Am I willing to give him another chance?
Am I willing to risk my heart being broken all over again by putting my trust in him?
Is he worth it?
Yes.
Uncle Jack lets me cut my shift short to go and see Kyle. The sun is out, it’s unusually warm out for this time of year. As I head for the subway, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out. Three missed calls from Kyle in the space of five minutes.
My heart lurches.
I answer. “Kyle?”
I can hear him breathing deeply through the other end. Something’s wrong. I stop in my tracks, clutching my phone tighter.
“Kyle, are you okay? Can you hear me?”
“Hayley?” His voice is strained. “I need you.”
∞∞∞
I race through the doors of the hospital, stopping at the reception desk.
“May I help you?” the lady behind the desk asks.
“Luke King, he was brought in not long ago,” I reply.
“Are you family, miss?”
“I-”
“Hayley.” I whirl around to find Kyle striding towards me, his face ashen, his eyes bloodshot.
I rush towards him. “What happened?” I take his hands in mine.
He shakes his head. “All we know he was in a car accident, heading down the freeway and somehow he lost control of the car.”
“Oh my God, have they said anything, how is he?” I ask.
A tear falls down his face. “He’s in surgery, right now. I can’t lose him, Hayley, I can’t.”
“You won’t. He’s going to pull through.” I squeeze his hands tighter.
He nods sorrowfully.
We make our way over to Kyle’s parents who are sat in the waiting room, Nathaniel sits with his arm clamped tightly around his wife’s shoulders, clutching her to him. They both look up as we approach, Ellen’s eyes are red and puffy from crying, her husband’s face, pale, his knee bouncing anxiously.
“Hayley.” Ellen breathes out.
“Hi.”
“Thank you for being here, it means a lot.” Nathaniel gives me a faint smile.
“Of course.”
Kyle turns to me. “Thanks for coming, after everything, I’m sorry I bothered you, I know you asked for time-”
“Of course I came, I still care about your family and about you.”
“Are you the family of Mr King?”
The four of us turn to see a doctor dressed in his scrubs stood in front of us, pulling his mask away from his face.
“How is my son?” Nathaniel asks.
The doctor’s gaze falls to the ground, and sighs deeply. “We did everything we could, we were able to stop some of the internal bleeding, but unfortunately his injuries were too severe, we were unable to save him. I’m very sorry.”
All of the air leaves my lungs.
Ellen wails, turning her head into her husband’s chest as she sobs.
“No. No he can’t be dead,” Kyle protests, his voice trembles.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” the doctor adds.
“No.” His voice barely a whisper. He collapses on the ground, his knees hitting the ground hard. His face falls into his hands and his shoulders begin to shake as a cry rips through him.
I sink to my knees and wrap my arms around Kyle, clutching him to me tightly, tears of my own trickle down my cheeks. His arms wind around my waist, hugging my body to his as he buries his face in my neck and sobs.
Chapter 43
Kyle
I fucking hate funerals.
Not just for the obvious reason of burying someone you love and the gut crippling grief that comes with it, but the fact that I’m surrounded by almost two hundred people, and I can count roughly twenty people I actually recognise.
The other one hundred and eighty people, fuck knows who they are.
That’s what I hate about funerals, people showing up that you have no idea who the hell they are and what they meant to the person that is being lowered into the hole in the ground. They’re probably just people my brother passed on the street and claimed to know him.
‘I knew Luke King, I saw him at a party one time five years ago,’ is what they’d probably say if I asked. No, you didn’t know him, so why the fuck are you here? ‘He was the guy I fucked while I was totally shitfaced at my birthday party when I was eighteen.’ Good for you. What gives you the right to be here, pretending to have known him while surrounded by people who are actually grieving?
It’s fake. All. Fucking. Fake.
The way I see it, the only people that should be here are people who actually loved him, people that he cared about.
Hayley’s hand squeezes mine comfortingly as she stands beside me, before releasing it as she and Gwen make their way forward, dropping a rose onto Luke’s coffin. She returns by my side, placing her hand back in mine, she glances up at me, tears in her eyes, offering me a warm, reassuring smile.
The past week has been torture, if it hadn’t been for the girl that I’m currently clutching to, I’m sure I’d be in the same place my brother is now. I’ve barely left my apartment, wanting to barricade myself inside, closing myself off from the world in an attempt to block it out, in an attempt to pretend that my brother isn’t actually dead.
He can’t be. He was so young, so alive.
How can someone so full of life have it ripped away from him so easily?
It’s fucking with my mind.
It shouldn’t be him in that box that’s now being covered over, it should be me.
Luke didn’t deserve this end, he deserved everything that life had to offer.
If I could switch places with him right now, I would, so long as it meant he was still here, still living, still breathing.
The past week I’ve feel like I’ve been drowning, my chest tight, struggling to find my breath. Once again, I turned to the sweet relief that alcohol had to offer, but Hayley was there to stop me, God knows why, hell, after what I’ve done, she should be handing me another bottle telling me to have at it. Instead, she’s been by my side
