Read Always For You (Books 1-3) for Free Online Page B

and number and
passing it to me. I liked it when they wrote their name, often I
didn't remember.
    Krista. Typical
name for a girl like that.
    She walked away leaving me there in
bed, the smell of her perfume still lingering on my skin. As the door
shut I felt a pinch at my chest, a gnawing feeling that hadn't left
me since the crash, a feeling only briefly subdued by women and
alcohol.
    I'd
seen Grace wake up only a couple of weeks ago. I'd been there at the
hospital when she did. There was a weird poetry to it: that I was the
one who pulled her out, and I was there to see her wake. Yeah,
but you caused the fucking accident too.
    I'd rushed off to grab a nurse,
watching Grace scream and shriek in grief from behind the window. It
was painful to see her come round, realize her mom was dead. I
couldn't handle it, so I left. I returned later that night though,
saw her when she was calm, dozing off. That was the last time. I
couldn't face going there now that she was awake.
    I''d
tried to forget about it all, tried to get it out of my head. But it
wasn't like having a fight with someone: those I could forget easily.
It was my fault, my fault that Grace's mom died, my fault she was in
a coma. How
can I ever forget that? She'll probably barely remember me if I talk
to her, if I try to explain. I guess I'll have to learn to live with
it.

Chapter 8
    December/January 2012/13
    Grace
    The last two months had been the worst
of my life. My mom's funeral was held in early October. They didn't
know when I'd wake up, whether I'd wake up, but had waited. They were
going to have the funeral without me, but then I came round. They
gave me more time to recover, another week in the hospital before we
buried her. It was the hardest day of my life.
    I'd learned about the entire crash,
more than what Ellen had told me. She'd said she had died without
pain, but I'd seen the video, I'd seen the car become engulfed in
flames. How does anyone know she hadn't woken up? That she wasn't
alive when that happened? That she wasn't roasted in the wreckage?
    There were no medics there, no firemen.
There was no one. No one to tell that she was already dead, that she
wouldn't wake up when the flames started eating at her clothes. No
one except that man, the man on the bike. I'd seen that man, riding
alongside the car, peering in through my window. It had happened when
he dropped back – the bump, the knock that sent up spiralling off
down the road.
    I don't know whether he had anything to
do with it, but I was grateful for what he did. The way he threw
himself into the wreckage, no thought of his own safety, was amazing.
I wanted to talk to him, thank him, tell him how grateful I was for
saving me, for trying to save my mom. But he had disappeared, without
anyone seeing his face, the license plates on his bike.
    I'd been taking painkillers for my
injury, for the pain. They numbed me, helping me through. But they
never quenched the suffering I felt at my mom's death. I had no
remedy for that, nothing but time.
    It
was December before I went out again. I had recovered from my injury
by then, so my friends took me out for the night. We went to our favorite restaurant in town, a simple steak place where they sold beer and
cocktails by the bucketload on Thursday nights. Two for one it was,
something most of the young people in the area would take advantage
of.
    Tom was there. He'd been there by my
side the whole time: at my hospital bed, coming round to the house
everyday. This was what he was great at – taking care of me – so
he was really in his element. I hated it all though, stuck in the
house, my dad and Tom and Ellen pandering to me. I just wanted things
to get back to normal.
    Of course, that was going to take time.
I'd had to drop out of college for the year because of personal
reasons, taking a sabbatical to grieve and recover. It was the worst
thing that could have happened. I suddenly had nothing to cling onto,
nothing to focus my attentions on, nothing