Can't Let You Go (3 page)

H
eaven was. . . unexpectedly
noisy.

Eyes still shut, I listened to the beeps and clicks around me. I expected angel choirs, a hallelujah chorus, maybe some cheering at my arrival.

And
ow.

My body ached like I’d been hit by a train.

What happened to being pain-free? Was that just a line to get us to drop more in the collection plate?

I struggled to lift open my eyelids, but nothing seemed to be working. If I was in a new body, clearly Jesus owed me a refund.

“Katie?”

At least someone knew my name.

“Katie, can you hear me?”

I tried to answer, but my lips wouldn’t work, my tongue somehow stuck to the roof of my mouth. So thirsty. So tired.

“Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

That voice. It was so familiar.

Millie?

“She squeezed my hand. Did you see that, James?”

“I did. Can you open your eyes, sweetheart?”

The light.

“Turn it off.” Jesus needed to turn his high beams down. Glory was painfully bright.

“Come on, girl. Talk to us.”

I blinked with hangover-heavy eyelids, and the scene slowly came into focus, one blurry pixel at a time.

“Millie?” I swallowed past the dry, copper taste on my tongue. “James?” I was surely alive. Beeps and voices sounded in the hall outside, and the walls around me told me I was in a hospital room. A very ugly one.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Oh, geez. She doesn’t remember anything.” My grandma hip-bumped Millie and scooted her way to my bed. “This happened on
Days of Our Lives
.” She grabbed my hands and leaned down inches from my face. “You’re Katie Parker Scott.” Her volume could’ve lifted the ceiling. “This is your mom, Millie and your dad . . .” She looked at James then shrugged. “I don’t remember his name, but they’ve been legally bound for at least a few years. And I’m Millie’s younger sister Maxine.”

“I know who you are.”

“If you recall, I had an illustrious movie career, everyone back home adores me, and in polite company, we do not talk about my torrid affair with Brad Pitt.”

It hurt to smile. “Stop yelling,” I whispered. “I remember everything.”

Maxine arched an artfully plucked brow. “You do?”

I nodded. “And we all know you’ve never even met Brad Pitt.”

She sniffed. “It could happen.”

Millie sat on the white-blanketed bed. “You’ve been out for about six hours. Do you remember what happened?”

I shot straight up from my pillow. “Millie—all those people!” Dear God, we had crashed. “Charlie. Where’s Charlie?” Was I the lone survivor? I didn’t want to be! They would put me on
Good Morning America
and expect me to write a book and do some made-for-TV movie starring some down-and-out Disney actress.

“He’s fine. You’re all fine.” Millie held me down with gentle arms. “There was no crash.”

My heart raced. “He’s okay?”

“He’s been right by your side the whole time,” James said. “We just sent him to get coffee downstairs.”

My body shook with the relief, and I deflated in exhaustion. “But I don’t understand. We were going down. It was awful. I just knew we were going to—”

“You hit a pretty bad storm,” James said. “We still don’t have much information, but it appears the plane lost control for a bit. The pilot made an emergency landing.”

“In a cornfield.” Maxine gripped my hands harder. “Did you see any crop circles while you were landing?”

“She didn’t see anything,” Millie said. “It got so rough anything not belted down went airborne. A few of the overhead bins flew open and a bag hit you on the head. Knocked you out cold.”

“Charlie scooped you into his strong, manly arms, held you to him, slid with you down the emergency thingie, then carried you to safety.” Maxine hid her lips behind her hand. “You should’ve used your feminine wiles and held out for mouth-to-mouth.”

“I was a little busy being unconscious.”

“You should sue the airline and get tons of money,” Maxine said. “I’ll represent you. I’ve watched a lot of court shows. I bet that pilot was sexting”

“How do you feel?” Millie ran her hand over my hair. “You got some stitches on your forehead.”

Maxine eyed my wound. “And even though it’s puffy and ugly, and you could be deformed for life, we want you to know we’re still gonna try and love you anyway.”

“Noble of you.” I lifted my hand to my head, my fingers sliding over the bandage.

The door eased open and in walked Charlie Benson, carrying a burrito, three candy bars, and a YooHoo. His gaze landed on me, his eyes softening. “You’re awake.”

I smiled. “Near death experiences make you a little hungry?”

“They really do.” Maxine snatched every bit of the food from Charlie’s full hands. “You forgot the hot dog.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I was halfway through your order in the cafeteria when a doctor started lecturing me on my food choices. Said this was a heart attack waiting to happen.”

Maxine shrugged. “I got a defibrillator in my purse.”

I had so much to say to Charlie. My mind filled with thousands of words, all of them spinning and careening like falling stars.

“Why don’t we step out for a bit and get some coffee?” James put his hand at Millie’s back and guided her toward the door. “Maxine, let’s go to the cafeteria.”

“Nah.” Her lips surrounded an oozing burrito. “I got all I need.”

James held open the oak door. “I’m buying.”

Maxine patted my blanket-covered feet. “See ya, tootsie.”

My family escaped into the hall, leaving me with my old friend.

The boy who had saved me.

The one I had declared my love to.

“Charlie—”

“Katie—”

Our words overlapped, crashing like cymbals, then fell to the ground, leaving us with a silence so heavy, I sank deeper into the pillows.

“The doctor says you’re going to be released soon.” Charlie settled on my bed, his hip nestled against my calves.

“I feel fine.” I tried to focus on his eyes, but his lips captured my attention. I had kissed those lips. Those lips had kissed me. “They, um. . .” What were we talking about? “They should let me go home now.”

He scooted closer, his hand gently reaching out, then slowly tracing across my bandage. “We’ve had quite a day, Parker.”

My old last name always sounded like an endearment from him. “I hear I have you to thank.”

“That’s what friends are for.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Friends.”

Somehow he had moved even nearer. Charlie’s lips did a slow curve while he rested his hands on either bed rail, leaning in, so close I could smell the remains of his morning after shave. “You took a pretty hard knock to the head.”

“I did.” His eyes were as silver as a stormy ocean.

“The doctor said you might have some temporary memory loss.”

“Understandable.”

“How much do you remember?”

Plane diving. Passengers screaming. Charlie and I kissing.

“Bits and pieces.”

“Is that so?” His voice was a low rumble in his chest, a mere hush in the room. “Tell me what you recall.”

“Maxine said you carried me to safety. I wanted to thank you for—”

“Answer the question.”

I nibbled on my bottom lip, feeling a flush climb up my skin under his intense scrutiny. “I’m sure it will all come back to me eventually.”

“How about I fill you in? I’ll start at the beginning—”

“No!” My flailing hand covered his. “No need for that.”

“Because you recall every second on that plane.”

I did.

It was the type of memory you carried with you the rest of your days, one you thought about on sleepless nights and still held close to your heart when your hair was white and your steps were feeble. Charlie and I had kissed before, but never at the gates of life or death, never with that kind of desperation. He had kissed me back, but that didn’t mean a thing.

Or did it?

“I think I remember most of it.” I reached for my water cup and took my sweet time drinking from the straw. “You came and sat by me on the plane. We talked for a few hours. The plane started to drop and. . .I blacked out.”

“That’s all you got?”

“Seems that way.”

“You don’t remember anything else?”

There was no need to revisit the kiss or my errant, crazy declaration. Charlie was still out of my league, and I had left what was left of my beating heart in London. All I wanted was to return to In Between, settle in, and clear my head. Without the interference of any member of the male species. They could not be trusted. Even if they carried your limp form off weather-beaten planes.

“Thank you,” I said again. “You were wonderful to me today.”

My eyes widened as Charlie shifted, his face an inch from mine. His fingers slipped into my hair, his thumbs grazing my cheeks.

“Charlie?” I breathed. “What are you doing?”

He smiled as his mouth descended. “Jogging your memory.”

I
woke the
next morning to an old woman standing over me, a mirror in my face, and the realization that I had not dreamed the last thirty-six hours.

I had indeed quit the show in London and hopped on a plane three weeks early. That plane had done the watoosie in the sky, and I had thrown myself at my teenage love. It was a lot to pack into seventy-two hours.

I blinked against the sun filtering through my old bedroom window. “Maxine, what exactly are you doing?”

“Checking to see if you were still breathing.” She removed the pink handheld mirror. “For a moment there it was iffy.”

“Is that my Hermes scarf around your neck? Were you even going to wait until my body was cold?”

“It’s twelve-thirty in the flippin’ afternoon. Who sleeps that late except werewolves and dead folk?”

“People with jet lag? People who nearly crashed in an airplane and have a concussion?”

“You’re boring me.” She plopped herself on the bed and flopped to her side, her blue eyes assessing me like a hanging judge. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong?”

I sat up, feeling slightly underdressed in my worn In Between High School t-shirt, while Mad Maxine wore canary yellow skinny pants, a white button-down, and layers of turquoise beads artfully wrapped around her slender and surgically smoothed neck.

She kicked off her black patent spike heels and leaned her chin into a propped hand. “I’m waiting.”

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m exhausted, and I have a headache.”

“Please. I’ve dated two former presidents. I know a lie when I see it.”

I scrubbed a hand over my face and wondered how a woman who had to surely be from her own planet could be this intuitive. I’d never been able to get away with anything with her—from little white lies to sneaking candy from the secret liner in her purse.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Sitting up, I swung my feet over the edge of the bed, the room tilting a little to the left.

“You know what I think?”

I grabbed Maxine’s mirror and inspected my bandage, as well as the bruise covering my forehead.

“I think something happened in London.” Maxine’s hands mimed an explosion, complete with sound effects.
Pow!
“Something big.”

“I was homesick.”

“Oh, yeah? One of your college friends from your drama program has been calling here for days. Said she was sorry about what happened, but she knew a director in New York who wanted you to give him a ring-a-ding.”

My head ached for caffeine and a room without prying conversation. “I’m taking a break.”

“From what?”

Life. Love. Airplanes. “The theater.”

A knock interrupted my grandmother’s next comment as Millie poked her blonde, curly head in the room. Her familiar smile had me blinking back tears, and for a moment I longed for the days when she’d slip her arm around me, kiss the top of my head, and talk me off some adolescent ledge of drama. “There’s my girl. How are you feeling?”

“A little gassy.” Maxine patted her tummy. “I think it was that sixth piece of bacon.”

“I meant Katie.”

Maxine rolled her eyes. “Attention hog.”

“I’m okay,” I said as Millie padded across the floor in her bare feet. Since she’d conquered breast cancer seven years ago, Millie had taken up yoga, even teaching it at a studio downtown, and she now moved with an enviable grace I would never possess.

“Why don’t you get dressed and come downstairs? I’ll whip you up something to eat, and we can all talk.” Millie leaned down and kissed my cheek.

But as I shuffled to the bathroom and freshened up, I knew it wouldn’t be chit-chat that awaited me downstairs. You didn’t suddenly come back from your Chance-of-a-Lifetime-Part, in a Chance-of-a-Lifetime-Play in Chance-of-a-Lifetime-London just because you were missing home. My family wanted answers.

But did I have them?

*