I lie there between all three of them — Theo in the chair, Beckett at the foot of the bed, Cody holding me — and I feel it settle over me like a blanket.
This is real.
All of it.
And I'm not trapped.
I'm exactly where I chose to be.
"How," I ask in a quiet whisper after some time has passed. I rake my fingers across his chest.
“What?” he asks with his mouth against my hair.
"How are you not trying to kill them?" I ask. "After everything they did to you. The rink. The coma. Me. All of it." I look at him. "You don't forgive things, Cody. You don't let things go. That's not who you are. I know you. So how are you in this lake house with both of them like none of it happened."
He's quiet for a moment as he looks at the ceiling.
"The night you got hurt," he says.
I wait.
"We didn't say anything to each other that night," he says. "Not at the road. Not at the hospital. We just—" He exhales. "We sat in that waiting room for six hours. We didn't say a word and somewhere in those six hours the thing I'd been carrying — the revenge, the anger, all of it — it just." He looks at me. "It didn't matter anymore."
"Just like that?" I ask, confused.
"Not just like that," he says. "After you went into surgery, Theo followed me outside. I was ready — I was ready to finish everything right there in a hospital parking lot, six months of rage, I had all of it ready." He looks at my eyes. "He didn't say anything for a long time. We just stood there. And then he said: she could have died tonight because of us. Not because of Nessa. Because of us. Everything we did, everything we set in motion." He pauses. "And then he walked back inside."
I sit with that.
Cody grins. "No, not exactly." He looks down at my lips. "I threw the first punch. I'm not going to pretend we hugged it out in a parking lot. It was bad, and I wanted them dead. Beckett too." Something moves across his face. "But I didn’t kill him or put him in a coma. When I was satisfied enough, we were both still standing and you were still in surgery.” He exhales and holdsmy gaze. "You're the reason I haven't burned everything down. You're the reason I'm lying in this lake house instead of—" He stops. "You've always been the reason."
I look at his face and put my hand on his chest. Over his heart. I feel it beating fast.
"You're going to have to keep earning it," I say. He just listens to me. I add, "More than them."
His eyes drop to my lips again.
I wet them and then I say, "I'm most angry at you."
"I know."
His hand comes up and covers mine.
"I will," he says. "For you, I will. I love you."
I look at him, realizing how much I love him too.
Then I kiss him.
His arms come around me.
Carefully.
“I can’t believe you transferred for me. Do you like UW?”
“It’s been rough,” I admit.
He kisses me. “I’ll make sure to change that, okay?”
