“This is my fault, you’re here because of me. Because I’m selfish and took when I shouldn’t have. I should regret finally giving into the temptation, but I don’t.I’ve wanted you for so long. I don’t know when I fell in love with you.”
A tear slips off my chin, dripping onto the sterile blue floor.
“But I did. I do.”
Folding myself into the chair beside the bed, I take hold of her hand, expecting it to be warmer but it’s still cold, too fucking cold.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, Savannah but I saw what it was doing to you. I’m a fucking coward, I know I am, I let you down. I always let people down, but I had to let you go. I didn’t want to keep hurting you with my lack of courage. I shouldn’t have let you drive away though.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“I need you to wake up, Savannah.” I lean across the bed, pressing my lips to the back of her hand. “You can hate me. Despise me. Wish me fucking dead but I need you to wake up.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Even if you hate me, I’ll always love you.”
My soul is in pieces, she is the only thing that is keeping me together.
“Just wake up, Tiny Dancer. Come back to us.”
But she doesn’t, not today or tomorrow, or even a week from now.
She doesn’t wake up and every day that goes by, I crumble, fracture, piece by piece I fall apart with no way of ever being put back together again.
Chapter Thirty-five
Thirteen days, five hours and thirty seven minutes have passed since I found out about Savannah’s accident and so many days since she’s been in her coma with no sign of waking up.
Until now.
My legs feel heavy as I walk the corridor toward Savannah’s room, my exhaustion and fatigue a plague I now carry on my shoulders for all to see. I haven’t slept more than three hours in one night and those are haunted by nightmares.
But it isn’t my past haunting me anymore. It’s the accident. Dean pulled the footage from that night so we could understand just how it happened and the guy who hit her had ran a red light, plowing into the side of her small vehicle. Savannah was lucky to survive it. And now all I see is that accident, all I hear is thecrunch and scream of metal and the skidding of tires as rain pours down onto the city.
In the aftermath, as both cars smoked in the rain, it was silent. No other cars joined them on the road, no one came running. There was no one, for several minutes the scene was so still I thought that the video had been cut off.
How could a street be this empty, this deserted and still this happened? Two people in the middle of the night running into each other with such violence when the rest of the world was sleeping all around them.
Eventually, someone had come across them and called the emergency services but it’s the crash and then the silence that keeps my brain churning, night after night replaying it over and over.
Sometimes I think I can hear her scream.
I greet the nurses at the station with a quick nod before I push on the door and step into Savannah’s room.
And stop dead.
Awake. She’s awake.
Sebastian is here with Willow and they’re talking with her where she is propped up on pillows.
All eyes turn to me.
“Savannah,” Her name croaks from my mouth.
“Hi Killian,” There’s a rasp to her voice from lack ofuse. The bruises are still marring her skin, faded but there, the cuts healing slowly. She’s pale, looking thin and frail. But she’s awake.
I step toward her on impulse, wanting to take her face in my hands and press my mouth to hers. I want to taste her again, feeling her skin on my body.
