Not sure why it’s loud in my head, thrumming into my skull through the fluorescent lights and thebeep beep beepof monitors that have no business being so goddamn noisy.
My mouth tastes like dust and metal. The back of my throat’s dry enough to spark a fire, and I swear someone poured cement into my limbs while I was out.
I can’t move.
My head feels like I’ve slept through a damn apocalypse—maybe I did. Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’s happened to me.
The sheets are stiff and smell overwhelmingly like bleach.
The hospital. Of course, not my first—and let’s be real, not my last—visit to this place.
There’s a tight, itchy bandage on my side, and when I shift even an inch, pain slices through me like a rusty blade.
Right. I got shot.
Strings of memories start pouring into my fogged-up brain.
The cave.
Dark. Cold.
Vaughn.
His face comes back in the brightest flash. His body pressed close, his arms enveloping me, and his all-consuming warmth when everything else was ice.
And the kiss that I stole before…what?
Well, fuck me, I remember nothing after I let myself drift off to sleep with his taste on my tongue and his breath in my ears.
My eyes dart around.
Whereishe anyway?
The question hits before I can stop it. Yes, the first question I ask myself after I wake up in the hospital is not how am I alive, not what the hell happened, justwhere the fuck is Vaughn?
I try to sit up, my teeth gritting, my breath hissing, and my lungs protesting as pain explodes all over my side.
The monitor freaks out six ways to Sunday, beeping like crazy. A nurse yells something from the hallway. I ignore her. My body’s fucked, but my mind’s already clawing its way back to that last moment—me bleeding out, him holding me like I mattered.
Vaughn telling me he’swithme. We live together and we die together, right?
Maybe it’s completely out of left field to have these thoughts about someone I’ve known for such a short time, but Vaughn was there for me like no one else has ever been.
Yes, I took a bullet for him, but he could’ve abandoned me and gotten himself to safety, yet he didn’t. I felt him shaking when he got the bullet out, but he still did it.
Still had my back through it all, literally.
Not even my father or brothers, my actual blood, would ever do that for me.
And maybe it’s clichéd, but I’m truly loyal to my saviors and repay them really well.
Though Vaughn is more than just a savior.
Fuck me, I’d pay whatever price necessary to have a taste of his lips again. Maybe while he’s awake this time.
Because damn, that was an out-of-body experience like I’ve never felt before, and believe me, I’ve fucked enough girls to know this is different.
I need to find Vaughn before someone tells me I imagined the whole damn thing.
