“Nothing yet. They took him back the second we got here.” I stood up to face her. “I'm sorry. I should have checked on him sooner. Should have known he was?—”
“You found him.” She cut me off, and her voice was shaking. “You went when I called, and you found him in time. That's what matters.”
We sat together in the too-bright waiting room and waited for news that felt like it would never come. Minutes stretched into an hour, then longer, and nobody came through those doors to tell us anything.
Poppy was crying quietly into Micah's shoulder. Talia was staring at the wall with her jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping. And I was sitting there thinking about pill bottles and shallow breathing and the way Soren's hand had felt limp in mine.
I'd come to his house planning to apologize. To tell him I was sorry and scared and wanted to try again. I'd brought chocolate and flowers like those things could fix what I'd broken.
And instead I'd found him dying.
The thought of losing him—of never getting to say the things I needed to say, of never getting another chance to prove I could be better—made my chest feel like it was being crushed.
He had to survive this. Had to wake up and fight and give me one more chance to not fuck everything up.
Because if he didn't, I'd spend the rest of my life knowing that the last real conversation we'd had ended with me pushing him away.
And I didn't know how to live with that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
still here
SOREN
The first thing I became aware of was light—too bright even through closed eyelids, sterile and wrong in ways that told me I wasn't in my bedroom. The second thing was the dryness in my throat, like I'd swallowed sand and glass in equal measure. The third was the ache in my body, deep and exhausting, like I'd been hit by a truck and left to recover in slow motion.
I tried to move and immediately regretted it. Everything hurt. My chest, my head, my arms where I could feel the pull of an IV line taped to my skin. Even breathing felt like work I wasn't sure I had the energy for.
Hospital. I was in a hospital.
The memories came back in fragments that didn't want to fit together cleanly. The court papers on the floor. The pills in my hand. The bottles. The quiet decision that maybe everyonewould be better off if I just stopped trying to hold everything together.
And then nothing.
I forced my eyes open, blinking against the light until the room came into focus. White walls, beeping machines, a TV mounted in the corner playing something on mute. Standard hospital room, antiseptic and impersonal and exactly what I deserved for being stupid enough to?—
Movement caught my attention, and I turned my head to find Rook sitting in a chair pulled close to the bed, slumped forward with his head resting on his arms on the mattress near my hip. His hand was wrapped around mine, fingers laced together in a grip that looked uncomfortable but felt like the only thing anchoring me to reality.
He had a beard. Not a full one, just a few days' worth of growth that shadowed his jaw and made him look rougher than I'd ever seen him. It suited him.
He looked exhausted even in sleep, dark circles under his eyes and tension still visible in the set of his shoulders. His clothes were rumpled, and there was a coffee stain on his shirt that suggested he'd been here for a while.
He'd stayed.
Despite everything he was here. Holding my hand like letting go wasn't an option he'd considered.
I smiled and felt tears start streaming down my face before I could stop them. They came silently at first, and then the sob that tried to escape made my chest hurt badly enough that I gasped.
The sound woke Rook immediately.
His head snapped up, eyes going from sleepy to alert in half a second, and the relief that flooded his face when he saw I was awake was so intense it made me cry harder.
“Soren—” My name came out rough and broken, and his hand tightened around mine. “Oh thank goodness. You're awake. You're actually awake.”
I tried to say his name back and couldn't make my voice work past the rawness in my throat. The attempt turned into a cough that hurt badly enough to make me wince, and Rook was immediately on his feet.
“Don't try to talk yet. Just—fuck, I need to get the nurses. They said to call them the second you woke up.” He was already reaching for the call button, pressing it repeatedly with his free hand while refusing to let go of mine with the other. “You're okay. You're going to be okay.”
