Half truth

Chapter Five

I awoke to the news that my brother had been rushed to the hospital. Instead of waiting around to hear any details, I shoved some things into a bag and ran out of my apartment. Fuck my classes and the orientation I was hoping to sneak into. The thought of Lincoln, alone, in a hospital room, was making me sick. I was rushing out of the building when I nearly bumped into Logan. Again. This time, I had the mind to look up just as he pushed away from the revolving door and walked inside. He took one look at me and frowned. God knows what the hell I must have looked like, makeup-less and riddled with worry.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“Nothing.” I shoved myself into the revolving door and picked up the pace toward the black SUV that awaited me on the corner. Why didn’t they park directly in front of the building?

“Hey,” he called out.

I halted in my steps and turned around to see Logan jogging up to me. It was then that I noticed how sweaty he was, his dark hair sticking to the sides of his face before he pushed it back. He was wearing basketball shorts and a Toronto Raptors t-shirt that looked like he’d cut the sleeves off himself to make it a muscle tee. He’d probably just gotten in from a run. Under any other circumstances, I might’ve considered that he looked really hot right now, but my mind was overloaded with the flight I needed to catch and my brother’s state. I hadn’t even bothered to ask my mother what happened. I heard—Lincoln, hospital, in her grief-stricken voice, and I ran. I’d bypassed dad and called his favorite pilot and driver myself, not wanting to waste any time. Surely, Dad had told them picking me up was okay though, otherwise they wouldn’t have shown up.

“Yeah?” I asked impatiently, because Logan was just standing there staring at me.

“Where are you ru

“I can’t talk right now.”

The door to the building swung and a woman stepped out. I watched as she walked toward us.

“I was wondering where you ran off to this morning,” she said, her voice a coo.

“I told you I don’t stay over,” he said, his voice gruff. “What the fuck are you doing out here anyway? I’m trying to have a conversation with someone.”

“Oh.” She blinked and looked over at me. “I hadn’t seen your little friend there.”

“I have to go,” I said, turning around.

I didn’t have time for this bullshit. I ran to the SUV, climbing inside and shut the door. I said hello to the driver and turned in my seat as I pulled the seatbelt across my chest. Logan and the woman were still standing on the sidewalk. He was now typing into his phone, completely ignoring her as she held onto his arm. She seemed to be begging him for attention, but he wasn’t having it. I turned and faced forward as we drove off. Whatever was happening back there was none of my concern.

“What happened?” I ran straight to my mother when I got to the sixth floor of the hospital.

One of the nurses had personally escorted me there. Apparently, the sixth floor was one nobody spoke of, where celebrities often were treated but never talked about. Mom stood from her chair and met me halfway, opening her arms for me as I reached her. That alone scared the fuck out of me. Mom wasn’t the most affectionate person. To her, limited affection was key to a successful being. It was one of the many outcomes she’d come up with during the extensive studies she’d done on human interactions. It was an idea my father always frowned upon, being that he came from a family of huggers and over-affectionate people and had obviously turned out just fine.

“What happened?” I pulled away. “Where’s Lincoln?”

“Oh, Amelia.” Her voice cracked, tears filling her green eyes as she looked at me briefly before pulling me into her again. “He’s gone. Lincoln is gone.”

If there was ever a time when I would have fainted, it would have been then, in my mother’s arms, in the middle of a sterile, quiet hospital. A fat tear rolled down my face, then another, and another, but my mind still couldn’t process those words or what they meant.

“What do you mean gone?” I croaked. “What does gone mean? Where did he go?”

Suddenly, her arms felt like cages that I needed to rip away from. I pulled away and stepped back, swaying on my feet.

“Where’s dad?” I asked. “What do you mean gone?”

“He’s dead.” She wiped her face.

I took a good look at her then. I’d never seen my mother without makeup. I’d never seen her wear anything outside of the house that wasn’t tailored to perfection and pressed. She was wearing green and blue checkered Polo pajamas. Pajamas. Out of the house. I’d never seen wrinkles or hair in disarray. I’d never seen grief so blatantly etched on her face. I stumbled back, this time, landing on my ass, and I sat there, on the hard, cold floor. Who was dead? My father? Lincoln was gone, had he killed him? No. He may have had issues with dad, but he wouldn’t resort to murder. Would he? I looked back up at mom, my pent-up confusion and pain rolled together as I wailed.

“Who’s dead? Who died?”

She took a shuttering breath as she walked over and crouched in front of me. I could see that she was doing everything in her power to calm down, to pull the perfect psychiatrist mask over her face in order to help me deal with this, but she couldn’t. Not when she obviously didn’t know how to process it herself.

“Your brother is dead,” she said slowly, taking a breath. “He killed himself last night.”

“No.” I shook my head, tears filling my eyes again.

“Yes.”

“No.” I continued shaking my head. “No.”

“Amelia,” she said softly. “Do you think I want to accept this? That my own son—” Her voice broke. “My own son . . . ”

“No.” I slapped the floor on either side of me. “He wouldn’t do that!”

“He did. He overdosed. He did.”

“He wouldn’t.” My brother was the ultimate health nut. He hated the mere idea of drugs. I stood quickly, pacing, walking down the corridor as I yelled. “Where is he? Where is he?”

“Amelia please,” Mom sobbed. I’d never seen mom sob. I’d never seen her cry—period.

“How?” My chin wobbled. My arms shook. “How could this happen? Weren’t you watching him? Aren’t you a fucking expert in this?”

It was unfair. I knew it even as I blamed her, but I couldn’t help it. My brother. My best friend. My . . . I started to sob, my shoulders shaking as I held myself together. He was a light in this world. Why would he want to extinguish it? How could he? It wasn’t possible. A door opened and shut loudly, and my head snapped up, fully expecting Lincoln to walk out of there. Lincoln, with a presence so massive, he’d take up an entire arena. Instead, it was my father.

“He’s not dead,” he said.

Mom and I both gasped loudly.

“How can that be? Felipe. He was dead. We saw him,” she said rapidly. “How? Did he—”

“They revived him. They revived him,” Dad said, and then he stumbled into the nearest chair, buried his face in his hands and started to cry. “Oh my God, that was so scary. Oh my God. I thought I lost him.”

Mom rushed over to him, taking the seat beside him and wrapping an arm around him. They cried together as I stood there. My brother wasn’t dead. They didn’t let me see him until the next day. When I walked into the room, he was attached to tubes, and needles were protruding from his skin. He looked frail and uncomfortable. It was just the two of us in the room when his eyes snapped open. I stood right beside him, holding his hand. His eyeballs moved to look at me. He looked scared, as if he was trying to tell me something, but couldn’t with the tube that was in his mouth.