Page 23 of What We Become

“You have snot on your face,” she says.

A sound comes out of me that might be a laugh if it wasn’t so broken. I wipe my face with the hem of my ruined shirt and she watches me do it with an expression that’s tender and amused and completely unimpressed by the wreckage, because Sage has never needed me to be unbreakable. She just needed me to be hers.

“Don’t tell the others,” I say.

“That you cried?”

“That I had snot on my face.”

“Holden. Milo is going to find out. Milo finds out everything. He probably has a camera in this room.”

“He doesn’t.”

“Are you sure? He’s very sneaky.”

I’m not sure. I check the ceiling anyway.

She laughs—a thin, rattling sound that turns into a cough. I reach for the water cup on the nightstand, angle the straw under the mask, and hold it while she sips. Her hand wraps around my wrist while she drinks, thumb resting on my pulse point, and I let her feel it. Fast. Ragged. Proof that I’m not as put together as I look.

She lets go of the straw. Settles back into the pillow. Her eyes are heavy again, the drugs pulling her back under.

“Stay,” she says.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise.”

“I promise, wildcat.”

Her eyes close. Her breathing steadies. The mask fogs and clears and fogs and clears.

I lean forward and press my lips to her forehead. She smells like antiseptic and hospital soap, and I keep breathing it in because it means that she’s here. She’s alive.

I don’t let go of her hand.

SEVEN

SAGE

Iwake up to the sound of arguing in the hallway.

“You can’t bring that in here. It’s a medical facility, not a⁠—”

“It’s a care package. It’s therapeutic. There are studies.”

“There are not studies about—oh wow, is that a robe?”

“Yes. A luxury robe. Egyptian cotton. Thread count so high it has its own zip code. She’s been through a trauma, nurse. She deserves thread count.”

The room is bright—morning light pouring through floor-to-ceiling windows that frame mountains and pine. Stone walls. Hotel sheets. Wildflowers beside the bed. Medical equipment trying and failing to make the place feel like a hospital.

I have no idea where the fuck they brought me.

The oxygen mask is still on, but someone turned the flow down overnight because my breathing is easier, less rattled.

My throat feels like I gargled battery acid and my wrists throb under the bandages and there’s a deep, chemical ache in my chest that flares every time I inhale too deeply. But I’m breathing. I’m still breathing.

Micah is asleep in the chair beside me, chin tucked to his chest, one hand wrapped around mine on the bed, the other hanging off the armrest. He looks rugged in a way I’ve never seen. The stubble, the shadows under his eyes. He’s wearing hospital scrubs and boots with dried foam insulation on them, and my God, just looking at him here makes my heart ache from everything we almost lost.