“Why didn’t you do it?” I finally asked.
She closed the book around her finger, bookmarking her spot.
“It’s not that I’mnotgoing to,” she disclosed honestly. “But for now, I want to see you every day. I want to see you get through this time in the hospital. I want to see you get out of here. If I can just slow down and think, day by day…then maybe, just fucking maybe, it could get easier.”
The reluctant tone in her voice was evident. But I couldn’t help it. The smile that infiltrated my features was too difficult to hide. She was trying to stay. She had reconsidered, and this was her compromise.
Fuck. If I weren’t hooked up to machines, I would’ve launched myself out of this fucking bed and tackled her to the ground. I would have claimed every inch of her.
She noticed my sudden increase of happiness painting my expression. “Don’t get too excited, Asher. Day by day means tomorrow I could fucking say that’s enough. I only have one good reason to stay—and that’s until I hurt you beyond repair.”
Lennon’s face was serious, but I couldn’t match her energy.
“Babe,” I said gently, “there’s absolutely nothing you could do to me that would make me not want to be in your presence. There will be hard fucking days, I know that. But I’m never giving up on you. I can’t give up on you. There’s no option for that.”
She stared at the ground, shyness taking over her. “You say that now—”
“I know exactly who you are, Lennon,” I cut in. “There’s no guessing with you. I’ll be here day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, getting through all the bullshit life throws our way. You never have to walk this world alone again.”
I spoke earnestly, needing her to understand.
A knock at the door pulled us out of our own little world, and I was shocked to see it was my father.
“Am I interrupting?” he asked upon entering.
Lennon shook her head, and immediately shifted as if she was about to hop off the bed, but he motioned for her to stay.
“No, don’t get up. I just wanted to stop in and see how everything was coming along,” he said softly.
Something about him was off. He wasn’t acting like his rigid, arrogant self. He seemed…shy. Nervous to be in this room with us, and I couldn’t tell why that was.
Either hospital rooms made him uncomfortable because he really didn’t come here often when I was here, or Lennon made him nervous.
Which could be the case, because she even made me fucking nervous.
“Yeah,” I said carefully. “Come in. Have a seat if you want.”
He shook his head. “No. No. This won’t take long. I just…I have an apology that’s long overdue.”
My heart dropped into the pits of my stomach, lodging somewhere inside my intestines. I was nervous, and scared, and wanted to scream at him to not say a fucking word to her.
The air was thick with electricity of me wanting to stop the inevitable.
He extended his hand to shake Lennon’s. She anxiously placed her small hand in his, looking nervously up through her lashes.
“I’d like to formally introduce myself to you, Miss Becker. My name is Andrew Graves. I’m an Inspector of the Toronto Police Service. Approximately nineteen years ago, I was the lead investigator on an accident that took your father’s life.”
My father allowed the bomb that was just dropped to fill the space. Lennon’s hand stopped shaking, the colour draining from her face as her eyes stayed glued to him.
Between them, my gaze gradually pinged back and forth. My father looked sincerely desperate for her to say something, anything at all. The look that filled Lennon’s face was that of shock and imminent despair.
Finally, Lennon inhaled a breath that took far too long to ingest inside her body. Her shoulders rose, adjusting to the added space being taken up inside of her body.
He was the first to break eye contact, clearly unable to cope with the information that he just provided her with. “I—uh—I was first on scene.”
The breath that was filling up Lennon’s body turned into shakes as her perfect almond eyes turned a shade of bloodshot red.
“You’ve seen my dad?” she finally whispered, desperate for any scrap of details.
