Kudos,God.
That’s the last thing I remember. Clay Butcher isn’t a devil—he’s an angel. My north. My everything.
As I open my eyes, Sir’s face isn’t hovering over me. No biker or cars or frantic world or blood on the curb. Instead, I’m nestled in a warm bed, surrounded by white, with a sheet pulled tight under my chest.
For a sweet moment, I think it was all a nightmare.
Then somewhere, a monitor chirps.
Ugh.Hospitals.
I hate hospitals.
I try to move my head, but it’s somehow both heavy and hollow. I smack my lips, tongue thick and dry. The scent of disinfectant fills my nostrils, and suddenly blunt pain rolls across my forehead as if it forgot for a moment it was there.
Slowly, I come to. I reach up, fingers instinctively finding the wound, exploring the foreign soft, puffy texture.
Bandages.
When I prod at the edge, someone gasps. There are hands—gentle, anonymous, but authoritative—guiding my wrist back down to the blanket.
"Don’t touch that," a female says, her tone tender and exhausted, like a newborn’s mother… A mother…
My babies.
Clay.
I try to focus.
A nurse sits at my bedside.
I glimpse at her—round shoulders, hospital-pink scrubs, a name on a lanyard that blurs in and out of legibility.
"You’re”—her words are slightly delayed, as if translated from another language—“awake.”
She forces a smile.
All I want to do is ask for Clay, to pull his name out of my head and taste it on my tongue, but my throat won’t work.
I try anyway. "Clay." It comes out as a rasping whisper; the way it scratches my throat reminds me of screaming.
The nurse leans in. "Easy. You’re at Connolly Hospital. You had a nasty bump to the head, but you’re going to be fine.”
I try again, this time with more… just more. "Where is Clay? Where are my babies?"Something isn’t right.He would never leave me alone in a hospital. He should be sitting beside me, waiting for me to wake up, fingers on my cheek, a reverent grounding touch. Like last time. When I lost the baby. He was there. He never left my side. I manifest his words as my throat thickens with emotion. I hear, “Little deer.” That’s what I should be hearing right now.Where is he?
“Clay.” My voice breaks as a blast of memory hits me—glass exploding, screaming, my babies, the biker, and then Clay… Sir. Then blackness.
"He’s not here… right now." She looks down on me, almost apologetic. I fucking hate her pity. She trails off into the most painful and confusing of pauses.
I try to sit up. "Where are my babies?" I ask, desperate, clawing at the words. "My babies?—"
The nurse flinches, and a second nurse appears, summoned by some secret code of distress.
Anger picks at me.
This one is older and, if emotional fatigue had a team, this lady would be the mascot.
She sits on the edge of the bed, her big blue eyes level with an expression of grave necessity. "First things first. You need to breathe," she says.
