But alive.
"I love you," I whisper against his skin. "I know I should've said it before. I was scared. I'm still scared. But I'm done running. So you need to wake up, okay? You need to wake up so I can tell you properly. So I can show you what it means. So I can spend the rest of my life proving it."
No response.
Just the steady beep of the monitor.
But I stay.
Keep holding his hand.
Keep talking to him—about nothing, about everything, about the life I want to build with him if he'll just wake up.
About the future I never let myself imagine until now.
The night stretches on.
I don't sleep.
Can't.
Every beep of the monitor, every hitch in his breathing, sends my heart racing.
But I stay and I wait.
Because that's what you do when someone is your person.
You stay.
No matter what.
CHAPTER NINE
Gunnar
Everything is hazy.
Fragments of memory float through my consciousness like debris after a storm—Ingrid's voice calling my name, my mother's hands on my face, pain so sharp it stole my breath, then nothing but darkness.
And dreams.
Fever dreams, I think.
Twisted images of children screaming, of knives flashing in the dark, of Ingrid's face swimming above me while someone kept saying "stay with us, stay with us, stay with us."
I don't know what's real anymore.
Don't know how long I've been under.
Don't know if I'm still alive or if this is what death feels like—floating in darkness, disconnected from everything.
Then I hear it.
Beeping.
Steady and rhythmic.
A heart monitor.
