Page 82 of Still Missing You

Hunter

Hospitals warp time. Every second drags. Every sound is too loud. The squeak of shoes on polished linoleum floors. The distant beeping of monitors. The murmur of voices behind closed doors.

I sit on a hard plastic chair in the waiting area outside the operating room and try not to come apart. It’s not working. I can’t sit still, feeling helpless and useless in equal parts.

Dylan’s blood is still on my hands. I scrubbed them in the bathroom down the hall until my skin burned, but I can still see it. Still feel it. Sticky and warm, slipping through my fingers as I tried to hold him together.

I press my palms against my thighs, trying to ground myself. I can’t stop the memory from replaying in my mind. The gunshot. The way Dylan’s body jerked. The sound he made when he went down.

I drag in a breath that doesn’t quite fill my lungs. I should have shot Nancy when I had the chance. The first time she took her gun off Dylan, I should have emptied mine into her, instead of letting Dylan try to talk her down.

He was conscious. I keep telling myself that. He was talking to me in the ambulance. Pale as hell, sure, but awake. Aware. Alive.

But he also lost a lot of blood. Too much. I’d overheard a doctor say something about internal bleeding. They needed to operate immediately. Then they took him away from me. How much time had passed since then? An hour? Two? It could be ten minutes or ten years, for all I can tell.

“Hunter.” Linc’s voice cuts through the fog, and I look up.

He’s leaning against the wall across from me, arms crossed, expression tight. Calm on the outside. Always calm. But I can see the tension in his shoulders. He’s worried too.

“Sit back,” he says quietly. “You’re going to wear a hole in the floor.”

I hadn’t even realized I’d stood up and started to pace.

I sink back into the chair.

“Any word?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Nothing yet.”

Colin sits a few chairs down, scrolling on his phone, though I doubt he’s really seeing it. He came as soon as Linc called him. Didn’t even ask questions, just showed up. I should feel steadier with them here, but I don’t.

I scrub a hand over my face and let out a shuddery breath. None of this is something they can fix. My gaze drifts back to the double doors at the end of the hallway.

If I stare hard enough, maybe they’ll open. Maybe someone will come out and tell me he’s okay. Or...

I shut down the thought before it can take root. No. I shut the thought down hard.

I lean forward, elbows on my knees, hands clasped together so tightly my knuckles ache. I was so afraid of this. Not this exactly. Not bullets and blood and operating rooms, but losing him.

I spent years convincing myself I was over Dylan. That what we had was something from another lifetime. Something I could file away under what if and move on.

Then he’d walked into my office and back into my life, and everything I felt for him came rushing back as if it had never left. I tried to fight it. Tried to keep what was growing between us controlled. Safe. Because loving him meant risking everything all over again. It meant giving him the power to walk away. To break me.

I thought that was the worst thing that could happen. I was wrong. This is so much worse.

The idea that I could lose him without ever really getting him back. Without telling him everything I should have. Without fixing what we broke.

My voice catches in my chest. “I didn’t even—”

Linc straightens. “What?”

I shake my head, staring at the floor. “I didn’t tell him,” I say quietly.

“Tell him what?”

“That I love him.”

The words feel raw coming out. Linc exhales slowly. He rests his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “He knows.”