Burns. From the fire. From carrying me out while the house collapsed around us.
My chest ached in a way that had nothing to do with smoke inhalation.
“However …” Dr. Ellery’s gaze found mine, and something in her expression shifted. Softened, just slightly. “There’s no epidural or subdural hematoma. No subarachnoid hemorrhage. No midline shift, and the ventricles are normal. We see no evidence of diffuse axonal injury on the imaging.”
The breath I’d been holding escaped in a rush.
No brain bleed. No swelling. No catastrophic damage. The second concussion was serious, the skull fracture was serious, but it wasn’t … it wasn’t the worst-case scenario my mind had been constructing for the last three hours.
“We’ll be monitoring him closely,” she continued.
“But you think he’s going to be okay?” I pressed.
Dr. Ellery paused. Measured. “It would be premature to make guarantees with any head injury.”
“It’s okay,” Blake said gently. “They understand. They just want to know what you think, not what you’d put in a chart.”
She considered this. Weighed whatever professional caution she’d been trained in against the desperate hope on my face. Then, slowly, she nodded.
“Based on the imaging, I’m optimistic. His neurological exam was intact when he arrived. He knew his name, the date, where he was. He was … quite insistent about seeing someone named Harper actually.” The ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “I believe his exact words were, ‘I’m not doing a damn thing until someone tells me she’s okay.’”
The tears spilled over. I couldn’t stop them.
That stubborn, impossible man.
“Well”—Axel broke the silence with his signature deadpan—“Knox sure knows how to keep us all teetering on the edge of cardiac arrest. It’s really his best quality.”
Ryker elbowed him, smirking. “Read the room, man.”
“What? I’m relieved. This is my relieved face.”
“Your relieved face looks exactly like your annoyed face.”
“They’re versatile.”
I barely heard them. My mind was already racing ahead, already doing the math. If he was stable. If he was awake. If he was asking for me?—
“Is there any chance,” I said, my voice thick, “that we could share a room? For observation, I mean. Since we’re both here anyway.”
Blake’s expression softened. He exchanged a glance with Dr. Ellery.
“I think we can arrange that,” he said. “Let me make some calls.”
Twenty minutes later, an orderly was wheeling my bed down the corridor. The fluorescent lights passed overhead in a steady rhythm, one after another, and I counted them the way I’d counted ceiling tiles earlier. Something to focus on. Something to keep me from flying apart.
The door to room 412 was already open.
And there he was.
Knox lay propped against the raised hospital bed, his head wrapped in white gauze that made his silver-blue eyes stand out even more than usual. Those eyes tracked to me the instant my bed crossed the threshold, and something in his expression cracked open. Relief. Desperation. A rawness I’d never seen him show around anyone else.
White bandages wrapped both his forearms from wrist to elbow. More gauze peeked out from beneath the hospital blanket where it covered his shins. Evidence. Proof. The cost of loving me written on his skin.
The tattoos on his upper arms disappeared beneath the hospital gown, and without the prison orange, without the walls and the guards and the weight of fourteen years pressing down on him, he looked almost … vulnerable.
The orderly positioned my bed beside his, close enough that our hands could touch if we reached.
So, we reached.
