I brace myself with a hand on the wall. Fuck. I’mreallynot usedto being in pain anymore. “Yeah, I should be fine.”
Nodding, Arlo slips out of the room and into the hall. He’s only gone for a minute, tops, before he’s opening the door and helping me walk out. Like Arlo said, he’s only two doors down from me, and when we push open the door to his room and walk in, my body tenses.
“We should be quick,” Arlo warns.
I nod, shrugging him off so I can walk toward Damien’s bed. I’m a nervous wreck the entire time, my heart hammering.
When I get close enough to see him, I can’t fight a gasp.
His hair is matted with blood, and there’s a line of stitches down his hairline that looks like it’s holding his face to the scalp. The beep, beep, beep of his monitor is loud. I glance up at it. I know nothing about what the numbers mean, but it seems like his blood pressure is low.
The swelling is so severe that I can barely make out any of his features under it. The blue eyes I’d grown so afraid to look into are so swollen I can’t even see his eyelashes, and there are bruises and deep cuts on his cheekbones. His once-straight nose is mangled and definitely broken. There’s nothing of the face I once loved and feared in this man.
Good.
I don’t even care if that makes me a bad person. Not even a little bit.
Leaning against the side of his bed, I take a deep breath. “I don’t know whether you can hear me or not. I hope you can, but even if you can’t, I don’t care.” This isn’t for him anyway. It’s for me. “I fucking hate you. I hate you for what you did to me. And I hate you for making me believe what we shared was love.”
My voice goes wobbly, so I pause, trying to get it under control.I clear my throat.
“You tried to ruin me, Damien. You tried. And you fucking failed.”
Tears fill my eyes, and instead of fighting them back, I let them fall. The salt burns my wounds as it spills down my face.
“You don’t ever get to touch me again. I’m going to report you. I’m going to press charges. I’m going to ruin your life the way you tried to ruin mine.”
I wipe my face with the back of my hand.
“And unlike you, I’m going to fucking succeed.”
I take a step backward, then another, not taking my eyes off him until I bump into Arlo. When I turn around, he’s staring at me with glassy eyes. “Fucking proud of you. Now let’s get out of here.”
He wraps his arm around me again. The monitors start getting loud, the beeping getting quicker and quicker. That’s almost a surefire guarantee that nurses are gonna be on their way. Arlo and I share a panicked glance. “We gotta go,” I whisper.
Arlo nods, then peeks into the hall again, looking both ways before practically dragging me back to my room. No sooner are we through the door than three people rush past.
“Fuck,” I whisper, adrenaline coursing through me. “Holy fuck. What do you think’s happening?”
“I don’t know.” He glances at the door. “Let me see if I can hear anything.”
He slips into the hallway. I want to pace, and I probably would be if it weren’t for how badly my head hurts from being up and moving around. As it stands, I lean against the wall to wait. There’s no way I’m going to be able to sit in bed right now.
It feels like Arlo’s been gone for a lifetime. I can hear more people running past my door, their shoes frantic on the vinyl floors. Andthen everything goes silent. Not only that, but still. Like the entire world just stops. Something heavy presses down on me in that silence.
The door to my room opens, and when Arlo steps back inside, his face is ghost-white.
I don’t need him to say it. I already know before he even opens his mouth. I can tell just from the look on his face.
“He’s dead.”
Chapter 37
Austin
I’mcradlingmyheadin my hands, sitting in this freezing room at the sheriff’s department, and every single fiber of my being is dying to get to Luca. No one will tell me a fucking thing, and it’s making me crazy.
I just want to know if he’s okay.
