I shake my head. “I don’t blame you for leaving. I was being a total asshole. I was only thinking about myself.”
“But you had a lot going on,” she argues. “I don’t blame you for lashing out.”
“Ido,” I press. “You didn’t deserve it. You’re one of the most important people in my life, and I shouldn’t have let you think for one second that you weren’t.”
She bites at her bottom lip. “I am?”
“Of course you are,” I tell her, reaching to push a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “These last six weeks…they’ve been everything to me, Abby.”
Her voice is quiet when she answers, “Me too.”
“Yeah?”
She nods. “You’re important to me too.”
“It’s the nachos, isn’t it.”
She pinches me in the side with her good hand. “I hate you.”
“I really don’t think you do,” I say with a laugh, so relieved that she’s okay that I can feel elation coursing through me. “Can I take you home now?”
“They still have to discharge me,” she says.
“But after?”
“You really want me to come back?”
“Of course I do,” I tell her. “I want you wherever I am.”
Her lip trembles and her eyes shine, and it feels like gravity, the way I lean into her, the way my lips brush against hers. My hand pushes up into her hair to cup the back of her head, and it takes nothing at all to lick at the seam of her mouth, practically sighing internally with relief when she immediately opens to let me in.
I hold her closer as my tongue swipes against hers, feeling her teeth scrape at my lower lip as she makes a soft sound of contentment. I swallow it down, wanting more, wantingeverything—and it’s just hitting me that I could havelosther today. Everything that I’ve been so worried about feels like nothing in comparison to that. And suddenly the need to say something, to tell her everything I’m feeling, is so great that I can hardly contain it.
“Abby,” I murmur against her mouth. “I—”
“Wow, I absolutely did not want to see this,” a voice groans behind me.
I whip my head around to see a smiling Dee and a grimacingIan standing in the doorway, the latter looking at the pair of us like he’d very much like to turn around and walk back out.
“You kissed my sister first,” I remind him. “It’s only fair.”
“You were supposed to hate him,” Ian hmphs. “Notkisshim.”
Abby chuckles. “I…tried?”
“I’ll have you know, I’m a very loveable person,” I tell Ian.
Ian rolls his eyes. “I’m feeling less and less love toward you by the second.”
“Oh, shut up, the both of you,” Dee says, pushing into the room. “Abby, are you okay?”
Abby holds up her arm. “Six stitches, but I’ll be fine.”
“Why the hell didn’t you call me to take you to the hospital?” Ian grouses. “I was right upstairs!”
“I don’t know!” Abby counters. “I panicked! The guy was beside himself after he clipped me, and he was worried I was going to sue or something, and I was practically bleeding all over the street…I did the first thing I could think of.”
“Next time maybe call me yourself instead of letting the hospital do it,” Ian grumbles. “I thought you were seriously hurt.”
