My eyes burn again.
“I need you because I love you.”
There. The words are out.
Maybe no one heard them but me and the machines, but I said them.
I lift my head and look at his face.
Unchanged.
Of course.
I wipe my cheeks again, then reach for the laptop.
Because if he cannot wake up yet, then I can do the next best thing.
I can find the person who put him here.
As I follow the threads back to the source, a name appears on screen. I nearly scream in frustration.
It’s the third name I’ve seen buried under all these companies.
But I’m not ready to give up yet. Iwillfind who did this.
I glance at Adrian, then down at my stomach, then back at the screen.
“You picked the wrong family,” I whisper.
And then I keep digging.
Chapter Thirty Seven
Adrian
There is sound before there is anything else.
A steady mechanical breath that does not belong to me. A faint beep, and another. A soft hiss. A distant murmur beyond a door. Rubber soles on tile somewhere far away.
Hospital.
The thought forms slowly, like it has to push through mud to reach me.
I hate hospitals.
That is the first clear thought I have.
The second is pain.
It’s not as bad as I expected, but I imagine the painkillers they have pumping through me are helping with that.
But they do not stop me from feeling everything, and as I wake, it arrives in layers.
Throat first.
Raw, scraped out. Like I swallowed broken glass and sand. My mouth is dry, my tongue feels too big, and my chest aches with every breath.
Then my side.
