That part surprises even me. Blake smiles slightly.
“He’s not going to be mad,” he says.
“He’s absolutely going to be mad,” I reply.
“At me,” he corrects.
“Probably at both of us.”
“Worth it,” he says simply.
I laugh quietly despite myself.
“You’re very confident for someone stuck in a hospital bed.”
“I’m strategic,” he replies.
“You’re stubborn.”
“That too.”
I lean forward slightly so our hands stay touching as he shifts again.
“You scared me yesterday,” I admit quietly.
“I know,” he says.
“I thought…” I stop myself.
“I’m still here,” he finishes for me.
“I know.”
We sit like that for a moment longer, the morning light growing brighter around us while the hallway outside slowly fills with footsteps and quiet voices again. The hospital is waking up in the same ordinary way it always does, even though everything about the last twenty-four hours still feels unreal to me.
“Ok,” I say finally, taking a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.“When Zane gets here, we'll tell him.”
Blake nods.
And even though my stomach flips nervously at the thought of what that conversation is going to look like, something inside me settles anyway.
Because for the first time since all of this started, it doesn’t feel like something I’m facing alone.
Chapter 23
Blake
Hospitals have a strange way of stretching time into something unreliable. As if minutes are either disappearing too quickly or lasting far longer than they should, depending entirely on what you’re waiting for. Right now, I’m sitting somewhere in the middle of both of those things at once. I’m watching the door across the room like it might open at any second, even though I know Zane isn’t supposed to be here for at least another ten minutes.
Lisa is still sitting beside the bed, her left hand resting loosely on the edge of the mattress near mine. Her posture is straighter than it was earlier, but still tense in a way that makes it obvious she hasn’t fully relaxed since last night. Every few seconds, she glances toward the hallway like she’s rehearsing something silently in her head that she hasn’t decided how to say yet.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” I tell her finally.
She turns toward me immediately.
“I’m not thinking loudly.”
“You are,” I say.“I can hear it from here.”
