Falling For Seconds

Chapter Sixteen

"What the hell happened?"
Levi burst through the door. I turned to look at him, tears falling down my cheeks at the fact he was the only other person to show up. At the sight of him, my anger pricked at my fingertips.
"What happened? You should know what the hell happened!" I wiped my nose on my shirt sleeve and glared up at him.
"It's not my fault Dale is hurt, Hadley. You know damn well that I had nothing to do with this, so don't even try to blame me!"
His voice was stern as he pointed his index finger this way and that. I knew it wasn't his fault, but at the moment, he was the only person I could blame.
  I was tired of blaming myself and constantly thinking, "if I were the one in the bookstore instead of in the storage room, I would be the one in the OR, and Dale would be the one sitting in this uncomfortable, white chair."
My mother and father would sit in the chairs to the right of my hospital bed with Greyson standing behind my mother, his hand on her shoulder for comfort. Levi wouldn't have shown up because if he had, he would've had to explain what he was to me. Greyson would end up in the bed next to me for trying to fight Levi after he found out I had been unfaithful for over three months.
"I know it's a lot to take in, but everything is going to be all right, I swear." Levi's words weren't soothing as he took a step toward me, draping his arm over my shoulders and giving them a light squeeze. I shrugged it off and stared at the tile beneath me.
  "How did you know where we were?" I questioned.
"It's a big city, but it's not that big."
"In other words, your brother told you." I didn't need to see his face to know he nodded. Why did everything always have to come full circle?
"I was at work when..."
"Do you remember when you told me on my mattress that I know a lot more about you than most people?" My eyes met his; they were a pale yellow. Something had stolen the spark from them. He nodded again.
"I don't know anything about you if you think about it."
"What does this have to do with anything?"
I pushed a finger against my lips, silencing him without touching him. "Think about it...I don't know where you work. I don't know anything about your family. I don't know why you and my boyfriend hate each other. I don't know anything of meaning other than the fact that you dealt drugs to get out of student debt, which doesn't even seem like a legit reason to sell drugs in the first place."
"I fail to see the relevance."
"What I'm saying is that through these three months, I've been beaten and bruised and lying for a guy I don't even know."
There was a long silence as he looked between my eyes, trying to understand the point. He wasn't going to understand, no matter if I spelled it out in front of him, so I changed the subject.
"I'm going to tell the police," I spoke carefully, making sure he heard every word.
Levi placed his hands tightly on my arms. He was directly in front of me, making it difficult to look anywhere else. His eyes were hard to read, and his lips sat in a hard line across his face. His whole demeanor changed in a matter of seconds.
"You can't go to the police. Promise me you won't go to the police." He stated sternly, and my brow furrowed.
  "Levi, do you not realize they probably killed the old man in the operating room? They've harassed me on several occasions! I have every right to!"
Levi's head dropped at my words, and he lightly shook it back and forth. "If they go to jail, I go too."
My mouth gaped at the statement. "I don't know what this is," I start, stepping back from Levi's grasp. "...maybe some brotherly bond or some shit, but it's ridiculous. You may be blood-related, but you can't take the fall for his sins. That's not how it works; you know that, right?"
He exhaled a little too loudly, causing a couple sitting in the far corner to look up from their magazines(they were most likely eavesdropping anyway). Still, I mouthed an apology before returning my attention to the troubled man in front of me. I was bewildered.
His eyes found mine for a second before focusing on something at his feet. I couldn't tell if he was trying to find the words to say that was the deal they made or if it was something different entirely.
His hands once again found my arms, like if he weren't holding onto me, I would disappear.
"If you tell the police about them, they will tell the police about me. Hadley, I'm just as bad as them. If you send one of them, you send me too. Don't you remember those rumors that girl you worked with told you?"
I took another step back and covered my ears, but he followed me, uncovering them as fast as I had covered them.
"No, I don't want to hear this."
"You want to know me? You want to know the real me...?"
"No, I don't," I begged.
He looked around at the other people in the waiting room before continuing. "I have killed people. I dealt drugs too, but you already knew that. You need to know I'm just as bad as them. You deserve to know, and I'm sorry I lied."
Another round of tears pooled in my eyes. I was terrified but not of the situation that had presented itself hours before, but of the boy standing in front of me. Is this what Elizabeth had meant when she wanted me to wait it out? I wanted to thank her.
I couldn't think straight, and the only thing looping in my mind was how Levi, the guy who'd been so gentle to me, could kill someone. My stomach churned. I needed to find a bathroom or a trashcan fast.
"Hadley, don't leave. Dale needs you. You need to stay for him." Like reading my thoughts, he spoke. My eyebrows knitted together.
"Me? Leave? If anyone is leaving, it should be you." But then I shook my head. I couldn't think straight. I raised my hands to stop whatever was going through his head and ran down the hall. My fingers wrapped around thin, transparent plastic covering a tiny, grey bin as I hurled. My body was scrunching and convulsed over and over.
Finally, I sat on the floor, pushing the bucket of vomit to my left. "How many people did you kill?" I looked up at the man I thought I loved and wiped my mouth with my shirt sleeve.
"Two." He answers, and I vomit.
"Why?"
"Drug deal gone wrong? I don't want to get into it. I don't like reliving it. It happened; that's all you need to know." I took in a sharp breath at the realization that he was like them.
I vomit again. Tears in my eyes, completely out of breath, I focus on the coolness of the tile and how it's slowly freezing my buttcheeks and progressing upwards. Maybe if I sat on the floor long enough, my body would entirely freeze over, and I wouldn't have to feel this pain anymore.
I took a seat in the same uncomfortable chair I had been in when He first entered and let my head fall into my hands. Levi didn't say anything, just stood there while I took in all the new information. "How is that all I need to know? Don't I deserve more?"
How could he have made me feel completely safe and happy when his brother makes me feel terrified if they were the same? How could I have thought he was different?
I couldn't believe I was sitting in this hospital waiting to hear about my boss, who was fighting for his life. If you had asked me six months earlier what I would be doing now, I wouldn't have said this. I wouldn't have ever expected my life to be like this.
Who knew I would get wrapped up in all of this just because I asked a boy to help me study for a test. I thought back through the past and replayed everything he had enabled me to do.
I was finally able to drop out of college and get out from under my parent's persuasion. Though I lived in a small apartment above the bookstore, I was happier than I had ever been. What was so wrong then? If I was happy, why did I feel like everything was falling apart? Because it is, dumbass.
I had to give props to my subconscious for never losing her sense of humor in all of this. I wish I could be more like her. I shook my head. What was it that Dale had said earlier today? Pros and cons? If he wanted to change? At least he was getting all his skeletons out now, right?
I needed to calm down. I needed to take a deep breath and realize that what Levi told me had changed nothing. He was still the same guy who had promised to keep me safe. He was the man that loved sarcasm and was quick to make a suggestive remark at me. He hadn't ever laid a hand on me. He had never hurt me.
I felt my pulse slow and my breathing level. This changed nothing, I repeated. This changed nothing. What he'd done in the past was just that...in the past.
"I'm sorry you had to find out like that. I should've told you from the very beginning. I was just scared of how it would change your view of me. I should've been honest, but I loved being around you. I couldn't stop seeing you. But now I understand that I was in the wrong, and I need to go."
I had just snapped out of my trance, and my heart jolted back to its elevated rate. Levi's pace was quick. I bound down the hallway after him.
"Levi!" I yelled down the hospital hallway, but he didn't stop or slow down. His strides were miles longer than mine, causing me to practically sprint to catch up to him. What had I done? Why had I pushed him so hard?
"Levi, please!" and this time, he slowed down, but only long enough to open the door to the outside world. I followed suit, pulling the heavy glass door open and stepping out into the darkness.
The red 'Main Entrance' neon sign hung high above my head. The hospital was full of people walking in and out. Some bring their sick children to the emergency room; others visit relatives. In the midst of all that, I was standing in the cold night with only a long sleeve shirt and jeans to cover my body, all in hopes of reconciling with the boy who'd taken my heart.
"Levi, you could have killed a million people or been on hundreds of drug deals, but that wouldn't change anything about how I feel for you." I started. He turned around quickly and balled his hands into a fist. "And how do you feel about me, huh?"
"I..." I bit at my bottom lip, making damn sure what I was going to say was the truth. "I...I love you."
I had said all I could say. My feelings were laying on the ground ready for him to do whatever he wanted with them. Instead of being serious or saying those three words back, he laughed and shook his head. "You think you love me, but you're just infatuated with the adrenaline rush you get when you're with me."
I wanted to close the space between us and convince him that his assumptions were wrong, that I had been an idiot to react in that manner, but my body didn't move.
"You can't love a guy like me just as I can't be with a girl like you." His words cut like knives at my chest and I believed that if he kept going, I was going to be in the bed next to Dale.
"That's not true. I was stupid to say that. Please don't leave me here alone, Levi. I don't know if I can do this without you."
Like he hadn't heard what I'd said, he continued with his rant. "I thought that I could pretend that I wasn't the person I am. I tried to hide the fact that I am just like my brother. I thought that if I didn't say it out loud it wouldn't be true. The truth is, I'm just like my brother and nothing I do is going to change that. Being with you isn't going to change the fact that I've killed two people. Getting to know you isn't going to help my problem. So just go back to Dale, Hadley. He needs you more than I do."
He shoved both hands in the pockets of his jeans before turning on his heels away from me. Tears traveled from my eyes and down my cheeks, but I didn't bother to wipe them away this time. "You don't understand." I stage whispered, but he didn't bother to retort. I watched his silhouette fade into the darkness of the night and suddenly I wished there had been a bullet in the gun he'd aimed at my head a few weeks back.
I stood at the front of the hospital, completely alone. I wanted to collapse and just give up, but I knew I had to be strong for Dale. I had to be strong for him because if I wasn't who would be? I wiped at my eyes with my shirt sleeve before turning and heading back inside, drained and defeated. What I thought was going to go so well, spun around and bit me in the ass.
I walked too slowly back to the waiting room, replaying everything in my head. I then understood why Levi felt how he did about us.
When we first met, he told me it was fate to see a pretty girl twice. I told him that it would only happen in his dreams because girls like me didn't end up with guys like him. He was cocky then, but I had genuinely hurt him. I understood that now. Of all the sides I'd seen of him, I had yet to see his heart or what he felt for me. I thought I knew how he felt but, oh, was I ever wrong.
I slouched into the same white chair with the peeling armrest and laid my head against the wall. I was cold, tear-soaked, and completely out of hope. I didn't want to be here when the doctors came out to tell me what the verdict was. I didn't want to be here alone.
All I wanted was someone to wrap their arms around me and tell me they weren't going to leave. What had I done? The single phrase played on repeat in my head. I had pushed Levi away. I had almost killed my non-relative grandfather. I had ruined a perfectly good thing with my high school boyfriend.
At some point, I had to run out of tears as much as I had cried in the past 24 hours, but here they were just rolling down my cheeks and neck. If I could go back, the only thing I would change is the conversation I had with Levi.
I was stupid to blame him. Of course, he already blamed himself for what happened to me—twice— but now he had to live with the fact that his decisions had almost killed another person too. He was dealing with so much and I threw it all in his face. How foolish of me.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and searched the contacts for someone I could call that would be up at 2:30 am on a Friday. My thumb hovered over Greyson's name, but quickly I scrolled past. Then I found Levi's and I knew he wouldn't answer but clicked the 'call' button anyway.
The phone rang five times before going to voicemail. "I just wanted to let you know that I am sorry for what I said. I realize now that you are already going through a lot and how I reacted was out of line. I know we're done, but I needed to tell you that. I thought you also deserved to know that you aren't like your brother, in the slightest. You are different and free to make your own decisions, don't limit yourself..."
"Miss. Hadley?" A soft voice came from the calm of the waiting room. I quickly ended the call and looked up. A woman with light blue scrubs on was walking cautiously toward me. "I understand that you are Mr. Whittaker's granddaughter?" She asks me and I nod.
It was the only way that I was going to learn anything about Dale's whereabouts or how he was doing. The woman looked down to the floor before directing her eyes at me. "I'm very sorry to say, but the wounds were too extensive. We tried everything that we could on our end, but due to his age and where the bullets have landed...your grandfather has passed."
I know I had lied about being related to him, but hearing those words hurt as if he was my family. My head falls to my hands and I began to sob. There was no one left to call. "Thank you," was all I could muster, but I wasn't even sure what it meant.
Why was I thanking her when she hadn't saved him? Through blurry vision, I redialed Levi's number and again it went to voicemail. "I..." I could barely talk over the short breathes I was taking. "Dale's gone," was all I could get out before breaking down again. The tears had come before in waves, but not it was a flood, never-ending.
I could feel the other couples and family members staring at me but I didn't care. I had lost the one person I could go to for anything. The one that took me in and sheltered me, asking nothing in return. His words echoed in my head. "As long as I was able to help one person, I can go in peace." Why did he have to say that? Why couldn't he have told me that he would be happy, not that he would die?
There was a hole where the bookstore and its owner had sat. I'd heard of dying from a broken heart but never thought it to be true. Sitting in the waiting room, shriveled in a chair, I realized the saying was completely accurate. That's what was happening to me.