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“Bones,” I pressed.
He dropped my hand and then went to grab the chair and brought it to my bedside. He took a seat and rested his elbows on his thighs and interlinked his fingers.
“You might not want people to treat you differently, but do you know what it’s like to find the person you love passed out on the floor? Do you know the terror, Hayden?”
I shook my head.
“It’s fucking terrifying.” His blue eyes bored into mine. “The blood…the pallor of your skin, the coldness of your hands…”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I should’ve told you.”
“Yeah, you should’ve.” He paused. “But while we’re clearing the air, I haven’t been completely honest with you, either.”
Dread curled in my stomach like a rattlesnake waiting to strike. “Honest about what?”
“About my past.” He clenched his hands together. “I’ve been married before, Hayden.”
A gasp escaped my lips.
“I was nineteen years old and I married my girlfriend at the time. She was dying of a rare type of blood cancer. She died three days before her twentieth birthday. It was a gorgeous day. Not a cloud in the fucking sky. Birds singing, wind blowing through the trees. It was perfect, except…” He shook his head, his brow wrinkling at the memory.
He gestured to the spot on his arm where the Golden Snitch tattoo was buried underneath his clothes. “I got this for her. It was the only thing…it made her happy. Hours and hours, the first few movies on repeat while she grew thinner and sicker.”
My heart drummed in my ears. Heavy, pulsing; carrying my life through my veins.
I reached my hand out toward him. He looked at it for a moment before unlinking his hands and taking my palm in his.
“We were at one of those traveling carnivals,” he murmured. “I was standing in the hotdog line and she was standing in the lemonade line. Suddenly, someone yelled that a person had fainted. It was Iris. She told me it was heat stroke. But three weeks later, she told me the truth. She’d been diagnosed with her condition and she was starting treatment.”
Tears gathered in my eyes as I watched Bones relive his past.
“I drove her to doctor’s appointments. I held her when she yelled at her body for betraying her. I slept on her parents’ couch when she tried to break up with me—which she did pretty regularly.” He looked at me, his blue eyes, normally so electric, so vibrant—dull and lifeless like the girl he’d lost.
“I shaved her head when her hair started falling out. I shaved mine, too. And when her father told me they were stopping treatment because it wasn’t working, I asked her to marry me. Because everyone deserves to be someone’s everything. And she was my everything. She was my future and my hope…my dreams and my only plan for the future was to love her. But all that went to shit when she got sick.”
He swallowed. “Her getting sick changed everything. Changed the entire trajectory of my life. And I never thought I’d want that again—to feel so deeply for someone, knowing that life could throw me a curve ball and shatter what was left of me. But then I saw you laugh for the first time, and that was it.”
Bones held my gaze.
“I laughed,” I repeated.
“You laughed, and I thought here we go again. There was no stopping it, Hayden. Even if I’d wanted to. I think I fell in love with you the moment I heard that laugh.”
It all made so much sense now. Why he didn’t want to leave my side after I’d been asleep for eighteen hours, why he’d run headfirst into this relationship without slowing down over the speed bumps.
I tugged on his hand to bring him closer and then I cradled his cheek. “A life with me never scared you. Did it, Bones?”
He turned his head and kissed my palm. “No, Duchess. It was a life without you that scared the shit out of me.”
“Bones,” I whispered.
“Hmm.” He hugged me tighter in the small hospital bed that he’d climbed onto to hold me.
“Were you ever going to tell me about her?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
