“Love rarely is.”
“I don’t want to hurt her.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to hurt myself anymore either.”
Regan let out a shaky breath. “Oh, honey.”
“I saved him,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“And now I have to watch someone else hold his hand.”
“Maybe.”
The single word held too much.
Hope.
Danger.
Permission.
Warning.
I looked down at my bare hands. No gloves. No ring. No cuff. Just skin scrubbed raw from trying to wash away Dylan’s blood.
“What do I do?” I asked.
Regan’s answer came quiet and fierce.
“You do what you’ve always done. You survive the next hour. Then the next one. You let him wake up. You let the truth stand in the room with all of you and see who’s brave enough to look at it.”
I closed my eyes.
Upstairs, Dylan was alive.
Engaged.
Critical.
Mine in no way the world respected.
Maybe mine in every way that mattered and no way that counted.
Lily slipped her hand into mine.
Regan stayed on the phone, breathing with me through the silence like she could hold one end of my unraveling from miles away.
Inside the hospital, machines kept Dylan alive.
Outside, under the metal stairs and bitter smoke and cold New Mexico night, I finally stopped pretending the past was past.
