11
“It is better to love wisely, no doubt: but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.”-Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Madison
We’d been in the hospital for forty-five minutes. Tammy was taken into a room with some doctors and a couple of nurses. They’d told us that she was breathing, assured us she was fine but that she had severe alcohol poisoning, they’d need to pump her stomach if she had any hope of a full recovery.
Kyler was making me nervous. He’d been pacing up and down the hallway, his fingers sliding through his dark, messy hair constantly. He wasn’t brooding, then angry or swearing, he wasn’t like his normal prideful and cruel self, he actually was genuinely scared. Rattled, at least.
“Kyler, she’s going to be fine. They told us that much.”
Kyler turned to me, his eyes haunted; the regular steel in his blue irises had vanished, replaced with darkly etched sorrow. I stood from my chair and walked to him, recognizing that he needed some sort of comfort. The only problem was that I wasn’t sure what to do. Normally in situations like this, I would’ve offered a hug or a cup of coffee or just sat silently holding the other person’s hand while we waited for news. But with Kyler, all those things just seemed ridiculous. He wasn’t the kind of guy that one would think would need anything, at least nothing that I could offer.
“It’s only been a couple of hours. How the hell did something like this happen in a couple of hours? Where were you? I thought you’d be stuck by her side for the whole night.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer his questions.
“I was with her for the first hour, but then she told me she was going to get a drink and didn’t come back. I waited. I guess I waited too long. Maybe I should’ve gone to find her, but that room felt overwhelming to me. She said she was going to be right back.”
Kyler looked at me. There was a pause before he spoke again and that brief pause worried me, but then what came out of his mouth was so completely unlike him, it actually sounded...reasonable.
“None of this is your fault. I just wanna know what happened. Tammy has been hanging out with a rough crowd lately and those parties are right up their alley. I always thought she knew better, I thought she knew her limits. She’s always had her shit together. I should’ve fucking done something, forced her to stay home, acted like a fucking big brother. But I was too busy with my own shit, too busy being angry at the fucking world.” He looked at me and I could swear that his eyes had begun to pool with tears, but just as quickly as they appeared, they vanished. He quickly turned away from me and started pacing once again, his motorcycle boots making a stomping sound against the tile floor of the hospital. Right then and there, I decided that there was more to Kyler Sinclair than I’d thought.
Even though Kyler was a little scary, and had shown me nothing but cruelty, I still wanted to show him kindness while his sister was still in a hospital bed. I placed my hand gently on his shoulder and Kyler turned around so quickly that I wasn’t even sure if it was humanly possible.
“What part of don’t fucking touch me don’t you understand?”
I moved my hand from him as if he’d dipped it in acid. His words actually stung--they made me feel bad, and worst of all, they made me feel ugly. Maybe he had a thing with only certain girls touching him and I just wasn’t attractive enough or rich enough. Normally, some sort of smart-mouthed answer would have been on my lips to cover up the fact that his words hurt so much, but right now I knew wasn’t the time. Right now we just need to be worried about Tamlin.
“I’m...I’m sorry. It won’t happen again,” I whispered, turning away and sitting down. When I did, he shocked me by sitting beside me, hanging his head and supporting it with his hands. His feet began tapping in a nervous pattern, his thumb moving up and down along the arch of his eyebrow in a soothing rhythm.
“I’m sorry. I just have issues with people touching me.”
“How is that possible?” I asked, gesturing to his arms. “I mean, you have all those tattoos.”
He laughed, turning to look at me then. His laugh was so beautiful; the unguarded smile nearly stole the oxygen from my lungs.
“Nothing about me makes sense, Maddy.” His gaze locked with mine. I couldn’t help noticing that his eyes looked so much more vibrant. Like the bluest sky on a warm summer’s day. “I know what to expect with the tats. A needle plunges into my skin and I disconnect.” He rubbed the back of his neck, making his arm muscles bulge and showing off more of the intricate art wrapping his sinewy muscles. “You have any tats?” He raised his left eyebrow into a perfect, pointed arch.
“Me?” I asked, shocked by his question. “Ummm, no.”
A sinfully slow smile spread across his lips and his eyes took me in as if I was a perfectly grilled steak. That look was so heated, something I’d never seen from him before, that I felt the blush creep up my cheeks, desperately forcing me to look away.
“Too bad,” he said. “You’d look pretty hot with one.”
Hot. Did Kyler Sinclair just say I would look hot? As in attractive?
“You’re also pretty cute when you blush,” he chuckled.
This time I did look away, my warm pink blush now a flaming red. I must’ve looked like a fully cooked lobster. I tried to hide my face behind my hair, letting the strands fall down like a
