"He's my friend. He won't sue me."
"He won't sue you," Brooks agrees, his voice silky. "But he's an officer of the court. If I press charges, which I intend to do, I can subpoena him. I can put him on the stand and ask him, under oath, what he saw. And he'll have to choose between perjury and sending his fiancée's best friend to jail."
The blood drains from my face. I hadn't thought of that. I had been so worried about Mason's judgment, I hadn't considered that Brooks could weaponize Mason's integrity against me.
"You wouldn't," I whisper.
"Try me," Brooks says. "Give me my phone."
"I've been here for two hours making sure you didn't die," I say, desperate to change the subject, to find a different angle. "I rode in the ambulance. I held the basin when you got sick in the intake bay. I haven't left this room, Brooks."
He studies me without blinking, hunting for the deception he knows is there. Men like Brooks Taylor don't believe in altruism. They believe in leverage. And right now, he is trying to figure out why the woman who flattened him is currently fluffing his pillows and guarding his hydration.
He looks at my dress, the champagne fabric now wrinkled and stained with grass and dirt. He looks at the dark circles under my eyes. He looks at the terror I'm trying so hard to hide.
"Why?" he asks. It's a simple question, but it feels like a trap. "Why are you still here, Ivy? If you were smart, you would have run. You're scared. I can see it. So why are you sitting in that chair?"
I open my mouth to answer, to conjure up some noble excuse, but the door swings open before I can speak.
A nurse marches in, the same one from earlier. She's carrying a clipboard and wearing the kind of forced high-wattage cheerfulness that makes me want to crawl under the bed.
"Well, look who's awake!" she announces, beaming at Brooks as if he's a prize poodle who performed a trick.
She moves to the bedside, checking the monitors with brisk movements. Then she turns that glow on me.
"You must be so relieved, honey. I told you he needed to sleep it off."
I freeze. Every muscle in my body locks up.
"Yes," I manage to choke out. "Very relieved."
Brooks looks between us, his brow furrowing. The pain in his eyes is eclipsed by confusion.
"Who is..." he starts to ask.
"Your fiancée has been an absolute wreck," the nurse continues, talking right over him as she adjusts his IV drip. She reaches out and pats my arm affectionately. "She hasn't left your side for a second. Poor thing was shaking like a leaf when you came in. She told the intake coordinator she wouldn't let anyone else make medical decisions for you. That's true love, right there."
The silence that follows is absolute.
It is a vacuum. A black hole in the center of the room that sucks all the oxygen out of the air.
I don’t dare look at Brooks. I stare at the speckled linoleum tiles, counting the scuff marks, bracing for the explosion—his shout of “Who is this woman,” the call button slammed for security, the nurse summoned with orders to call the police and remove the stranger who assaulted him.
But the shout doesn't come.
Instead, a low, dark sound escapes him. A chuckle.
It's a terrifying sound. It's dry and devoid of humor, the sound of a lock clicking into place.
I risk a glance up.
Brooks is watching me. The confusion is gone. The dull gloss of pain is pushed to the background. In their place is something far more dangerous: clarity.
He looks from the plastic 'Visitor' band on my wrist to my pale, terrified face. He looks at the nurse, then back to me.
I can practically see the gears turning.
He is connecting the dots—the lawyer at the wedding, the ambulance ride, the refusal to leave. It seems to dawn on him that I didn't stay out of guilt; I stayed to get past the "Family Only" policy. I stayed to keep him quiet.
