The monitor kept its patient beat, and I found myself matching it, inhaling, exhaling, syncing my world to his.
“Do you remember the vineyard?” I asked quietly, even though he couldn’t answer. “You said we’d go back every year. You said the vines looked like veins, like the world had a pulse. I didn’t get it then. But I do now. Everything you touched—everything we built—was alive because you were.”
My voice cracked again. “I don’t care how long it takes. I’ll sit here and tell you stories until you open your eyes, and when you do, I’ll tell you I’m sorry and that I love you, and this time you’ll know I mean it.”
I pressed my lips to his wrist, feeling the faint flutter of his pulse beneath the skin. “There you are,” I whispered. “That’s all I need.”
A nurse slipped in briefly to check vitals, soft-footed and kind-eyed, then slipped back out. The door clicked shut, and the quiet swelled around us again.
I lay my head on the bed beside his hand, eyes heavy. Breathing in deeply, I tried to find his scent buried beneath thestrange ones, the clinical smells, but couldn’t. It’d been too many days since Eli was himself. Outside the window, the light faded from gold to gray to blue.
For the first time in weeks, I let myself close my eyes.
Not to escape, but to stay.
Because even if he was sleeping, we were finally in the same place.
Chapter 20
Borrowed Time
ELI
At first, the world was sound.
A low hum, a white noise of different machines blending into a discordant symphony. Then something softer, breath close enough to touch. I floated toward it, through a fog that smelled faintly of disinfectant and something warm that didn’t belong in hospitals.
My head and chest throbbed. Every breath felt borrowed. But when I blinked, and the light finally steadied, I saw him.
Adrian.
He was sitting beside the bed, his fingers threaded through mine, his head bowed. Dark crescents shadowed his eyes, but when I shifted slightly, his head snapped up, and that smile… that smile made the pain worth it.
“Welcome back,” he whispered, voice breaking on the words.
I tried to say his name, but my throat felt raw, dry. Imanaged a rasp that sounded vaguely like “hey.” It didn’t matter. He understood.
The next few minutes blurred—the nurses rushing in, lights flicking brighter, voices overlapping as they checked monitors and IVs. The cuff on my arm squeezed the blood from my veins. Adrian stayed beside me, answering questions, shaking beneath his calm exterior. Someone said something about vitals and oxygen saturation, but all I could see was his hand, still gripping mine, afraid I might vanish if he let go.
When they finally left, and the door clicked shut, the solitude became enormous. Adrian sat back down, the chair creaking.
I tried to speak again, my voice rough. “How long?”
“Four days,” he said softly. “You woke once yesterday, but they had to sedate you again. Your body needed the rest.”
Four days. It sounded impossible. I turned my head to look at him properly. His eyes were red, bloodshot. Exhaustion that no amount of sleep could fix.
Pain sharpened as I shifted, sudden and everywhere at once. It dragged a low sound out of me before I could stop it.
“Why does it hurt so bad?” I rasped, each word scraping. “What… what happened to me?”
Adrian straightened, instinct snapping into place. “You were in a motor vehicle collision. You sustained a moderate traumatic brain injury with cerebral edema, a subdural?—”
“In English,” I cut in, sharper than I meant to. The ache in my head beat with its own pulse. “Please. Just—tell me what’s wrong with me.”
He froze for half a second, knocked off script. Then something in his face softened.
“You were in a bad crash,” he said carefully. “You hit your head. Your brain swelled. You’ve got some broken ribs, bruised lungs… and a jagged piece from the crumpled door panel impaled your thigh. You lost a lot of blood.”
