His lips formed a half-smile that was brief and almost fond. “You will. Eventually.”
“Maybe next week.”
He huffed a quiet laugh. “Hold on,” he said, reaching for the nightstand. When he turned back, he was holding a plastic urinal jug.
I stared at it. Then at him.
“Not on your life,” I rasped.
His mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but close enough. “Didn’t think so.”
“Good instinct,” I muttered.
“Bathroom it is, then.”
He helped me to my feet, one arm cinched firmly around my waist as I leaned on the crutches. The floor felt farther away than I remembered. The stitches in my thigh pulled every time I shifted, a tight, burning reminder that my body wasn’t ready tokeep up with what I wanted from it. Every step tugged on my bruised muscles, but the quiet patience in his voice kept me moving—that murmur he used in the hospital meant to soothe the scared or the hurting.
By the time we made it across the room, I was sweating. My breath came short and sharp, my chest burning as if I’d swallowed a live coal.
Adrian reached for the light switch, casting the small room in soft yellow. “Take your time.” He turned away to give me privacy.
“Like I’ve got anywhere to be,” I muttered.
His chuckle was low, the sound half relief, half exhaustion.
I braced both hands on the counter when he closed the door behind me. The tiles were cold under my feet, the air faintly smelling of shower gel and floral air freshener. For a second, I just stood there, catching my breath, trying to remember how something as simple as standing could feel like running a marathon.
When I finally looked up, the mirror almost knocked the air out of me.
Jesus. I looked like hell. Pale. Gaunt. The bruising on my temple had gone yellow and green, fading into the sallow exhaustion under my eyes. My hair stuck up in a way that made me look half feral, and the hospital band still clung stubbornly to my wrist.
“I look like shit,” I muttered.
The door creaked. “You don’t,” Adrian said softly from outside.
I huffed out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“Maybe,” he said, pushing the door open. He leaned against the doorway, arms crossed. “But I’ve seen you worse. Remember that week you didn’t sleep before your firm’s big trial?”
That earned him a weak smile. “That’s a low bar.”
“Still counts.”
He didn’t move closer, didn’t try to touch me, just stood there, a quiet shadow in the doorway, watching me as if he was unsure whether he should cross the space between us.
I turned back to the mirror, tracing the line of tape across my chest. “Guess this is the new me.”
His reflection met mine in the glass. “It’s the same you. Just… healing.”
I didn’t answer. Because for all his calm certainty, I didn’t know if that was true.
I studied him in the mirror: the scruff on his jaw, the lines at the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there a year ago.
“You don’t look much better,” I said quietly.
He huffed a small laugh. “Guess we’re a matched set.”
That unsettled me a little, not the joke, but the softness in it. The reminder that there’d been a time when “matched set” had meant us, choosing the same couch, the same coffee mugs, the same damn future.
