I firmly shake my head. “I can’t leave his side.”
“Scarlett…”
“Ican’t.” I grip his hand, as if she’ll forcibly drag me out of the room. The nurses have been trying to get me out every night, but I swear I’ll bolt my feet to the floor before I agree to leave him alone in here. “He wanted to tell me he loved me, and I didn’t let him. He begged me to tell him I loved him, and I wouldn’t. And now…” Now we may never get to say those words. “I scrubbed my hands for half an hour, and the blood wouldn’t leave, Paige. It just wouldn’t. And his chest—his chest stopped moving, and his lips stopped moving, and I—”
“Scarlett…”
“I didn’t tell him I loved him. That’s all he wanted, and I didn’t give it to him.”
“Okay. You don’t have to go.” She moves closer. “Tomorrow, maybe.”
Tomorrow. The implication is almost enough to break me. This is what our life will look like from now on, isn’t it? For weeks, maybe months. Until I’llhaveto go. Find another job, because Booked It is obviously done, but the bills still need to be paid. Ethan needs to eat, and I need to be his guardian.
At some point, I’ll have to leave Rafael here, all alone. Maybe hurting, though the doctors promise he’s not. Defenseless, motionless. I’ll have to move on like my life makes any sense without him in it.
But that day certainly isn’t today. Or tomorrow.
“Maybe.”
“Okay.” There’s some shuffling noise, then she holds out an envelope. “This is for you.”
Tentatively, I grab the envelope and open it, trying to push away the sinking feeling I get once I let his hand go. “What is it?” I ask when all I see inside is money. “What is this for?”
“It’s from—well, everyone. Whatever they could spare. So you can pay bills and buy food and whatever else you need while you’re here.”
My eyes sting and my nose burns. “I can’t accept this.”
“Not only can you, but you have to.” She takes the envelope back. “In fact, I’ll be using a chunk of this to pay your bills today and leave the rest at home, okay?”
Too tired to argue, I say, “Okay. Thank you.”
She wraps her arm around me in a quick side hug.
“This is it, right? How love will destroy me? I thought it was our breakup—that no longer having him in my life was the strongest pain I could experience—but I should have known better.”
Death. Grief. Loss.
That’s what love really is.
“I’m sorry, you know? If it wasn’t for me… I pushed you to fall in love, and—”
“I don’t regret Rafael,” I rush out. “Not for one second. Loving him is worthanypain.”
I just wish it was me lying in this bed instead of him.
“He’s your real-life book boyfriend, Scarlett.” She presses a kiss to the side of my head. “Thosealwayswake up.”
Tears trickle down my cheeks.
“I’ll text you later, okay?”
I turn with a smile over my shoulder until she leaves the room, and I’m finally alone with Rafael again. Maybe I should read to him some more. The doctors said he might hear it. Or maybe that’s the sort of bullshit they say to people like me, hopelessly waiting for their loved ones to wake up.
I grab a noir Paige brought over yesterday, but I can’t really focus, and to be honest, I’m kind of done with murder. Instead, I reach into my bag and take outHearts on Hold. I’ve been reading it to him, annotating it the way he asked me to weeks ago. But once I reached the third-act breakup, I couldn’t force myself to watch these two people hurt the same way I am hurting.
Still, it sounds better than murder, so I open to page 256 and read out loud: “Julie sat alone in the quiet of her apartment, her gaze fixed on the flickering candle in front of her, but her mind was far from the present. It kept drifting back to him—always back to him.
“Terrence. It felt like a lifetime ago when they were wrapped up in each other, when his touch felt like the safest place she could ever be. She could still see the way he’d watched her from across the room and made her heart skip a beat. She remembered how easilythey’d fallen into step, how perfectly they’d fit, despite everything that should have kept them apart.”
