I nodded.
I deserved worse.
Callum opened the door, then glanced back.
“And Dylan?”
“Yeah?”
“If you break her heart after all this, I’m not protecting you from Edge.”
The door closed behind him.
I lay there alone with Georgia’s ring on the table, Destiny’s kiss on my mouth, Callum’s words in my chest, and the first honest truth I had spoken in years burning through what was left of me.
I loved Destiny Rourke.
I had loved her since the fire.
And if she never forgave me for taking this long to say it, I would deserve that too.
CHAPTER 13
DESTINY
Georgia left before midnight.
I knew before anyone told me.
The air in the hallway changed after she walked out of Room 412. Subtle, but I felt it. The chair outside Nate’s room stayed occupied by a San Diego brother. Monitors kept beeping. The hospital kept moving like it always did.
But something had ended.
Lily appeared beside me at the nurses’ station with two coffees and that carefully blank face she wore when she was about to deliver bad news.
“No,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything yet.”
“You have information face.”
She handed me the coffee. “Drink first.”
I took it. It burned my tongue. Good. Pain I could handle.
“Georgia left,” Lily said quietly.
The words landed soft. That somehow made them worse.
I stared at the cup. “Left like… she’s coming back later, or left like she’s done?”
Lily’s silence answered.
“Oh.”
That was all I could manage.
She was gone. The woman with the ring. The one who had slept in that chair and cried in the waiting room and brought him breakfast with shaking hands. The one who had every right to hate me and somehow didn’t.
