Chapter Twenty-Six
How dare he.
That was all Claire could think when she rushed into Maya’s hospital room and found her little girl lying in bed, alone. Maya’s face was pale but her skin was warm. Claire had seen that look before, the pastiness of her cheeks as the swelling slowly receded.
She didn’t know what made her more furious—that Ryan had put Maya in this position, or that after endangering her daughter like this, he wasn’t even here to make sure she was okay.
What if Maya had woken up and no one was beside her? What if something happened, she went downhill, and Claire was still on the road?
Then she heard the door open, and he waltzed in, holding a steaming cup of coffee and a bag of cookies from the vending machine.
Like he didn’t have a care in the world.
Claire dropped Maya’s hand and turned on him, instinct making her stand between her daughter and Ryan.
“She’s okay,” he said before she could find the words to tear into him.
“Okay?” Claire cried loudly enough to wake Maya if she’d been sleeping.
But the fact that Maya didn’t stir was a reminder that she wasn’t asleep, that this was anything but normal. Ryan had picked the completely the wrong word to describe Maya right now. “Okay” wasn’t anywhere in the same galaxy as what was going on.
“The doctor just came by,” he said. “I got her the EpiPen in time. The EMT administered some other medication, and the swelling has already gone down.”
His voice was weird. Flat. He sipped the coffee. Did he think this was just some ordinary conversation? Did he not care that Maya was lying unconscious behind her?
She wanted to hurl herself at him, pound him with her fists until he broke. She wanted to sob into his arms and trust him to take care of her like he was supposed to.
But he was the reason they were in this mess, and she knew she couldn’t turn to him, couldn’t rely on him, and sure as hell couldn’t trust him anymore.
So she kept her fists by her side. And she tried to keep her eyes dry, even as tears threatened to spill.
“What did you do?” The words came out raw and angry, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing she could say would be enough to capture how upset she was, a rising panic that made her want to scream.
He looked stunned, as though he hadn’t expected her to ask that question. As though he thought he could go and get his coffee and his cookies and pretend to be the good guy, the one who used to be an asshole but had finally learned how to care.
But it was too late for that act.
“It was an accident, baby,” he said, his voice so soft it made her want to throw up.
“This isn’t a good time to baby me.”
“It was an accident,” he repeated, holding up his hands. “An honest to God accident, and I’m so, so sorry.”
“An accident would be if she tripped and fell on the jungle gym. This—” She gestured to the bed behind her. “This wasn’t just some mistake you can pass off as though you had no responsibility. You knew she has a life-threatening allergy.”
“Jesus, Claire. I didn’t feed her peanuts. What do you think I am, a monster? I turned my back for one second—”
“You can’t do that!” she cried, wringing her hands. “Don’t you get that? She’s five years old. You have to be the responsible one. You have to be the adult.”
“It happened so fast, Claire. You have to believe me. I was right next to her, she wasn’t eating anything, and then I turned around and the next thing I knew, it turned out Seth had fed her something while I wasn’t looking.”
“Seth?” Claire said, suddenly confused. What was he talking about?
Ryan paused.
“Tell me,” she said when he didn’t go on.
The silence felt heavy. Thick. A physical force separating them. She realized he probably hadn’t meant to say all that, that he’d spilled details he’d hoped to leave out.
Well, let him suffer. Let him squirm. His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. The storm had gone out of his eyes, and they were flat and gray, dark as the fog on a sea when everything was eerily still.
He ran a hand through his hair, his nervous gesture. It was so heartbreaking, she almost went to him, to take him in her arms and touch his hair, his cheek, feel the angle of his jaw and the scratch of his scruff on her skin. To play her usual, reassuring role.
But she didn’t. And he must have known she wasn’t going to do that ever again, because he sighed and told her.
“Seth Richter.”
He said it the same way he used to confess when she’d ask him what he’d done the night before, or how much he’d had to drink. Like the problem was her making these demands of him, not the fact that he’d done it in the first place.
She remembered, too, not just the tone of his voice but the way the numbers would increase the more she pushed. Three beers, he’d say. I only had three beers. She’d have to ask every other question—how many shots on top of the beers, who had bought a bottle and passed it around, where did he go after everyone else had piled into cabs and he lied and said he’d walk home. Lied so no one would know he was going to another bar, that the night wasn’t over. Not even close.
It felt like that, like there were all these pieces she had to pry out of him because this wasn’t just some story about an accident—an accident she still couldn’t understand because hadn’t she left him crystal clear instructions? Didn’t he know what Maya couldn’t eat? Wasn’t there absolutely nothing in her house that Maya was allergic to, so she could never get into anything without realizing it?
But Seth Richter. That was a name she hadn’t thought about in ages.
And the whole rest of the gang—Cam Sallister and the other guy who used to play with them, the one with the bitten nails who alternated between keyboard and guitar. She didn’t even know Ryan was in touch with them anymore.
“What were you doing with Seth Richter?” she asked. But it didn’t come out like a question. They’d passed from yelling into something far more dangerous. Far more chilling.
“Everything was fine,” he repeated.
She folded her arms. She couldn’t even dignify that with a response. The more he finally told her—about Cam’s call, the bar, whatever idiotic rationale had convinced him that taking Maya to meet those guys at a sleazy joint was a better idea that literally anything else he could have done—the more she felt the color draining from her face.
By the time he got to the end, she just couldn’t listen anymore.
“Get out,” she said, shaking her head when he was about to go on.
“What?” Ryan screwed up his face like he couldn’t understand her.
“I said, get out of here.”
The Claire she used to be was quiet. Even-keeled. Mild-mannered to a fault. Never once did she throw a bucket of cold water on his head and demand he wake the fuck up, or shove her pregnancy test in his face so he couldn’t forget.
No, she tiptoed around while he was passed out, silently packed up her things, and disappeared without a trace.
But that person was a distant memory. Ryan might not have changed as much as she’d thought, but she’d changed even more than she’d realized. When he didn’t budge, she moved toward him, every step forward making him step back.
“Claire,” he tried. “I’m telling you, it was an accident.”
“I trusted you.” Another step and he was back to the door. “I trusted you with my daughter.” Another step and he was standing in the hallway. “I trusted you with my heart.”
“She was having a really good time,” he said weakly. “Cam showed her some riffs on the drums.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She couldn’t believe he actually thought he could justify this.
“You took Maya to a bar, Ryan. You were responsible for her for one night, and you couldn’t even put her needs first for that long. Couldn’t say no to a bunch of guys you could see any time and stick with what was best for a kid.”
“I told you how sorry I am. Can’t you cut me one inch of slack for trying to make this better? For the fact that I was scared out of my mind? That I’ve just been through the worst experience of my entire life—and believe me, there’s some stiff competition for that title—and that all I want is to be holding you right now?”
She heard it then, the break in his voice. Understood that what had come before—the casual stroll, the coffee, the calm to his voice—was all an act, an attempt on his part to maintain control.
But he couldn’t fucking have it. He couldn’t be in control, and she wasn’t here to make this easier for him, to make sure he didn’t feel anything too painful, to protect him from the consequences.
“Isn’t there anything I can do?” he said softly when she couldn’t respond.
She shook her head. “Just let me take care of this.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’ve done enough already.”
“You can’t kick me out, Claire. I’m her father, I’m the one who’s been talking to the doctors, and I’m not just going to leave her here.”
The F-word again. It made her blood boil just to hear him say it.
“I don’t just mean the hospital,” Claire said, clenching her fists to fight back the tears.
“You don’t mean that,” he said.
But she shook her head. He couldn’t talk her out of this.
“Get out of the hospital, and get out of Gold Mountain. I don’t know what you think you’ve been doing these past few weeks, but your life isn’t here, Ryan. The little games we’ve been playing, pretending we can start over? Pretending there’s ever going to be a happy ending for us? Go home, Ryan. Go back to your actual life.”
She saw him stammer, saw his eyes go dark as the sea. She almost took it back, told him they could find some kind of compromise where he got to see Maya occasionally, even if whatever else they’d been up to was officially done.
But then she heard a faint moan, the sounds of Maya coming to behind her, and she couldn’t give him another second to weasel his way back into their lives.
“Go home, Ryan,” she said again.
And then she made her decision final. He was on the other side of the threshold, standing in the hallway while she was still in the room. Which made it easy for her to reach out and slam the door in his face.