Mike was in an accident!
“Lyssa,” Caroline said gently. “Honey bee. Mike was on his way to the airport. He was coming here. To see you.”
Her words ricocheted around my skull. I had to put my tea back down on the coffee table. I pulled apart the letters of each word, like mental slime, and smushed them back together again and again, trying to make sense of them. Chase and Caroline let me be. When my functions came back online, I took a cab home and packed with record speed. I didn’t plan color stories or lay out options to evaluate combinations—I just threw stuff in my suitcase and zipped it.
Chase hired a car to take Caroline and I to JFK—he had to stay in New York, he had some ethics panel thing on Saturday—and by seven p.m. we were in the members’ lounge.
We’d been there an hour when I got the text.
Mike
NOT THE SURPRISE I HAD IN MIND, SORRY GIRL
My thumbs rapped my heartbeat across the screen.
How are you? Are you in pain?
NAHHHHH THEY PUT ME ONN THE GOOD STUFF
RIBS AREJUST GRILLZ FOR YOUR LUNGS ANYWY
Before I could respond, he messaged again.
DID DAD TELL CAROLINE THE GHUY WILL BE CHARGED? SHE SHOULD KNOW HE WILL B HCARTED. I DON’T WANT MT SIS TO CRY
My poor, high Mike.
Yes, he told her. Caroline and I are at JFK now, sweetheart. We’ll see you soon.
SWEETHEART. I LIKE THAT
The typing bubble was there for ages, and I genuinely worried he’d fallen into a coma. Eventually his message came through.
COME HOME TO ME
CHAPTER 29
WOODVILLE, AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND
LYSSA
The purple flowers along the edge of Mike’s driveway were overgrown. Heavy bloom clusters dripped from long stems and hung low over the path. I reached out and bobbed a few of them as we walked up to his door.
Chase had booked Caroline and I a room each at the Woodville hotel above the pub, and we’d stashed our bags there. It didn’t feel right to arrive at Mike’s house pulling my suitcase behind me. Even if I wanted to.
We’d slept on the plane, and Dean had collected us at the airport—he’d been here with Kev since the accident, although Hannah was home at their hotel with their dog. Caroline suggested that Dean’s main reason for being here was to avoid his hotel guests, a jibe Dean accepted good-naturedly because we all knew how worried he was about Mike.
The main road from the airport to Woodville had reopened, thankfully, and we drove it under the beaming sun. I didn’t think I would ever be able to travel on the alternate route that Mike had been on when the asshole who had been speeding nearly killed him. I fidgeted as we had coffee with Kevin, killing time until Mike woke up. After our last sips of espresso, Dean, Caroline, and I headed to Mike’s house on foot.
Each step up the concrete driveway felt like I’d stepped in this wet concrete after it had been poured, leaving a perfect imprint for my feet to find again now.
I found the key in the dead aloe vera plant by the door and let us all in.
Caroline went into his room first, and I lingered politely in the hallway. When I heard Mike’s voice through the door, raspy with sleep but still intimately familiar, my stomach flipped. Somehow, waiting two minutes for Caroline to be with her brother felt harder than waiting the whole eighteen-hour flight from America. But I did it. They were Hollidays and they needed each other. I listened to their murmurs, and what sounded like Caroline fussing and Mike cracking jokes.
“Where’s Lyssa?” the voice I craved rasped. “Didn’t she come with you?”
“She’s in the hall,” Caroline answered.
