“Hey guys,” I said sheepishly when I reached Lane’s family.
The words had barely left my mouth before Birdie was on her feet, drawing me into a hug. It took everything I had not to stiffen in her embrace.
“Thank you,” she murmured repeatedly, holding me so tightly I could barely breathe.
When her grip loosened and she pulled back, I looked anywhere but at her tear-streaked face or the rest of the family when I said, “I didn’t do anything.” I blinked a few times, breathing slowly to fight off my own tears. “I almost lost him.”
“But you didn’t,” Finn reminded me, his hand reaching up to squeeze my shoulder. Normally, I didn’t mind physical contact, but at that moment, every nerve ending in my body was overstimulated. Being touched was rapidly fraying my control, and I needed to get away from these people before I lost it.
To Finn, I merely nodded. Now was neither the time nor the place to argue with him, not when Lane’s fate no longer rested in my hands. Instead, I withdrew into myself, walking out into the lobby for a moment of peace.
Truthfully, I didn’t deserve their praise. I wasn’t even sure I deserved to remain in the same room as all of these people who openly loved and respected him—something I’d never quite managed. And in return, he loved these people as fiercely as he could, meeting their love with equal fervor, giving them the same all-encompassing energy he gave everything else in his life.
There’d been a time when my name would’ve been at the top of that list—until I’d spurned him.
The whole ordeal, from Lane being shot to me standing here alone now, had taken no more than an hour, but my entire life had changed. Shifted into something unrecognizable, in those sixty minutes.
I couldn’t face the possibility that he wouldn’t walk out of this hospital on his own two feet, so I was manifesting it: Lane would survive. No, he would more than survive. He would make a full recovery and come back better than before.
Hell, my chest hurt. Putting my back to the wall, I sank down to the floor, hidden from view of the waiting room by the check-in desk. Drawing my legs up to my chest, I wrapped my arms around them and dropped my forehead to my knees.
Closing my eyes, I inhaled for six, held it for four, and exhaled for four, using the breathing technique I learned from my therapist ages ago to marshal my emotions. As adrenaline fled my system, I allowed that truth—that Lane would be okay; I’d accept nothing less—to settle in.
But that wasn’t the only truth now sinking deep into my bones. This other one had always been there, though I’d managed to ignore it, shove it into a box and bury it deep in my soul for over fifteen long years.
Memories flashed through my mind. Moments in time I’d both tried like hell to forget and clung to in an attempt to protect them, knowing I’d never get any more like them. Attempting to perfectly preserve them like a dragonfly in amber, a relic of a day long since passed, clearly visible in my mind but completely untouchable.
Navigating Boise State’s campus that first week of freshman year, finding ourselves not so far from home but in a different world entirely. How by the next fall, Lane had gone from someone I’d been friendly with in that way all kids from a small town were, to someone I considered mybestfriend, to…more.
The transformation of my relationship with Lane hadn’t happened overnight but spanned years.
When those final roadblocks between us came down, when nothing stood between us and giving in, it had been all too easyto fall into our new normal. Back then, I remembered feeling like I could’ve done anything so long as I had him by my side.
Until the night that once again changed everything. Until one party altered not just the course of my relationship with him, butallof my relationships. My entire perception of the world changed in a blink, in a haze of pain and despair, the kinds of memories IwishedI could forget.
In the aftermath, I should’ve drawn him closer, held tight to the one thing that remained constant. I should’ve clung to the man who’d vowed to be with me through it all, should’ve thrown myself into his open arms and let him shield me as best as he could from the hellscape my life had become.
I liked to think there were a lot of things I’d do differently if I could go back and change it all, but I wasn’t sure I meant it. After that night, I became unrecognizable and nearly unbearable to be around. There were days when I thought it would’ve been easier to end it all than keep pushing forward and keep forcing my loved ones to deal with me.
Lane should’ve been a reason to keep living, and while I’d obviously found other ways to fight through and come out on the other side, unfortunately, he wound up being another casualty in the war I’d waged with myself.
A war, perhaps, I’d neverstoppedwaging. There was no truce to be found, no white flag to be waved. Not when, even though so much had changed, there was one thing thathadn’t.
I was still desperately, irrevocably in love with Lane Lawless.
And I had no idea what to do about it.
two
. . .
LANE
“Morning, baby,”a soft voice murmured, accompanied by the sagging of the mattress and a warm body curling up against mine.
I blinked my eyes open, focusing on the ceiling of our bedroom.
Turning toward the woman at my side, I clocked the brown hair fanning out over my arm, which I’d instinctively wrapped around her, the smooth cheek pressed against my bare chest.
