“There, there,” she said. “Everything is emotionally catastrophic, but at least no one is actively bleeding right now.”
I laughed into her scrub top. Then I cried. Just a little. Just enough.
After that, I did not go to Dylan’s room.
I finished my shift.
I went home.
And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like the secret wound anymore.
The next few weeks did not fix anything.
They only made everything quieter.
Dylan stayed in the hospital long enough for the story to stop being dramatic and become routine. Dressings changed. Tubes came out. Medications were adjusted. Physical therapy started with a nurse walking him six steps down the hall while Nate, still pale and stitched together in his own room, yelled encouragement like an obnoxious football coach with a punctured lung. The Royal Bastards took over one corner of the ICU waiting area until administration gave up pretending they were temporary. Callum came and went with coffee, paperwork, and the kind of silence that made doctors explain themselves twice. Edge showed up once, stood at the end of Dylan’s bed, looked at him for a long, deadly moment, and said, “Heal first. Then we talk.” Dylan, apparently not completely brain damaged, only nodded.
I stayed off Dylan’s care team after that night. Not because I couldn’t do the job, but because doing the job had become its own kind of lie. I could chart numbers, hang bags, check wounds, and take vitals with steady hands, but none of that changed the fact that my heart reacted every time someone said his name over the station. So I worked other rooms. I took extra shifts. I let exhaustion become a wall. When I passed his hallway, I kept my eyes forward. When Lily gave me updates, I pretended not to hold my breath. When Nate sent me ridiculous messages through Lily—tell Rourke I lived because I’m too pretty to die—I smiled, answered with something rude, and did not ask whether Dylan had asked about me.
He did.
Lily told me anyway.
Not right away. Not cruelly. Just one night after a twelve-hour shift when we were sitting on my apartment floor eating takeout straight from the containers while Cupcake stalked a plastic fork like prey. “He asks every day,” Lily said, like she was commenting on the weather. I stared at my noodles. She went on, softer. “Not in a pushy way. Not like he expects access. He just asks if you’re okay.” I hated how much that hurt. I hated how much I wanted to know if he looked toward the door when he asked. I hated that the answer mattered when Georgia had already left the hospital with a bare finger and red eyes because Dylan and I had spent years pretending a fire had not branded us both.
Georgia did not come back.
That was the part nobody said loudly. Her things disappeared from Dylan’s place in San Diego two weeks later, packed by her father and shipped by Nate because Dylan was still too weak to stand for longer than a few minutes, and Georgia had been clear: he was not allowed to turn returning her sweaters into one more tragic apology scene. I heard thatfrom Lily, who heard it from Nate, who probably exaggerated at least thirty percent of it because Nate believed information was best served with seasoning. But the part that mattered was true. Georgia was gone. Not because she had been beaten by me. Not because she had stepped aside gracefully. Because Dylan had finally told the truth too late, and Georgia had loved herself enough to stop bleeding in his chair.
I thought about her more than I wanted to.
Not all the time. Not dramatically. But sometimes, in quiet moments, her face would come back to me. Her bare hand. The red around her eyes. The way she had looked at me in that family room and told me not to let him hide behind guilt. I did not need her forgiveness to know she had deserved better from both of us, even if I had never meant to take anything that was hers. That was the thing about love triangles no one put in songs. Someone always ended up standing outside the music, holding the bill.
Dylan was discharged on a gray morning that smelled like rain and wet pavement. I was coming off shift when the San Diego crew rolled him out in a wheelchair despite his obvious hatred of the entire arrangement. Nate followed behind in another wheelchair, wearing sunglasses indoors and complaining that no one had clapped for his survival. I saw them from the far end of the lobby and froze before I could stop myself. Dylan saw me too. Even across all that space, even weakened and pale, his gaze found mine with the same impossible certainty it always had. He did not call my name. He did not lift a hand. He did not ask me to come closer. He only looked at me like a man finally learning that wanting was not the same thing as having the right.
That was when I knew something had changed.
Not enough.
But something.
After that, time stretched. Dylan went back to San Diego to heal under Callum’s watch and Nate’s relentless commentary. I heard pieces from Regan, from Lily, from the club grapevine no one admitted existed. He started physical therapy. He lost weight, then gained it back. He walked with pain, then without showing as much of it. He went back to his classes before any doctor with sense would have recommended it. He finished the certification work he had once talked about like it was a future meant for someone better than him. Callum officially backed the construction arm, and Dylan threw himself into blueprints, permits, job sites, and recovery like a man trying to rebuild his life with both hands while one of them still shook.
I did not wait for him.
That mattered.
I worked. I slept badly. I fed Cupcake. I let Lily drag me to terrible movies and one farmer’s market where she bought homemade jam from a man she later described as “emotionally suspicious but excellent with peaches.” I went to therapy twice a month because Regan told me strength was not the same as refusing help, and for once I was tired enough to listen. I wore Mandy’s diamonds. I wore the turquoise ring. I did not wear Dylan’s cuff. It stayed in my drawer, wrapped in a soft cloth, not forgotten but no longer living on my skin like a question I was afraid to answer.
Dylan called after six weeks.
I let it go to voicemail.
He did not leave one.
The next day, he sent a text.
I know I don’t get to ask for anything. I just wanted you to know I’m healing. And I’m trying to do it honestly this time.
