“I...”
“That’s what I thought. Noah!” She raised her voice slightly. “Find me a vending machine or a cafeteria. These girls need food.”
Noah, who had clearly been eavesdropping despite his pretense of phone-focused distraction, nodded and disappeared down the hallway.
“You’re going to eat,” Sarah told me and Vivi. “You’re going to drink some water. And then you’re going to rest, even if it’s just in these uncomfortable hospital chairs. Your friend is going to need you when she wakes up, and you can’t take care of her if you’ve run yourself into the ground.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Vivi said quietly.
“What she said,” I agreed.
Sarah nodded, satisfied. Then her expression softened again. “Knox is going to be here soon, isn’t he?”
As if summoned by her words, my phone buzzed with a text. I looked down and saw his name on the screen.
Thirty minutes away. Are you okay?
I stared at the message for a long moment, all the complicated feelings I had about my mate swirling in my chest. Anger. Hurt. Love. Fear. Everything tangled together until I couldn’t separate one emotion from another.
“He’s almost here,” I said.
Sarah put a hand on my shoulder. “Remember what I said. Forgivable. Not right, but forgivable.”
I wasn’t sure I was ready to forgive him yet. I wasn’t sure I was ready to have the conversation we needed to have. But he was coming, and I was going to have to face him whether I was ready or not.
12
— • —
Lina
All the crying had left me completely drained.
After I received Knox’s message saying he was five minutes away, the tension that had been holding me together finally started to ease. My shoulders dropped. My breathing slowed. My eyes started to close against my will, the exhaustion of the past several hours catching up with me all at once.
Noah, bless his charming soul, noticed my state and disappeared down the hallway. A few minutes later he returned with a young nurse trailing behind him, her cheeks flushed and her eyes slightly dazed in that way women tended to look after being on the receiving end of Noah’s full attention.
“There’s a room down the hall that’s under renovation,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “No patients in there right now. She can rest for a bit if she needs to.”
I was too tired to ask what exactly Noah had said to convince her. Too tired to do anything except let him guide me down the hallway and into a small room with bare walls and plastic sheeting covering some of the furniture. The bed was made up though, clean sheets and a pillow that looked soft enough to pass out on.
Which is exactly what I did.
I crashed onto the mattress and was asleep before my head fully settled. I didn’t dream. Didn’t think. Just fell into the kind of deep, dreamless unconsciousness that only comes from complete physical and emotional exhaustion.
I didn’t know how much time passed before I started to wake up. It could have been minutes or hours. But as consciousness slowly returned, I became aware of several things at once.
I was warm, warmer than I should have been in a hospital room with thin blankets. And there was a sense of peace settling over me, the panic and fear and grief that had been consuming me earlier faded to a dull ache in the background.
It took me a second to realize why.
Knox was sitting next to my bed, one hand wrapped around mine, his thumb tracing gentle circles on my skin. The bond between us was wide open, something it hadn’t been since our fight, and he was pushing nothing but warmth and comfort and love through the connection. No words. Just feelings. Just him letting me know he was there, that I wasn’t alone, that everything was going to be okay.
My heart warmed at that. Even after everything, even with all the anger and hurt that still lingered between us, he was here. He was trying.
“You’re here,” I mumbled, my voice thick with sleep.
He was staring at me with an intensity that made my stomach flip. Those gray eyes holding so much emotion I couldn’t begin to untangle it all.
