Page 122 of Wait for Him

But the part of me that knows Rose, knows exactly what a hospital would mean right now. Fluorescent lights. Strangers touching her. Questions coming from every direction while she's still trying to figure out what year she's in.

She needs her own bed. Familiar walls. Quiet. A cold towel on the back of her neck and enough space to come back to herself without an audience.

The only thing I don't know is whether she'll want me there when she does.

When Rose opens her eyes, I might be the last face on earth she can stand to look at. Maybe I deserve that. Maybe I deserve it a hundred times over. I will leave the second she tells me to leave, but until she can tell me what she wants, I'm not abandoning her unconscious in an apartment and calling that respect.

The elevator ride is silent except for the small sounds she starts making as she surfaces, soft groans against my chest that put another crack through me every time I hear one. Emily digs the key card out of Rose's bag and gets the apartment open ahead of us.

"Get a towel and wet it with cold water, please."

I carry Rose straight to her bedroom and lower her carefully onto the mattress. Within minutes, Emily is setting a glass of water and the cold towel on the nightstand, then she gives my shoulder one gentle squeeze before leaving.

I don't deserve that either.

I lay the towel across Rose's forehead.

Her eyes flutter open and find me.

Her bottom lip starts to quiver.

And suddenly I can't make myself say a fucking word.

I'm standing in a version of hell I built with my own hands, and I already know there isn't a door out of it.

"You knew?"

I've never heard her voice that small. That broken.

I close my eyes and nod my shame. "I figured it out in New York."

"You were protecting him?"

My eyes fly open. "Baby, no. That's not it at all. I'm having him arrested tomorrow, for all of it, everything. I'm dissolving the marriage. He's going to prison, Rose. I've already set it in motion."

"Why tomorrow?"

Her voice doesn't rise and somehow that's worse.

"Why not today? Why not the moment you found out? It's been days, Jackson."

And she's absolutely right. The question guts me because there isn't an answer that survives it. Why did I give him an ounce of consideration when he gave her none?

"I..." My eyes start to burn. "I gave him time to get his affairs in order. I had security on him the whole time so he couldn't run. I thought..."

I thought I was handling it. That's the ugliest truth of it.

I thought I could package the whole nightmare neatly enough to spare her the chaos, deliver Wesley to the police once I had everything in place and somehow make that a kindness. I was so busy trying to protect her from what came next that I never stopped to ask whether I had any fucking right to decide what came next at all.

I made decisions about her trauma without her.

After everything she told me.

She stays quiet for a long moment.

What happens next scares me more than the screaming did.

Rose sits up slowly, ramrod straight. She reaches for the glass of water and drinks the whole thing without stopping, then sets it down and stands. Two efficient tugs straighten her clothes, one smoothing her shirt, the other fixing the waistband, and I watch her face close.