“That you’re here.” I waved my hand at the room. “That Clara is spending more time in a hospital when she shouldn’t have to see one for a long, long time.”
Beau grabbed my hand, lifting it up to his lips for a kiss.
Definitely not appropriate, given our non-romantic status. Yet I allowed it. My arm was tired. I didn’t have the energy to pull back.
“This isnotyour fault,” he said softly. “I will not hear another apology from your lips. I think it was you who told me women don’t apologize for the actions of men.”
I stared at him. He was tired, the circles under his eyes, the new pallor of his skin signified that. I swore he’d lost weight. But he was still Beau. Still devastatingly handsome. “You remember that?”
His gaze was unyielding. “I remember everything you’ve ever said to me, Hannah.”
My chest throbbed.
It had nothing to do with the bullet, the stitches, or the layers of ruined flesh.
I pulled my hand away.
Beau let me.
“I’m tired,” I said, voice flat.
He nodded. “Sleep, baby. I’ll be here.”
That shouldn’t have been comforting. I should’ve told him to leave. That I didn’t need him in order to sleep.
But that was a lie.
One last night. One last night in the hospital. One last night needing Beau. Then I’d be done.
It wasn’t a conversation about where I would go home to.
It was an argument.
“No way in fucking hell,” Beau barked when I’d informed him Finn was picking me up to go back to Lori’s as the nurses prepared me for discharge. I needed a lot of help still, which made it a little complicated going back to Lori who was pregnant and didn’t need to be taking care of me.
She needed to be taken care of, most notably by the man in love with her. But she insisted. And Cole was planning on coming back to help. Plus, there was Calliope. Nora. Tiffany. Even though the thought of those people playing nurse to me was embarrassing. I was growing close with them, but not that close.
It was comforting as much as it was irritating to hear Beau barking and grumpy. During my entire hospital stay, he’d been gentle, soft-spoken and oh-so-fucking sorrowful and haunted. Which didn’t satisfy me. Not even the petty part of me that was furious at Beau wished an eternal hangnail upon him.
The anguish in his eyes reminded me every moment of what we were. What we weren’t.
I wanted desperately to erase the horrible day that preceded Waylon shooting me. Wanted to forget that Beau had let me go.
But I couldn’t forget it. It was burned into my brain.
“I don’t recall asking your opinion on where I was going,” I said as I got my toiletries from the bathroom.
The toiletries that had been in Beau’s bathroom. The toiletries that had clattered to the sink the last night we were us.
“Home.” Beau took the toiletries from me, stomping over to add them to my small suitcase. It didn’t escape me that the bag contained almost as many things as the small duffel I’d arrived with.
Much nicer things, though.
I, quite obviously, hadn’t arrived at the hospital with anything but a weak pulse and half of the blood my body required to survive.
Every day since I’d woken up, I’d received a new delivery of things. Silk pajamas I definitely didn’t own before, plush robes, slippers, underwear, sweats. All high quality. All way out of my price range.
Which meant they either came from Calliope or Cole. I wasn’t in the position to argue. The luxuries helped serve as a barrier between the reality of where I was. What had happened.
