Page 129 of Trigger Happy Ending

It’s sitting there, like it’s been left for me. Beside it, a single folded note. My fingers tremble as I reach for it. The first movement in fuck knows how long. Time is meaningless.

I open the note and begin reading.

“Raine, I’m sorry. I’ve led a shitty life. I’ve done really shitty things. But I regret none of it. Because it all led me to you. I think I loved you from the second I laid eyes on you …”

I can hear him saying this in his deep, smooth-as-honey voice. My favorite voice in the world. My chin begins to wobble uncontrollably, my eyesight blurry. Christ, my eyes are fucking welling.

“I should have told you. That I loved you. But I’d never felt it, never experienced it, didn’t know what it was … I wasted precious time. But the time we did have? I’ll remember forever. Thank you for making all this worth it. I’ll see you in hell, baby. Soren x”

The paper trembles in my hands. I can’t see through the tears pooling and free-flowing down my cheeks. I open the notebook and watch a tear splash on a page. I flick through pages and pages of his handwriting. I’ve been dying (quite literally) to read this, to see what he has been scrawling all this time. I’m shocked to discover poem after poems about loss, revenge, lust, and love.

There’s a common theme in them all.

Me. They’re all about me.

I flick to the last entry.

My heart fucking shatters into a million tiny, unfixable pieces. He came for me. He saved me.

And now, what. He’s just gone? He’s left me?

Fuck. That.

I rip the cords off my chest and peel the heart stickers from my skin. Wincing, I slide the cannula out of my arm and toss it onto the bed. The machines scream in unison as I sit up and swing my legs over the side. The pain is real, but not as much as the pain radiating from my heart.

A nurse barrels into the room, alarmed, hands splayed out in front of her. “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to lie down.”

“No.” I shake my head. “I need to go.”

“You’re in no state to be discharged.”

God, I hate being told what to do.

“Is this a prison?”

She falters. “No, but—”

“Then I’m leaving. Give me whatever forms you need me to sign to save your job.”

“Ma’am, you’ve been in a coma for five weeks.”

I freeze at the words she blurted out. Five … weeks?

It can’t be. There’s no way. I want to ask her to repeat herself, but I’m frozen in place, in complete and utter disbelief at what she’s saying.

She takes a small step towards me and indicates for me to sit back down on the bed.

“You came in with severe internal trauma. You had a ruptured spleen, lacerated liver, fractured collarbone and ribs. You’ve had major surgery and were sedated to assist with the healing. Please, lie back down.”

I hate that she’s right, because as if on cue, pain pulses through my body. Perhaps I should lie down.

But only for ten minutes.

Slowly, I return to my horizontal position as I try to process how long I’ve been in a coma for. The nurse fusses around me, repositioning my pillows, untangling the cords from the monitors.

“The man who left this notebook … Where is he?”

“He came every day for the first two weeks. He left that.” She nods to the notebook. “But we haven’t seen him since.”