Part IV

Trouble follows Candace home to Sweet Amoris, where Castiel has been up to no good in her absence. Springtime brings life-altering changes for everyone - including Dake. The fourth and final part (really this time) culminates at the Sweet Amoris High School prom. There will be dresses. There will be drama. There will be confessions of love - but from whom, and to what end?

Chapter 37: Forgetting

EMERSON, CANDACE LOUISA
DOB: 01 MAY 1995, 17 YRS
SX: F, HT: 155 CM, WT: 57 KG
ST. ANDREW'S HOSPITAL

I pulled at the bothersome bracelet, but I was too weak to tear the laminated paper from my wrist.

The chart hanging from the foot of my bed listed 'dehydration,' 'fatigue,' and 'anxiety' as what was wrong with me, but the real reason didn't have an associated check box.

It's because I'm selfish, and anyone who dares get close to me only ends up getting hurt.

Nathaniel had a concussion and a nasty bruise forming on his face, but he seemed lucid enough, so they discharged him. With nowhere to go, he sat in the chair that faced my hospital bed, nervously jiggling his leg and chewing on his chapped lower lip. He had changed into a red t-shirt from last year's debate tournament; they probably disposed of the one splattered with Dake's blood.

Our packed suitcases from the youth hostel sat on the floor beside Nathaniel's chair. News of our involvement at the house-party-turned-fight that sent seven kids to Saint Andrew's did not go over very well with Belinda back at Loving Arms. We were ejected from the hostel and would be sent home as soon as Lysander and I were in one piece.

Of the three of us, Lysander was worst off. I hadn't seen him yet, but he was somewhere beyond the curtain that separated my bed from the rest of the emergency ward. Nathaniel told me he was cut in at least thirty places on his back and right side. They were mostly superficial cuts, but it would take around eighty stitches to sew them all shut. He must have been in tremendous pain - and his new wings were probably ruined.

Lysander's two assailants were being treated for similar injuries, but because they were drunk, their bodies languid, the cuts were neither as numerous nor as severe.

The sixth victim of the house party disaster was a dangerously drunk beads-and-feathers surfer girl, whose name I found out was Chelsea. For the first few hours of my hospitalization, she was in a curtained-off section right next to me. I had to listen as she was made to swallow liquid charcoal that would force the nine shots she took to come back up.

As for Dake...I had no idea. No one would tell me.

"I never knew your middle name was Louisa." Nathaniel was peeking at my chart. "It's pretty."

I didn't answer.

I checked the I.V. fluid bag that hung over my head. I was told I would be okay to leave shortly after it was empty. Right now, it was about half full. Really, I was the one who deserved Nathaniel's concussion and Lysander's lacerations. I deserved Dake's skull fracture. I deserved to be crawling around the living room of the Hallorans' house on my hands and knees, picking up each individual shard of broken glass with my bare fingers.

Whatever Dake felt for me before, he can't feel that way now. Not after some other guy from my school broke his nose. With his head.

The monitor I was hooked up to quickened the pace of its ceaseless beeping as my brooding heart fluttered.

Nathaniel scooted his chair closer to me. "Candace, everything's going to be okay now. We can leave this whole thing behind us. We can forget about this nightmare and go back to our lives."

"Sure, Nathaniel."

After a few months, Nathaniel would be fine. He would go back to Student Council meetings and volunteer work and debate team and Quiz Bowl - and at the end of the year, he would graduate and move away to his dream college. He would forget.

Lysander couldn't forget. He would wear the scars forever.

Dake couldn't forget. Even if they fixed his nose so that he could again look like himself, my face would follow behind him until he got that tattoo removed.

And I couldn't forget. Dakota Halloran was my first kiss, my first love.

We left Australia before I got the chance to find him again and tell him goodbye.