Xia pulled away, shaking her head.“I don’t matter at this moment, Cheri.Don’t you get it?”She turned and walked out with heavy steps and a leaden weight in her chest.She knew what she had to do.She had to fight.For him and with him.
Until the very end.
Rex
Midnight, LSUHSC Traumaand Critical Care faculty...
The world was a tunnel of fog, a suffocating haze that pressed in on him from all sides.His thoughts moved like molasses, dragging him under again and again.The last thing he remembered—the beach.The fire.The chaos.The Paradise Resort burning behind them, gunfire cracking like thunder, the scent of smoke, salt, and blood thick in his nose.
Then—nothing.Just this endless, drowning dark.
He could still feel how his lungs burned.His body ached in a deep throbbing kind of pain that radiated from his back, from his shoulders, from every fucking inch of him.
He tried to move, but his limbs were leaden, his muscles useless, as if he had drowned and had been left to rot.A low, rhythmic beeping pulsed somewhere in the distance, steady as a heartbeat, but wrong.Too fast.Too loud.
Where the hell am I?
His eyelids fluttered, heavy as concrete, but he forced them open.The room was dim, bathed in the eerie blue glow of monitors and the flicker of machines casting ghostly shadows on the walls.The air smelled like antiseptic and bleach, like sterile death and beneath it—something else.
Blood.Sweat.Fear.
“F-Fuck.”
He tried to sit up, but his body betrayed him as his arms trembled like a newborn baby.His vision swam as the room tilted with white-hot agony lancing through him.
“Fuck me,” he hissed, grinding his teeth as he collapsed back against the pillows.“What the actual f-fuck is going on?”Even his voice sounded hoarse and frail.
His eyes darted, taking in the myriads of tubes, the IV lines snaking into his arms, and the oxygen cannula digging into his nose.His skin prickled, too tight, too sensitive, like he’d been flayed alive.He flexed his fingers, testing his strength, but they barely twitched.
Jesus, just how much blood did I lose?
The memory hit him like a freight train—the fight with Dominic Drake.The gunshots.The way he had killed him and getting Xia to safety before his vision had tunneled, and the world went black as he hit the ground.He remembered the cold, the way his body had gone numb, and the terrifying certainty that he was dying.
“Xia.”His heart lurched like a wild, panicked beast in his chest.Where was she?She had been hurt.Who took care of her, since he—
He surged upright again, ignoring the pain, or his vision swimming as the monitors shrieked, and alarms blared like air raid sirens.His head pounded as his skull threatened to split open, but he didn’t care.He had to find her.He had to.His mind was numb until...he felt her.She was there.A whisper of movement.A soft, familiar scent—jasmine and her own personal sweet smell—cut through the sterile stink of the hospital.His breath caught.
“Xia.”
She stood in the doorway, her silhouette framed by the dim hall light, her hair a wild halo around her pale face.Her eyes were wide, dark, shining with raw desperation.She looked like a ghost, too thin with sharp cheekbones, and her clothes hanging off her like she’d shrunk in on herself, but she was alive.
She moved, rushing toward him.He felt her hands trembling as she reached for him.
“Rex!”
His name on her lips was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.He tried to speak, but his throat was sandpaper, his voice a rasp.
“Xia...y-you’re here.”
She grabbed his hand.Her fingers were cold, but her touch was fire to his soul.
“Oh, thank you, God,” she whispered, her voice breaking.“You’re awake.You’re awake.”Her other hand hovered over him, like she was afraid to touch him, like he might shatter.
He squeezed her fingers, weak but insistent.“H-how long...?”
She swallowed hard, her eyes glistening.“Six weeks.”
Six weeks.
