I blinked, startled. He hadn’t spoken to me like that since, well, not since the accident. Before that, actually. Because you have tocareto get worked up over something. It felt like Adrian hadn’t cared in… Forever.
For a second, all I could hear was my heartbeat, loud and wrong in my chest.
“I didn’t mean?—”
“I know,” he said softer, running a hand through his hair. The anger deflated, but it left a void behind that echoed with awkward tension. “I know you didn’t. I just… I can’t turn it off. Every time you move, I see it again. The blood. The flatline. You don’t remember it, but I do.”
That last sentence made my heart shatter. The shards dropped into my stomach, shredding the lining to pieces.
I looked away, throat tight. “I just hate feeling like a patient.”
His brow furrowed. “I hate feeling like I might lose you again.”
The air between us hung heavy, weighted with two different kinds of helplessness. And maybe I’d been wrong, assuming his hovering was control when it was really terror in disguise. Maybe he dealt with fear the same way he dealt with everything else, by conquering it.
Adrian busiedhimself gathering my shoes, crutches, and water bottle. When he finally crossed the room to grab his jacket, I caught the tremor in his hands. Just the faintest shake, almost invisible unless you were looking for it.
And suddenly, I couldn’t stop seeing it—the fear underscoring everything. The way he hovered in doorways. The way his eyes tracked every shift of my body, as if he was waiting for another crash.
He wasn’t trying to control me. He was bracing for impact.
The thought hit me with a strange gentleness, a wave pulling back instead of breaking.
He stood there for a second longer, keys in hand, not looking at me. Then he said quietly, “We should go. Don’t want to be late for PT.”
For weeks, he’d worn a thin layer of worry like armor he couldn’t take off. He washed dishes that weren’t dirty, rearranged the coffee mugs, and wiped down the counter twice.
But Adrian wasn’t restless. He was scared.
For the first time, I saw not the doctor, or the caretaker, or the husband trying too hard, but the man who’d watched everything he loved crumple in front of him and hadn’t figured out how to stop watching since.
It didn’t make it easier. But it made it make sense.
What would I have done if it were Adrian in that car? How would I have reacted to seeing him broken and dying, feeling powerless as the man I loved slipped away?
The answer came to me vividly. I would’ve done the samething. Hovered. Overcorrected. Tried to rebuild him with my own hands, just to keep from falling apart myself.
That was the cruelest truth of all: that the thing driving me crazy about him was the same thing that would’ve destroyed me if our places were reversed.
The airin the car felt thick enough to chew. Neither of us said much on the drive to PT. Adrian kept one hand on the wheel, the other braced on his thigh as if holding himself together.
For a while, I watched how his fingers flexed, stilled, then flexed again. Like he was working up to something.
“Do you remember it?” he asked finally, eyes still on the road.
I didn’t have to ask what he meant.
“Not much.” My voice came out rough. “Bits and pieces. Nothing that lines up.”
He nodded, jaw tightening. “Do you remember what happened? What made you lose control?”
I looked out the window, watching the world slide past in a blur of green and gray.
I could’ve lied. Said I didn’t know. That it was just an accident. Clean. Simple. But the truth had been weighing on me since I regained consciousness, heavy and unmoving.
“I was on my phone.” The words felt small in the space between us.
Adrian didn’t react. Not outwardly. But his hand stilled against his thigh.
