He winced slightly as he scooted over on the hospital bed, patting the space beside him. I went willingly, lowering myself, curling up against him. His arm wrapped around me, his hand stroking the top of my head as I buried my face into his neck. The sob came before I could force it back. I wasn’t quite sure why I was crying—for him? For myself? For the little girl inside me? For the wounds I’d spent a lifetime pretending didn’t leave marks? Pregnancy hormones?
Maybe I would never understand my mother. Maybe it wasn’t my job to understand why she did the things that she did, but to understand that, regardless of thewhy, I still didn’t deserve it.
And neither did my daughter.
Khalifa held me tighter, his breath unsteady against my temple, as if he were breaking a little too—only in all the right places.
“Sorry,” I muttered once my tears simmered down. “You’re the one who got hit by a car, yet I’m the one crying.” I looked up at him, eyes watery. “Do you need to cry?”
He laughed, thumb brushing my cheekbone. “No, I’m good.” And then—because apparently my emotional meltdown wasn’t humbling enough—he leaned down and kissed me deeply. When he pulled back, his forehead touched mine. “Better?”
“Yeah. I’m happy about it. I swear.”
“Me too.” He kissed me again, a smile pressed against my lips. “So happy.” Then he groaned playfully, as if remembering a cosmic injustice. “She’s going to turn out exactly like you.”
“No,” I said. “She can be whoever she wants to be.”
Chapter Forty-Five
AFTER CHECKING HISscans about a million times—because my anxious little brain insisted that was the amount required to prove he wasn’t secretly dying—I finally let them discharge him into my very eager care.
On the way back, I glanced over from the driver’s seat. “Where were you staying? We can swing by and grab your stuff.”
He scratched his jaw, suddenly fascinated by the dashboard. “It’s not far from the loft. Let’s just...go home.”
I narrowed my eyes but let it slide—mostly because he still looked pale and the thought of arguing with a recovering car accident patient felt morally questionable.
When we reached our building and stepped into the elevator, I tried again. “So, how close are we talking? I’ll just go get it for you.”
He mumbled, “Pretty close. Walking distance. No need to drive.”
I frowned, trying to piece that together as we started into the hallway. “Walking distance? Where—?”
But then he slowed in front of a door—the door directly across from ours—and pulled a set of keys from his pocket.
I blinked, confused, half convinced the concussion had scrambled his sense of direction. “Um...that’s not our—”
He slid the key into the lock, and it clicked open.
My brain took a second to catch up. My mouth, however, did not. “You’re kidding.” I stared as he pushed the door open likethis was perfectly normal human behavior. “You stayedhere? As in...directly across the hall? As instalker-adjacentproximity?”
He peered over his shoulder, all calm and unbothered. “This hardly counts as stalking.”
“Wow,” I said, shaking my head. “And you calledmecreepy for using binoculars.”
He chuckled. “Binoculars are still creepier.”
“Debatable,” I muttered.
The apartment was sparse—barely lived in, like he’d been squatting rather than renting. A single coffee mug, a few books, a makeshift bed on the floor made of a single sheet. I looked around, trying to process the absurdity.
“You signed a whole other lease,” I said, grabbing his duffel bag. “Are you sure you didn’t have a brain injury when you decided that?”
He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “I...needed to be close to you. Just in case.”
My heart did an inconvenient somersault. I tried to smother it with sarcasm. “Still. That’s commitment. How long are you stuck paying for it?”
He shot me a dry look. “Why do you care? You’re not paying.”
