Faking It with My Ex's Best Friend novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Stairwell

Cade corners her in the stairwell and she shows him the text. He watches Candice put her hand on Trevor's collar, and Trevor announces she is coming home with him.

Cade set the bag on the chair and did not look away.

"You know my name," he said.

"Trevor must have said it."

"Trevor's been in here ten minutes and said it zero times."

Down the hall a cart rattled past.

I had one chance to be a girl with a head injury, and I used it.

"Can you help me walk?" I said. "I want to stand up."

He studied me another second.

Then he crossed the room and put an arm under my good elbow.

I got my feet on the cold floor, and the whole room tipped.

Cade held on until it settled.

"The stairs," I said. "Is there a stairwell? I need to see one."

"Why?"

"Please."

He walked me past the nurses' desk in my socks and my gown, with my hand on his sleeve.

Nobody stopped us.

The fire door at the end of the hall was heavy, and he pushed it with his shoulder.

Concrete steps went down in a gray zigzag.

My knees went soft and I sat on the top step before I decided to.

Cade crouched in front of me.

"You're pale," he said. "Do you want me to get a nurse?"

"I fell down a set of these," I said. "Do you know what I remember about it?"

He did not move.

"All of it."

I said it in my own voice, flat and quiet.

His eyes went to the stitches and back.

"Say that again."

"My memory is fine. I know my name and I know my mother's phone number, and I know that Trevor is the one man in that room I would like to see drown."

The fire door hissed on its closer behind us.

Cade rubbed his jaw.

"The doctor said amnesia."

"The doctor asked if I knew him, and I said no."

"Why would you say no?"

"Because yesterday I went to his apartment with a cake."

I told him the rest in short, plain sentences.

I gave him the bedroom in one line and kept going to the part I had told no one.

Trevor on the landing above me saying, "Wait," and not coming down.

Cade listened with his hands hanging between his knees.

When I finished he looked at the wall for a long time.

"He told me you tripped," he said. "He said he heard you fall and ran down."

"He stood at the top."

"You don't know that."

"I was there."

His mouth tightened.

"Trevor and I have been friends since we were twelve," he said. "He's an idiot sometimes. He's a show-off. He doesn't do this."

"Okay."

"That's it? Okay?"

"You don't have to believe me." I wiped my face with the back of my brace. "You can watch him instead."

"Watch him do what?"

"Be afraid of what I remember."

"His phone buzzed in there. Candice wrote, 'Does she remember? Tell me she doesn't.'"

Cade's head came up.

"A girlfriend asks that," I said. "A friend doesn't."

"Lainey."

"Walk back with me. Stand at the door. Tell me what you see."

He helped me up.

We went back along the hall, slowly.

He put me in the bed and pulled the blanket to my waist.

Then he stood at the door with his arms folded and his back to the glass.

Through the little window behind him I could see the corridor.

The elevator opened.

Candice came out with a bunch of yellow tulips and a Get Well balloon on a ribbon.

She wore black and sunglasses and looked like a woman at a funeral who had planned it.

Trevor stepped out of the waiting area to meet her.

They were thirty feet down the hall.

Candice took off her sunglasses and put her hand on his collar.

She straightened it.

He caught her wrist and held it there a second against his chest.

He leaned in and said something into her hair.

She smiled with her eyes shut.

I watched Cade watch them.

He did not say anything, and he did not turn around.

His shoulders got slowly, completely still.

"That's eight years of friendship," I said quietly. "She was at my grandmother's funeral."

"I know," he said. "I drove her there."

He turned his head to me, finally, and his gray eyes were different.

"Don't tell him," he said. "Not yet."

"I wasn't going to."

Trevor pushed the door open with the tulips in his arm.

He looked from Cade to me and back, and his smile came up.

"Look who's up," he said. "Good news, baby. The doctor signed you out for noon."

"Already?" I said.

"You're coming home with me." He set the flowers on my tray. "Candice's going to help take care of you."

Candice came in behind him, pressing her lips together.

"Hi, Lainey," she said. "Do you know who I am?"

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