You think I care about a stupid broken wrist? I mean, yeah, I'm gonna be pissed when I try to throw a baseball around, but God, Doan, if you think the accident is what you need to be apologizing for, then I really have no idea what I'm going to do with you."

   He sits down carefully on the end of my hospital bed.

    "Gemma's?" he finally asks.

    "Ya think?" I shoot back.

    "I'm sorry about that, too, Holly. I don't know why I did it but I just felt like -- I don't know. You were getting too close. I was getting too close. But it isn't your fault. I just freaked out."

    "About what? I don't get it."

    He throws his head back and rubs his face with his hands. "Dammit, Holly, you're not making this easy." He takes a deep breath. "I don't want this to go away. You and me, I mean."

    I stare at him. "Then you should have been there for me when you promised you would be."

    "Don't you think I know that?"

    "Then why weren't you?" It's all I can do to keep from raising my voice but I don't want to attract the attention of the nurses.

    "Because I don't let people get close to me. I can't do it."

    "Yeah, yeah, I've heard that before," I say, waving my hand. "It's an excuse and it's a lame one. Everyone wants to be happy, Doan, but too many people are scared to give up what makes them comfortable to make that happen. You're never going to be happy if you don't risk what you have now to to get where you want to be."

    "It's not that simple for me."

    I try not to roll my eyes. "Everyone always thinks they're the exception to this," I say. "But guess what? Everyone's been hurt before and everyone's going to have to get over it and try again if being happy is what they really want. No one is an exception here."

    "Holly, my brother
died
in a war zone," Doan says. "Don't you think that makes it a little harder for me to get close to people?"

    All of me freezes except for my stomach, which plummets straight to my toes.

    My mouth runs dry, I can't move, have I heard him right?

    "Wh-what?" I stammer out.

    "Why are you looking at me like that?" he asks, confusion clouding his eyes. "You know this."

    "You never told me," I say. "I'd remember something like that."

    "I just thought you heard," he says. "Everyone in town knows. I figured if Justin didn't tell you then Natalie definitely did."

    "No one wanted me to tell me the things they all thought I should hear from you," I say, starting to piece together how all of this blew up.

    He rubs his forehead. "But the things you said," he tells me, his voice growing softer. "You asked me if I miss him a lot. And all those things I told you about not having enough time with family. I just thought you knew what I was talking about."

    "Doan, I had no idea. None. I thought he was overseas. Deployed. Coming home soon."

    He shakes his head. "He'd still have his dog tags," he says quietly, and I watch as his fingers absently go to the chain hanging around his neck.

    "I didn't know. When did it happen?"

    "Almost six months ago," he says. "Actually, it was six months ago yesterday. I think I went a little crazy knowing that. He was coming home in two weeks. And they had a mission. It was going to be the last one his unit had to go out on during their deployment. He just had to get through one more."

    He stops talking and sucks in a deep breath, his arms wrapped around his knees when he continues.

    "But he didn't. Their Humvee hit an IED and that was it. Only two of the guys came home at all."

    "What was his name?"

    "James."

    "I'm so sorry, Doan."

    "It's just not right," he says looking up at me, and my heart's breaking again but for completely different reasons now. "It's not fair. James was such a good dude. Better than I'll ever be. Should've been me, you know? But I was too scared to enlist. Didn't want to give up the girls, the drinking, the parties. The freedom. Isn't that funny? I didn't want to give up the one thing my brother was willing to die for. James's dead all so I can go pick up chicks on a Friday at the bar."

    "Doan, I -- "

    He shakes his head. "Don't, Holly. There's nothing you can say, and nothing you want to say, anyway. Don't feel like you have to."

    "I don't feel that way," I tell him. "Not at all. But you know that not everyone is cut out to do the same thing. I know there are a million things Justin is willing to do that I'm not. When we were kids, he saved my life. I almost drowned in our pool and neither of us knew how to swim and he jumped in after me anyway and almost died. I know it isn't the same, but I don't know if I could have done what he did. And I wondered about that everyday for a really long time. I was the one who was drowning. I was the one who was supposed to die, not him. But he almost lost his life, anyway. Protecting me. Kind of like James, I guess."

    Doan's staring at me with the strangest of looks on his face.

    "What'd you do after that?" he asks.

    I shrug. "I was only ten so I don't really remember. But my parents say that I got really quiet for weeks and could barely look at Justin. And when I did talk, I was angry. Always yelling. Always looking for a reason to be mad."

    He stays quiet for a second. "I didn't start smoking until James died, you know. I mean, sure, we had some beers and cigarettes before he left, but it didn't really become a thing for me until then. Now I can't stop. I want to, but I can't."
 

    "And the car racing," I say, as I think about how I reacted to Justin saving me. "You do that because of the risk. Because it makes you feel like if something happens to you, you'll get what you think you deserve and that'll somehow make it all better."

    Doan looks down at his hands. "It sounds really stupid when you say it like that."

    I shrug. "Yeah. Kind of. Because acting like a moron and putting other people at risk isn't smart," I say, and he glances up at me with a small hint of the familiar smile I'm so used to seeing. "But that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense, either."

    He furrows his brow. "It doesn't, though."

    "Yeah, it does. You said it yourself. You think you should've died instead of your brother. So with the car racing and the smoking and the drinking and all that, you're just being more reckless because you think it should've been you. That isn't gonna help you, though, you know that, right?"

    "You sound like my mom," he tells me.

    "Smart lady," I say with a smile.

    "Yeah."

    "Doan, it isn't going to be good for anyone if you get hurt," I tell him. "You've gotta stop doing that stuff."

    "Why do you get me like this?" he blurts out. "No one does but you."

    I shrug. "Don't know, really. But I could say the same thing about you. You were the one who forced me back into a relationship with my dad, and that's been one of the best things to happen since I moved back here."

    "I'm sorry I left you last night," he says then. "It was dumb. I shouldn't have. It's just that I haven't let anyone in since James died, not the way I did with you. I always promised myself I wouldn't do that."

    "Well," I say. "If there's one thing I've learned it's that you're pretty good at breaking your promises."

    He looks up at me sharply and I offer him a small smile.

    "It was just a joke," I say quietly.

    "It isn't funny. I don't want to be like that."

    "Then change."

    "It isn't that easy."

    "Why not?"

    He doesn't say anything for a few seconds. "Are we over?" he asks me.

    "Doan, I don't even know what we are," I say.

    "I don't want us to be done," he tells me with such certainty that I have no choice but to believe him.

    "You hurt me last night," I say. "That sucked. I was so excited to get up on that stage and know you were there and finally do this thing I've always wanted to do. And you let me down."

    "I know," he says. "And I'm -- "

   "You told me," I cut in. "You're sorry. And you explained yourself. With a better excuse than I thought you'd have, by the way. But dammit, how do I know this won't happen again?"

   "You don't. There are no guarantees," he says. "And maybe there aren't any promises, either. But we have faith and we can have trust."

    "Trust in what?"

    "What we have. I've never opened myself up to someone the way I have with you. I know I should've told you about James, but I don't talk about him. I've never talked about him more than I have right now," he says. "People out here just knew what happened because they were around when he died. It was never from me."

    I think about what he's saying, and I know it's true. I know that from the moment I blurted out to him at the pizza parlor that I might not go to college and the way he understood when I told him about my family that there was something special about Doan Riley and me.

    And I'm pretty sure that hasn't gone anywhere.

    "I can't promise you that we'll always have this, and I won't. But right now, there's nothing I want more than to be with you. And I can't see that changing."

    I fold my hands in front of my lips and stare at him.

    With one quick movement, I'm in his arms, and he's wrapping himself around me, his hands stroking my hair and I press my lips against his, and he kisses me back, and I know everything he said is true.

    I try to disguise the pounding of my heart against my chest, but it's no use. I can't resist this, can't resist him.

    And I haven't been able to since the day I met him.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Six weeks later, I'm finally sitting on the bar stool at Gemma's, the red and blue spotlights shining down on me.

The cast is off my wrist, and it's healed enough so that it doesn't hurt to hold my guitar.

It rests on my lap, song notebook open on the music stand in front of me. I'm wearing the ASU shirt Dad bought me after I told him I'd be enrolling at the school in the fall.
 

Natalie and Justin and Shane and Dad and Tanya are all in the audience.
 

So is Doan.

Everyone I want to see me play for the first time, with the exception of my mom and the count, is here.

And I can't imagine anything more perfect.
 

The lights dim, and that's my cue to start.
 

I strum the first chord, then the second and the third, and before I know it, I'm hardly thinking about what I'm doing at all as I start to sing:
 

"
I thought you left me to fall
 

But maybe I know nothing at all
 

Baby you've got me where you want me
 

And I'm not going anywhere
 

I won't make you a promise
 

Nothing is guaranteed
 

But if you can trust in us
 

Maybe you'll see
 

There's no way to know
 

If you don't put it out there
 

Show me you're the one who cares
 

And let me steal us a new home."
 

The rest of the words tumble out of me like I'm on autopilot and I don't even realize I've finished singing my latest song until cheers and claps and whistles startle me from my daze.
 

When I look up, Doan's on his feet and I'm pretty sure he's blushing.
 

Which he should be, since he's obviously the inspiration here.