Series: The Laws of Opposite Attract Series by Vi Keeland
Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 98878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 494(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
She nodded. “I’m really sorry. He was very sick.”
“Peyton!” A nurse called from down the hall. “Can you give me a hand for a minute?”
Peyton patted my hand. “I’ll be right back.”
I bit back tears, unable to move as my eyes darted around the unit. To my left, a guy in a gray housekeeping uniform mopped the floor, whistling. He smiled when our eyes met. To my right, two kids who couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old came down the hall laughing, pushing their IV poles. Peyton and the nurse who’d called her were a few feet away trying to figure something out on the computer they always rolled around on a cart. Everything seemed ordinary. Like any other time I’d visited.
Except it wasn’t. Landon was gone.
I looked around for a few more minutes. Life just kept rolling on. When I tasted salt in my throat, I decided I didn’t need to wait for Peyton to come back. There was nothing more to say or do. So I left the box on the counter—with my contraption and the one I’d made for my little buddy—and returned to the elevator.
***
“Brayden?”
I looked up, but not even finding Alex standing in the lobby of the hotel a day earlier than I’d expected could lighten my mood. “Hey.”
She frowned. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
I thumbed over my shoulder. “I just got back from the hospital. I made Landon this…” The words clogged in my throat, and the tears that had been threatening since I left the hospital spilled out.
Alex closed the distance between us and wrapped me in her arms. “Oh no.”
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t keep it together anymore. I cried like a damn baby as she held me.
“Let it out,” she whispered. “Holding it in doesn’t do us any good.”
Somehow we went from standing in the middle of the lobby to sitting on a couch in a quiet corner, yet I didn’t remember walking there. It had been a long time since I cried, and evidently all the tears I’d held back over the years had been waiting for their moment.
Alex rubbed her hand up and down my back. “I’m so sorry,” her voice cracked. “I’m so sorry, Brayden.”
Hearing her sadness might’ve been the only thing that stopped me from blubbering for hours. Once I knew Alex was in pain, a switch flipped. I went from self-pity to protective mode. “I’m okay.” I sniffled. But tears were now silently streaming down Alex’s cheeks. I wiped them away with my thumb. “Please don’t cry. I can’t bear to see you upset.”
She smiled sadly. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Like that’s ever going to happen.”
Alex rested her head on my shoulder and sighed. “You made his life brighter.”
“It’s not fair. He was just a kid.”
“I know. At least he’s not in pain anymore. He went through so much.”
I stared out into the lobby. People were coming and going, just like any other evening, the same way everyone had been at the hospital. “It just feels wrong that the world doesn’t stop, even for a moment, to grieve.”
Alex laced her fingers with mine. “We can grieve together.”
We stayed that way for a long time, sitting hand in hand in silence, stopping our lives in honor of Landon. Eventually, I took a deep breath and squeezed her fingers. “I didn’t know you were coming tonight.”
“I wasn’t sure if I should. But now I’m glad I did.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
“I didn’t check in yet. I saw you when I was on my way to the reception desk. Did you eat dinner? I don’t think the hotel’s restaurant has closed.”
I shook my head. “I couldn’t possibly eat.”
Alex nodded. “Yeah. I understand. You should get some rest. Would you want to have breakfast in the morning?”
“I’d like that.”
She smiled. “Me, too.”
It seemed neither of us wanted to be the first to move, but when my phone buzzed with a call from Liz, I showed it to Alex. “It’s the volunteer coordinator at the hospital. Why don’t you go check in while I answer?”
“Okay. Good idea.”
Alex came back just as I’d ended the call.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
I nodded. “I left a box at the nurses’ station with something I’d made for Landon’s prosthetic arm—a Spider-Man web shooter. The PA must’ve called Liz at home to let her know I’d come by. She wanted to apologize for not calling me last week, and she asked if it would be okay to send what I’d made to his parents. Apparently his older brother has taken an interest in prosthetics, and she thought he might appreciate the add-on.”
“Oh, that’s really nice.”
“That’s how I became interested in the field, too, through my buddy Ryan.”
“The world may not stop, but it changes. Because of your friend Ryan, you’ve made the prosthetics industry a little better with your technology. Maybe Landon’s brother will do the same.”