“I didn’t know you were in contact with your parents,” I say, treading carefully. The last thing I want to do is upset him more.
“I wasn’t. Good riddance, right?” he scoffs again, rolling his eyes. “They didn’t want me so why would I want them.” He bites his bottom lip between his teeth. “But then I got a phone call from this lawyer telling me that my dad had died and he asked if I wanted the money he left me.”
“Did you tell him yes, I hope?”
“Of course I did, I’m not that big of an idiot.” He manages a half-hearted smile. “The least the man could do is give me some sort of financial compensation for what he did to me.”
“What about your mom? Where is she?”
He licks his lips and shrugs. “Don’t know. Didn’t ask. Don’t really care to know. But I figured if dear old dad is dead, she either is, too, or still wants nothing to do with me which is fine by me.”
The sounds of his labored breathing fills the room once more as I let the information he told me sink in. My dad walked out on my mom before I was even born and she never had the capacity to have a child in the first place. I’m not sure how I’d handle it now if they suddenly reappeared in my life like Carter’s dad had.
“Please don’t say anything to Ivy or the others. I don’t want them to know yet.”
“Of course, man. It’s your thing to tell.” I shrug.
“Carter Jensen, I swear to god if you keep pulling that mask off your face I’m going to come over there and strangle you with it,” Willow’s aggravated voice cuts into our conversation.
“God dammit,” I hear him groan under his breath before slipping his oxygen mask over his mouth. I can’t help but laugh at how he’s afraid of someone as tiny as Willow. The girl might be hardly five feet, but she’d knock you on your ass before you knew what hit you.
“I heard that,” she growls, moving to stand next to where I’m seated. “Do you want your lungs to completely dissolve into nothingness because of the toxins you breathed in? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you don’t keep your mask on.”
“Of course not, Willie. If I did, I wouldn’t be around to hear you gripping at me anymore. You’d have to be a pain in the ass to someone else,” he jokes, looking up at her.
“Bite me,” she snaps at him, checking his IV to make sure it’s in place and glancing at the different monitors around his room. He follows her with his eyes and through his mask, I can see a soft smile on his face. He reaches for her hand and takes it into his.
“Thank you for taking care of me, Willow.”
She pauses to look down at where their hands are connected. Blinking quickly, she squeezes her lip between her teeth. Sensing that they need the room, I stand up quietly and head for the door. As I slip out of my isolation gown and dispose of it, I peer in at them through the open threshold.
“I’m sorry for being selfish,” I hear him say to her. “I’m sorry for scaring you.”
She’s standing next to his bed, looking down at him as small tears roll down her cheeks. His thumb moves back and forth across the back of her hand.
“You’re a real ass, you know that?” she chokes out.
He chuckles a few times. “Yeah I know.”
Then, she leans down and presses her forehead to his. Ilook away to give them their privacy but can’t help a second glance at them.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
He pulls his mask down from his mouth and takes a deep breath.
“Me too.”
41
HANNA
I hear a soft click of the door closing and roll over in bed. Reaching an arm out, I realize that I’m alone. I stayed at Miles’s place last night and have been staying with him for the last few days. This has become our new routine since Carter’s accident two weeks ago. We alter between staying at my place and staying at his, switching locations depending on his work schedule. He’s off today though and we have plans to spend the morning at the hospital visiting Carter. He’s being released to a rehab facility in a couple of days but since it’s the weekend and Miles is off, we want to spend the day with him so he isn’t alone. His entire family has been spending as much time at the hospital as they could that it’s a rarity that he’s alone for longer than a few hours. Thankfully, with Willow working at the same hospital he was admitted to, she can pop in and check on him throughout the day. After Miles shared with me the moment he saw the two of them have, I wonder if she’s popping in for more reasons than to make sure he’s okay.
I hear his footsteps travel across the room and roll overto find his sweet brown eyes looking down at me. Sweat dots his brows and his gray shirt has several dark stains on it from his morning run.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he hums, squatting down to bring his face to eye level with me. He hovers his face close to mine but doesn’t kiss me.
“Good morning. How was your run?”
