The Delivery Girl

52. Team

Callen

A sharp ache shoots through my body as I try to move. I peel an eye open, squinting at the blinding lights above me. I try to speak, but I only manage to mumble something even I can't understand.

"Callen!"

Julie's voice cuts through the fog in my brain like a spotlight. My blurry vision slowly comes back into focus. Julie and Eliza are standing to my sides, leaning over the bars along the bed.

Where the hell am I?

"Thank god," Eliza mutters.

"What happened?" I croak. My throat feels dry and rough like sandpaper. I try to sit up but Eliza presses a firm hand to my shoulder and keeps me down.

"Take it easy, you've been knocked out for nearly seventeen hours," she warns.

"I've what?"

"You were in a car accident," Julie says quietly. "Do you remember anything?"

My temples ache as I furrow my brows. "The last thing I remember is talking to Eliza on the phone." She called me asking where I was, and I was refusing to tell her.

"You scared the shit out of me," Eliza snaps. "One minute we were talking, the next I heard cracking glass and metal being crushed."

A creeping dread crawls up my spine.

Right.

Bright lights on the road.

Honking.

The darkness swallowing everything.

Also.. that was a seven hundred thousand dollar car. Fantastic.

"Sorry sis," I say quietly. "Love you."

"Love you," she grumbles and crosses her arms. "Don't you dare do that again."

My heart sinks when I see mom and the look on her face. The worry and disappointment she's been trying to mask for years, now fully on display.

She slowly approaches the bed. And for a split second, I go back a decade. I'm eighteen again.

I'd never seen her as angry as she was that night. Dad revealed I had signed a contract agreeing to take over the company when I finished university.

My normally poised and reserved mother, screaming and cursing at my dad. She threw vases, shattered a window, demanded he call it off. I sent Eliza to stay with grandma that night.

You've signed his fucking death contract, Tom. Remind me how many heart attacks you've had?

I eventually came to learn that she filed for a divorce the very next morning and made plans to move back to the UK. She begged me to come with her, to break away from the life that had already started claiming me.

I didn't understand at the time why she seemed to be making such a big deal about it. I was just doing what was right. Dad had worked so hard building the company from the ground up, he told me he couldn't bear to sell it.

Callen, I'd rather die than give it up. I know I'm getting old, but I refuse to stop.

Mom won't like that.

She wouldn't understand. Not the way you and I do. I can count on you, right?

How was I supposed to respond to that?

But now lying in this bed, I understand exactly what she feared.

"I'm sorry, Mother," is all I manage to whisper.