Chapter 26

Penelope wasn’t sure how long she sat staring at the text on her cellphone, but it was long enough for Grace to give her a gentle nudge in the ribs.

“Pen. You okay? And where the heck is Cole; he’s been gone for like two and a half innings. I thought this was his team?”

Penelope opened her mouth, but no words came out. Instead she handed her phone to Grace. Jake leaned over to read the message.

Bobby was in an accident. Headed to hospital.

“Who’s Bobby?” Grace asked, her brown eyes wide with concern.

“His older brother,” Penelope replied.

Grace glanced at Jake in surprise. “Did you know Cole had a brother?”

Jake looked troubled. “Yeah. He rarely mentions him. I assumed they were at odds or something.”

Penelope swallowed. “He has Down syndrome and lives in a group care home. I can’t imagine what might have happened—”

Why hadn’t he taken her?

She understood Cole’s being in a hurry. Of course. But she would have gone with him if she’d known. She would have held his hand, and—

Penelope yanked her cellphone back out of her friend’s hand and typed a response to Cole.

What hospital? Is he okay?

Penelope spent the next four innings staring at her phone as she waited for a response that never came.

“Maybe I should just go to the hospital,” she said, for the tenth time.

“But which one?” Jake asked.

“All of them.”

“It’s New York City, hon. There’s not just the one hospital off Main Street.”

Penelope huffed out a breath. Jake was right. She’d already researched the various places where they could have taken Bobby, and there were a lot.

And she could call, but she was pretty sure they’d only release patient info to family members. What was she supposed to say? Hi, the brother of my nonboyfriend whom I only sleep with on weekends was in an accident.

“Come on, Cole,” Penelope muttered, staring down at her phone and willing it to give her a response.

“I can’t just sit here,” she said, leaning forward and curling into herself. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt so miserable or helpless.

Grace rubbed her back. “Do you want to head back into the city? That way, if he does get back to you, you’ll be closer and can go to him.”

It was true. Bobby lived in Manhattan, so chances were, whatever happened to him had happened there. The closer she got to Manhattan, the closer she’d be to Bobby.

And to Cole.

“Yeah,” she said, “but you two stay here.”

“Hell no. We’re going with you,” Jake said. Grace nodded in agreement.

Penelope opened her mouth, but Jake cut her off. “We won’t go into the hospital, once you figure out where he is. We don’t belong there. But we’ll be there every step of the way up until then, ’kay?”

“Are you sure?”

“He’s our friend too,” Jake said quietly.

“Penelope.” Grace put a hand on her arm, her expression concerned. “This isn’t some little fling, is it? It’s more than you trying to move on from that Evan guy?”

Penelope couldn’t stop the little laugh that bubbled up.

Evan. She hadn’t thought about him since they’d ditched him at the restaurant on Friday night.

That anyone could think that Cole and Evan belonged in the same sentence, or even in the same thought…

Penelope might have loved Evan once. She might have. The kind of love that became sort of desperate because of its unrequited nature, thus making you feel that it was the biggest love you’d ever known.

But now…

In hindsight, Penelope recognized it for what it was—a shallow love that, while genuine, had never had the chance to grow roots.

For the longest time, she’d thought that Evan hadn’t seen her because she wasn’t a certain type. Because she wasn’t pretty enough or flashy enough.

But in the end, Evan Barstow was a useless jerk, and Cole was…

“It’s more than a fling,” Penelope said quietly.

Grace and Jake stood in unison, perfect soulmates that they were. “What are we waiting for? Up, Pen! Let’s go!”

The subway ride back to the city was the longest journey of Penelope’s life, but she was rewarded when they emerged from the tunnel in Manhattan and she had a text from Cole.

“Bellevue,” she said, already dashing to the curb to hail a cab. “He’s at Bellevue Hospital.”

A cab pulled up beside her, and Penelope reached for the door handle even before it came to a complete stop.

Then she whirled around, gave Grace and Jake fierce hugs. “Promise you’ll go someplace ridiculously fancy for dinner and let me pay you back for it later?”

They both ignored this. “Let us know as soon as you know what’s going on,” Grace said.

“I promise,” Penelope said, climbing into the cab. She blew them both a distracted kiss and then reread Cole’s text once more.

On one hand, he’d replied. Good sign. On the other hand…

They took him to Bellevue Hospital. He got hit by a cab while crossing the street. He’s fine, but they’re keeping him overnight. Don’t come, we’re fine.

Don’t come, he’d said.

Penelope tried not to read too much into it. He was probably just being a good guy—not wanting to take her away from the baseball game.

Don’t come.

There was something so final—so harsh about those two words. One sentence.

Don’t come.

“Too damn bad, Cole,” she muttered. “I’m coming anyway.”

Penelope tossed a twenty at the cabdriver, not bothering to wait for change, and sprinted into the hospital.

She started toward the reception desk then skidded to a halt and took several steps backward when she saw the gift shop out of the corner of her eye.

A couple emerged carrying flowers, but Bobby wouldn’t want flowers. Her eyes drifted to a display of balloons. Bobby would love balloons.

Ten minutes later, Penelope made her way to the reception desk with an enormous bouquet of orange, blue, and white balloons.

Penelope was in luck. She’d come during visiting hours.

Penelope followed the nurse’s directions to Bobby’s room, ignoring the annoyed looks she got when her balloons took up the entire elevator.

Her heart pounded harder as she approached Bobby’s room. Please let him be okay. Please let him be perfectly okay….

She got as far as the open doorway and froze, unsure of her best move.

Surprise!

It’s me!

I know you said don’t come, but I love you, so really, it wasn’t a choice…

In the end, it was Bobby who decided for her. He turned his head, and his face broke into a smile that felt like it lifted her heart right out of her chest.

“Penelope!”

Cole’s head whipped around.

He was seated in a chair next to Bobby’s bed, and even as she pasted on a smile for Bobby’s sake, inwardly she lurched at the look on Cole’s face.

He looked like he’d aged five years in two hours.

“Are those for me?” Bobby asked in a delighted voice, apparently unaware of his brother’s distress.

“Um, of course they are,” she said, coming toward the bed.

“Mets colors!”

“What else would I bring?” she said in a scoffing voice.

There was a tiny table and chair against the wall. “How about I tie these here?” she asked, looping the ends of the balloon strings through the rung on the back of the chair.

“Okay!”

“Who’s the bear from?” she asked, nodding at the enormous stuffed bear on the table.

“My friends at the Big House. They can’t come see me yet, but Cole said they wanted me to have the bear.”

Penelope risked a glance at Cole. He was standing now, hands shoved into his back pockets as he stared at Bobby with a bleak expression on his face.

Penelope’s smile never wavered, but her eyes skimmed over Bobby. His foot was in one of those sling things, a cast running all the way up to his upper thigh, but it was the only obvious sign that he’d been hurt.

“What happened?” she asked, coming to stand beside him.

Bobby sighed. “Cole’s mad.”

Cole ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not mad, it’s just—”

“I’m not supposed to leave the house by myself,” Bobby explained with a voice resembling a weary teenager’s. “But Penelope, I had to.”

She reached out and rubbed his arm. “What for?”

His eyes were wide and earnest. “For Carly. I wanted to get her flowers. Yellow ones, ’cuz they’re her favorites.”

Penelope swallowed. The sweetness was killing her.

“I didn’t know the taxi wouldn’t stop,” Bobby said glumly.

“You should have waited for me, Bobby,” Cole said.

“I know. You’ve told me a hundred times.”

“Then why—”

“I wasn’t going to see you till Wednesday,” Bobby said. “I needed the flowers for Carly today.”

Oh, Bobby, no.

Penelope closed her eyes.

She knew Bobby didn’t mean any harm. He was just stating facts without a single thought to laying blame.

But instinctively, Penelope knew it was the worst possible thing he could have said.

A glance at Cole confirmed it. He looked destroyed.

And Penelope knew why. Sunday was Cole and Bobby’s day; any other Sunday, Cole would have been there when Bobby wanted to get the flowers. Could have gone with him. Could have stopped him from stepping into the street.

But Cole had rescheduled for another day.

For her.

“Will you sign my cast?” Bobby asked. “My doctor says I have to wear it for weeks but that I can have everyone sign it if they want to.”

“I’d love to.”

“Okay,” Bobby said happily. “You can sign it after Carly. And after Cole.”

“Uh-huh, I see where I rank,” she teased.

“Penelope, can I talk to you for a sec? Outside.” Cole’s voice was gruff.

Uh-oh.

“Sure,” she said, smiling at him. He didn’t smile back.

“Bob, can you keep yourself busy watching TV for a few minutes?” Cole asked.

“Definitely,” Bobby said, attention already turned to the television. “Do they have ice cream here?”

“I don’t think so, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks for the balloons, Penelope!” Bobby called as she left the room.

She turned to face Cole as he followed her out, but he shook his head. “Not here. I need air.”

The walk to the elevator was silent. As was the ride down.

Not until they stepped outside into the warm sunshine did he speak.

“I told you not to come.”

Her footsteps faltered at his hard tone, and she turned to face him.

“I know,” she said quietly. “I just didn’t want you to be alone.”

“Are you kidding me, Penelope? He’s the one who shouldn’t have been alone,” Cole snapped. “I should have been there.”

She knew it was coming, but the sharpness in his tone still stung.

“It’s not your fault,” she said quietly.

He ignored her. “Do you know what he told me when I asked why he walked into the crosswalk when there was a no-walk sign?”

Penelope shook her head.

“He said that I do it all the time,” Cole said, his eyes wild. “That I never wait for the walk sign to indicate it’s okay to cross, so why should he?”

“Cole—”

“So let’s recap, shall we?” he said, voice louder. “My brother looks up to me for everything, and I teach him how to jaywalk. And then, on the one day out of the week that I’m supposed to be there for him, I’m at a fucking baseball game with a—”

Penelope narrowed her eyes. “With a what?”

“A woman,” he said tersely.

Penelope inhaled. She wasn’t exactly loving his tone. Still, the guy was having a rather massively bad day. He needed patience, not for her to go all diva on him.

Cole closed his eyes briefly. “I never should have canceled on Bobby.”

She took a step closer and reached out a hand. He backed up, which stung even more than his sharp words, but she let it go.

This wasn’t about her.

“I’d be feeling the same if I were in your shoes,” Penelope said quietly. “But I wouldn’t be any kind of friend if I didn’t tell you that this isn’t your fault. You do your best by Bobby, but you can’t put him in a bubble. You can’t be there every second of every day.”

“Yes, but—”

She pressed on. “What if this had happened on a Tuesday morning? Or a Thursday evening? What if he’d decided that Carly needed to have her flowers at midnight on Monday? The fact that this happened on Sunday is a coincidence, Cole.”

“Maybe,” he granted. “But Penelope, he’s up there with his leg in a cast, and bruises up and down his torso, and—”

“And he’s fine.” She found his hand and squeezed. “I’m not minimizing what happened, but he’s okay, Cole. And we’ll talk to him about crossing the street, and we’ll be more careful about—”

Cole stepped back, shaking off her hand. “We?”

Penelope faltered. “Well, I mean, I don’t want to insert myself, but I care about Bobby too—”

He laughed. “Today is the second time you’ve ever even met the guy, Penelope. Him dumping his popcorn all over you at a baseball game hardly makes you part of the family.”

She blew out a breath. “Wow.”

His words hurt; she suspected that he meant them to, but once again she tried to remember Cole wasn’t being himself.

“I’m not trying to insert myself into your family,” she said.

“And yet you came, when I specifically asked you not to.”

Penelope held her palms out to her sides and then let them drop. “What’s going on here, Cole? I’m having a hard time seeing my crime. I brought Bobby balloons, which he loved. I came to be here for you—”

He cut her off. “I don’t need you to be here for me. I don’t even— We’re not even—”

“We’re not even what?”

“We’re not together,” he said quietly.

Right. There was that.

“Not officially,” she said, “but I thought…things seemed like they were changing between us—”

He shook his head and cut her off. “You made a promise, Penelope. So did I. This was never meant to get serious, and this is why.”

“By this, you mean the off chance that your brother was going to get hit by a cab while we were at a Yankees game? That’s why you promised you wouldn’t fall in love with me?”

“Mock all you want, but he’s all I have,” Cole said.

“He’s not,” Penelope shot back before she could think better of it. “He is not all you have. You have friends, and colleagues, and me. You have me, Cole. You may not like that I’m here, but that doesn’t change the fact that I came for you, and that I’d do it all over again.”

His eyes were flat, his expression betraying nothing. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

Penelope ignored that. “Also, for what it’s worth, you’re not all Bobby has either. He loves you like crazy, Cole, but honestly, I wonder if he’s not better adjusted than you are, because he seems pretty okay with the fact that you two can be brothers and have your own lives.”

This time his eyes did flicker to life, and when they locked on hers they were full of anger. “Hey, here’s an idea, Penelope. You’ve got a sister, right? How about we wait until she’s in the hospital, and then we can have this little chat. Better yet, make sure that she’s entirely financially reliant on you, and that her well-being sits on your shoulders, and then come find me.”

This was not going well.

“Do you want me to leave?” she asked.

He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

It was no less than she’d expected, given his current mood, but ouch.

“Okay,” she said. “If you need anything, I—”

“I won’t.”

She met his eyes steadily. “Tell me you’re not actually doing this, Cole. Tell me you’re not that guy who goes all Jekyll-and-Hyde when something unexpected happens.”

His face crumpled for a moment before he put a hand over it, covering most of his features as he took a long breath. “I’m sorry, Penelope. I am.”

She stepped forward, putting her arms around him, the embrace slightly awkward because she was still wearing her Yankees hat.

He stiffened, and though he didn’t push her away, he didn’t exactly return her embrace.

“I should get back,” he said gruffly.

Penelope retreated a little, letting her arms fall back to her sides and trying not to feel humiliated by the one-sided hug.

“Okay.”

He started to turn away and then paused, hesitating before he met her eyes. “Believe it or not, I do get that I’m acting like an ass. I just…I can’t do this right now. It’s only ever just been me and Bobby, even when my parents were alive, and I don’t know what I’d do without him. Or him without me. He has to come first.”

“I see.” She managed to keep her voice steady. “You’re just realizing this now?”

He hesitated. “I’ve always known it, but lately…you made it easy to forget, Penelope.”

The statement would have warmed her heart if it hadn’t been uttered as he geared up to walk away from her.

She tried one more time. “Your heart’s bigger than you think, Cole. There’s room for me and Bobby. And Cole, you have to know that…”

I love you.

She opened her mouth to say it, but faltered when he took another step backward.

“Don’t, Penelope.”

“Cole—”

He turned away. “See you around, Pope.”

Penelope stood rooted to the spot as she watched his lean figure head back into the hospital.

See you around, Pope.

Was he for real?

See you around, Pope.

Suddenly she was so very glad she hadn’t uttered the words she’d been about to say.