Our Ruined Beginnings by Genevieve Jasper & Violet Paine

Author:Genevieve Jasper & Violet Paine [Jasper, Genevieve & Paine, Violet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2024-02-29T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Harper

I hold my breath. He’s right there … right behind this door. I can hardly believe it. For all the times I’ve thought about seeing him again— wishing for it—I’m now terrified to step through. My breath leaves me in a panicked rush, and my feet twitch with the need to run away, but Emma’s soft hand on my back keeps me in place.

“He’d love that you were here,” she murmurs, and I think it’s supposed to be reassuring, but I can only hear the silent finally left unspoken. Would he, though? Would he want me here, or would he wish I was as far away as possible, just like his twin does?

I nod and swallow harshly before I step forward, pushing the door open to step inside, and her voice filters in behind me, kind but determined.

“I need to get back, but stay as long as you like, and please, make your way to ours when you’ve finished here. I mean it.”

The door clicks shut quietly behind me, but I barely notice, my eyes locked on the boy from my childhood—the man laid in front of me.

His dark hair is swept back off his face. The woven blanket is tucked up high, but leaves his arms and chest exposed, along with the various tubes and wires connected to him.

It’s Caleb—of course it is—but he looks so unlike himself. So still and lifeless. Almost as if he could be dead.

A shiver racks through me as I remember how close that had been to becoming a reality. All of the articles I’d read about how long the doctors and surgeons had battled to save him. How he had slipped into a coma. How we still have no idea of the outcome.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything to do with the accident, but the details haunt me all the same, and now, the aftermath stares me in the face.

Tears spill over my lashes as I make my way toward him and lay a hand gently on his forearm. I flinch slightly as I touch him, his stillness unnerving me, before wrapping my fingers around his. I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve seen him with my own eyes. Seven months. We haven’t been apart that long since we met.

Now that I have his hand in mine, so unexpectedly warm, I don’t know how I’ll let it go. Awkwardly, I hook a foot around the chair behind me and drag it closer to the bed, folding a leg underneath me so I can rest my head on where our skin meets.

Then, stroking his hand with my fingers, I let myself cry.

Heaving sobs shake my body and soak our hands, and I’m sure the sheets underneath them. Here, I don’t have to wear a straight face or fight in battles I never signed up for. I’m just a girl who lost her best friends and now has nowhere she belongs.

I weep for her. For Caleb. For us.

For the future that was ruined before it could begin.

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