Page 109 of The Florist and Her Alphas

“She’s awake! Guys… GUYS, she’s awake, get in here, get in here now!”

I hear running before I see anything.

Feet pounding down a hallway, fast, several sets of them, and then the door bangs open hard enough that it hits the wall, and Cole is the first one through, already moving toward the bed. Ezra is a half step behind him, and Julian crowds in right after, and all three of them stop dead the second they see my eyes are open.

Nobody breathes for a second.

The nurse is next through the door, drawn by the shouting, and she takes one look at the monitor, one look at my open eyes, and her whole face transforms.

“Oh,” she says, soft, almost reverent. “Oh, sweetheart. There you are.”

She moves fast after that, checking the monitor, checking my pupils with a small light that makes me flinch, murmuring numbers to herself that I don’t understand and don’t try to. “We’re going to get this tube out of you right now, okay? I need you to cough for me when I say so. Small breath in.”

I’m afraid, my whole chest seizing at the thought of it, until her hand finds my shoulder.

“You’re doing great,” she says. “One, two, cough.”

It comes out of me in a single ugly, scraping pull, my throat lit up with fire, my eyes flooding without my permission, and then it’s gone, the tube gone, and I am breathing on my own for the first time in longer than I can count, air moving in and out of my own lungs.

“There,” the nurse says, smoothing the blanket at my collarbone. “That’s it. You’re breathing on your own. That’s the biggest hurdle, and you cleared it beautifully. I’ll give you all a minute, but I’ll be right outside.”

My voice, when I try it again, comes out low and cracked.

“I heard you,” I whisper. “All of you. I heard everything.”

The room goes so still I can hear the monitor’s beep as its own separate sound again, distinct from all four of their heartbeats, which I swear I can feel from here.

“Lia,” says Julian softly as he approaches me first. I turn my head slowly toward Julian. He’s gone pale under his tan, his hazel eyes locked on my face like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he blinks.

“Julian,” I rasp. “You told me about Pepper. Chewing the yellow chrysanthemums. We have to build him his own garden. A whole bed of yellow flowers. It’s time.”

Julian’s mouth opens. Nothing comes out of it for a second. His eyes go glassy fast, tears standing right at the rim, threatening, not falling yet.

“You heard that,” he says, wonder cracking his voice wide open. “I didn’t- I thought…Lia, I didn’t know if any of it was getting through.”

“It got through,” I whisper, my heart swelling with love for him. I heard everything these brothers said to me during my coma.

He fights tears as he looks at me.

“We’ll build it as soon as you’re out of here,” he says. “The whole bed. Marigolds, sunflowers, whatever you want.”

I turn my head toward August next. He’s still holding my hand, both of his wrapped around mine now, his glasses fogged at the edges.

“The poems,” I whisper. “And the book from my nightstand. It was so sweet, August.” I swallow, my throat aching with the effort of every word. “I’ve been dying to know what happens next in that story. Bored out of my mind in there. But you made it so much easier to wait.”

His whole face crumples. He brings my hand up and presses his lips to my knuckles, holding them there, his shoulders shaking with the effort of not sobbing outright, and when he finally speaks, his voice comes out in pieces.

“I’ll read you the rest,” he says against my skin. “Every night. However long it takes.”

I look at Cole. “Your voice kept the nightmares away.”

Something moves behind his eyes, and his jaw works once, twice, the muscle there flexing hard.

“Good,” he says, low and rough. “That’s exactly what I wanted.”

Then I look at Ezra.

He is standing very still at the foot of the bed, his charcoal jacket wrinkled in a way I know he would never allow on any ordinary day, his pale gray eyes fixed on my face like he still doesn’t quite trust that I’m looking back at him.