And maybe that's enough.
Maybe that has to be enough.
"I've got you," I say again, pulling her back against my chest. "It's over now. He's gone, and he's never coming back, and I've got you. I've got both of you."
I hold her until her sobs quiet.
Until her breathing steadies.
Until she falls asleep in my arms, exhausted and broken but alive.
And I stay there, holding my wife, watching the monitors track her heartbeat and our baby's heartbeat, two rhythms intertwined.
Virgil is dead.
The nightmare is over.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Vanna
I wake up to the sound of Garrett snoring.
It's not a loud snore—more of a soft rumble, the kind of sound that used to annoy me when we were first married and now feels like the safest thing in the world.
I turn my head on the pillow, wincing at the pull of bruised muscles, and find him slumped in the chair beside my bed.
He looks terrible.
Three days of stubble shadows his jaw.
His hair is greasy, pushed back from his face in uneven waves.
Dark circles ring his eyes, so deep they look like bruises themselves.
He's still wearing the same clothes he had on the day of the cabin—someone must have washed them, because the blood is gone, but I recognize the flannel shirt, the worn jeans.
He hasn't left.
Not once.
Not for a shower, not for a real meal, not for anything.
The nurses have tried to kick him out during shift changes, during procedures, during the middle of the night when visiting hours are long over.
He just looks at them with those cold eyes of his, and they back down.
No one argues with Bloodhound.
Not when he's like this.
I watch him sleep, studying the lines of his face in the gray morning light filtering through the hospital blinds.
He looks older than thirty.
Worn down.
Like the last three days have aged him a decade.
