When she wakes up, I’m going to make damn sure she knows it.
3
JOSIE
THREE WEEKS LATER
Hospitals, I’ve decided, are designed by sadists.
The beds are uncomfortable, the lights are too bright, the machines beep at random intervals like they’re specifically calibrated to prevent sleep. And the gown—don’t even get me started on the gown. One sneeze and I’m flashing the entire nursing staff.
But the worst part? The absoluteworstpart of waking up in Stoneheart General Hospital with broken ribs and a head that feels like someone has used it for batting practice?
Boone Armstrong.
He’d moved in at some point during my coma. The coma had lasted eleven days before I’d woken up with a few new holes in my head from efforts to relieve the pressure from the swelling. The first day after waking had involved one hell of a headache.
I blink awake, searching for the giant shadow that’s camping in my room.
Stone’s shifted from the chair beside my bed to the one by the window, a cup of coffee in his hand and his phone pressed to his ear. His voice is low, too quiet for me to make out the words, but I recognize the tone. Club business.
I watch him through half-closed eyes, not ready to announce that I’m awake.
According to the nurses—who’ve been far too delighted to fill me in—Stone has been here every single day since the accident. Every. Single. Day. Sitting by my bed while I lay unconscious, holding my hand, talking to me.
When the swelling got worse and they had to do emergency surgery—burr holes, they called it, which sounds far too casual for “drilling into someone’s skull”—he was in the waiting room for six hours. He threatened to have the entire MC descend on the hospital if anyone tried to make him leave.
I woke up a week ago to find him asleep in that chair, his hand wrapped around mine, looking like he hadn’t slept properly in days. The first word out of my mouth was his name.
I’ve been trying not to think about what that means.
He stayed. For three weeks, he stayed.
The thought keeps circling back, no matter how many times I try to push it away. Eight months of professional distance, of loaded silences, of pretending that night on the porch never happened—and the moment I end up in a hospital bed, he’s here. Holding my hand. Looking at me like?—
Stop, Josie. Don’t start reading into things again.
But I’ve seen his face when I opened my eyes. I’ve seen the relief, the fear, the raw emotion he usually keeps locked down tight. Whatever else Stone is, frustrating, confusing, impossible, he hasn’t been faking that.
Which makes everything so much worse.
I can imagine what I look like right now, but I’m too scared to ask. I can feel the stubble on the side of my head where they shaved it, the tight pull of stitches, the swelling that makes my face feel like it belongs to someone else. I must look like something out of a horror movie—Frankenstein’s monster in a hospital gown.
Which is why when Stone walks back in and his gaze lands on me and he doesn’t flinch, my chest begins to ache in ways that have nothing to do with my broken ribs.
If he doesn’t care, I can hate him. Can write off the almost-kiss and the rejection and the three weeks of silence as a bullet dodged. Can tell myself I’m better off and eventually believe it.
But he does care. He’s proven that by being here, by staying, by sitting vigil while doctors cut into my head and I fought my way back to consciousness.
He cares. He just doesn’t want to.
I don’t know what to do with that.
“You’re awake.”
Stone’s voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. I open my eyes fully to find him standing beside the bed, phone tucked away, coffee abandoned.
“Unfortunately.” I try to push myself up and immediately regret it. Fire lances through my ribs, sharp and vicious, and I collapse back against the pillows with a hiss.
