Page 46 of Deacon

I checked the time because looking at the clock felt safer than looking at him. “I should go. You need rest.”

“Yeah.”

I picked up my bag and turned toward the door before whatever lived between relief and grief convinced me to stay.

“Lila.”

I stopped.

Something in the way he said my name held me there. Careful now. Almost tentative, which belonged so poorly on the Jackson I remembered that I turned before I could stop myself.

His eyes met mine. “I don’t… I know I don’t get to expect anything.”

I said nothing.

“I know I left you, I know I left without sayin’ nothin’,” he continued before I could decide whether I wanted to answer. “I know that.”

My breath caught.

There it was.

Not an explanation. Not forgiveness or anything close to it.

Acknowledgment.

For seventeen years, I had lived without even that.

He swallowed, exhaustion and pain pulling at his features. “I made that choice. You don’t owe me a damn thing.”

I hated how badly some younger part of me had needed those words.

I hated that hearing them now couldn’t erase a single year. It couldn’t give Jade a father through scraped knees, school plays, feverish nights, birthdays, or every moment she had quietly wondered where half of her came from.

It couldn’t give me back the girl who woke after the lake believing her entire life had changed and learned hours later that the boy she loved was gone.

“I stayed because I was afraid you were dying,” I said softly. “Not because you’re here and everything between us suddenly makes sense.”

“I get that,” he answered too quickly. He caught himself, swallowed, then tried again. “I’m just… glad you’re real, I… thanks.”

That almost broke through everything.

Because he looked at me like I had been real somewhere before he woke. Like my voice had followed him into whatever darkness had held him and mattered enough for him to remember it.

After years of wondering whether I had meant anything to Jackson beyond one night by the lake, that was a dangerous thing to know.

I looked away first.

“I should go,” I said after a moment. “You really need to rest.”

His fingers curled weakly against the sheets. “Will you come back?”

There was no command in it. No assumption that because I had stayed while he was unconscious, he now had a claim on my time.

Only hope.

That was worse.

“I’ll check in. That’s all I can promise right now.”