Ryder
I hate hospitals. I've hated them since I was fourteen years old, sitting in a plastic chair while machines beeped around my sister's bed, watching her get smaller every week until the beeping just stopped one morning and nobody had to tell me what that meant. I was young enough that grief turned into something else pretty fast. Anger. Recklessness. A motorcycle at sixteen because it felt like the only thing fast enough to outrun what I was carrying.
So when Adrian called me to that hospital, my first instinct was to say no. Some things you don't go back to, not even for a friend.
I went anyway. That's the thing about Adrian, he's the only person who's ever been able to ask me for something and make me forget all the reasons I should refuse.
I didn't expect the kid to remind me o
