I opened my eyes again.
Her face was not angry.
I wished it had been.
Anger would have given me something to push against. Something to answer. Something sharp enough to make me feel less like a man lying in a hospital bed with one woman’s ring on the hand holding his and another woman’s voice still inside his blood.
Georgia sat back down slowly, but she did not let go of me.
That mattered.
She was still holding on.
“You scared me,” she said.
“I know.”
“No.” Her voice broke. “You don’t. I got a call saying there had been a shooting. That you were being taken into surgery. I drove here not knowing if I was going to be your fiancée or your widow before I ever got to be your wife.”
The words hit harder than the wound.
Widow.
Wife.
Georgia’s future had almost been destroyed because of a life I had promised her I was trying to leave behind, even while part of me kept circling another woman like a planet locked around the wrong sun.
“I’m sorry,” I rasped.
Her eyes filled again. “I know you are.”
That was the worst part.
Georgia believed in the pieces of me that were sorry.
She believed they could be enough.
She leaned forward, pressing my hand between both of hers. “I’m not giving up because you had a bad dream.”
My chest tightened.
I said nothing.
Her chin lifted, and there she was—the Georgia most people never saw because she was sunshine until she wasn’t. Soft did not mean weak. Warm did not mean easy to move.
“I’m not stupid,” she said.
“Never thought you were.”
“I know there’s history with her.”
My pulse jumped.
The monitor betrayed me instantly.
Georgia looked at it, then back at me.
Her mouth trembled.
