“People don’t go to hospitals for scrapes, Jacoby.”
“Yeah, you can blame my sister for bringing me. I didn’t want to come. I would’ve been happy to rub some dirt on it and call it a day.”
The nurse came in as I laughed and shook my head. She handed him a few papers, went through the aftercare directions, and then recited the normal “if it gets worse” speech that all doctors tell you. He was free to go.
Except I had no idea how this worked.
I assumed they’d escort him out in a wheelchair like they did in movies, but they didn’t. In fact, they didn’t even help him out of the room. They gave him some papers and left, leaving him—the patient—to walk himself out. Didn’t they know he was injured?
Then Jacoby stood and limped into the hallway, waiting for me to follow. But I was too shocked to move. This man was literally limping out of the hospital. I was appalled at their lack of bedside manner. “Shouldn’t we get you a wheelchair? Or at the very least, crutches?”
His laughter surrounded me, finally easing the tension that had choked me since Jessa answered his phone. “Like I said, it’s just a scrape. They gave me a few stitches, that’s it. I’ll be back to normal in a day or so.”
“Fine, but I refuse to let you hobble out of this place.” I slid around to his right side and wrapped my arm around his waist. “Lean on me, babe…I’ll be your crutch.”
With a giant grin plastered on his sun-kissed face, he draped his arm over my shoulder and let me lead the way. I wasn’t a short woman, but standing next to Jacoby made me feel small, especially when he laced his fingers with mine and held my hand. I’d always wanted to do that, but I’d never dated anyone tall enough.
The hop in my step, the smile on my face, and the excitement fluttering in my belly all changed the second we walked through the automatic doors. A guy, whom I recognized as a crewmember for the show, stood next to a large, concrete column, a camcorder propped on his shoulder. He didn’t say anything, just stood there and filmed us as we exited the hospital.
Ignoring him, I stared ahead, focusing on Jessa’s car idling along the curb. But one quick glance beyond that made my heart come to a screeching halt. There were several people in the parking lot heading our way. They were walking quickly, all aiming long lenses right at us as they snapped photo after photo.
I must’ve noticed before Jacoby, because it took him a second to mutter, “Oh, shit.”
Jessa, now aware of the paparazzi coming toward us, helped me get her brother in the back of her car. He hissed and gasped a few times, but even if he hadn’t done that, his pain was evident on his face. I couldn’t bear to make things worse for him, so I ran around the car to get in on the other side while Jessa finished getting him in and closing the door. It took several more seconds for her to settle into the driver’s seat and put the car in gear.
They couldn’t have gotten much, but it was enough to make Jacoby shut down.
And there wasn’t anything I could do to fix it.
18
Jacoby
I couldn’t get out of bed, and it had nothing to do with my leg.
My worst fears had come true. My face was plastered on article after article online. Granted, everything that had been written so far was mere speculation, no hard facts or anything personally damaging. But it was only a matter of time before it went beyond that.
“You can’t ignore her forever,” Jessa lectured from my bedroom door.
I wanted to tell her to leave, except I didn’t have the right to kick my sister out of her own pool house. That would only get me kicked out. “Stop making it sound as if I’m acting like a child, pouting in the corner and ignoring the neighbor girl who has a crush on me.”
“Stop acting like that, and I’ll stop pointing it out.”
There weren’t many times that Jessa made me angry, but this was definitely one of those times. “Maybe if the gossip columns were discussing you, then you might feel a little differently about this. Until then, you don’t get to tell me how to feel.”
She dropped her head back and huffed heavily. “Whatever, Coby…but one day, you’ll wake up and realize that you pushed away someone special for reasons that were out of her control. You’re literally blaming this whole mess on her, as if she’s the one who alerted the press.”
“If you look at it, then you’ll see that it is her fault. She’s the one who came to the hospital, a public place, knowing full well that people would see us. She should’ve known that was going to happen.”
“Tasha was really worried about you,” she admitted somberly. “She went to the hospital because she needed to see for herself that you were all right. And you can’t fault her for that. If anyone understands the importance of seeing someone you care about with your own two eyes to ease your fears, it should be you. Yet here you are, treating someone who genuinely cares about you like she purposely betrayed you.”
Jessa had a way of throwing our past in my face anytime she felt like I needed to be put in my place. But she’d gone too far by referring to the time she had to stay at a children’s psychiatric facility for evaluation. Our lives had just been publicly destroyed for the entire world to see. Not only did we lose both of our parents, but we were forced to stay with our grandparents, whom we’d never met. Jessa was all I had. I was petrified when she was sent away to that clinic,
