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They were in LA, and it would take two hours to fly to Denver if Ben took a commercial flight.
Three hours later, Ben stormed into the hospital…and Mark waited for him. Again.
“Tell me,” Ben managed to say. “No, wait. I’d rather hear this from Liv, since she’s awake.” The bitterness dripped from his tongue like poison sludge.
Mark took him up to Liv’s roo
m, where Paige and Renie sat with her.
“Hello, Liv,” Ben sneered. “Ladies, I need to talk to Liv alone.”
Renie stopped in front of him, tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It wasn’t ever about you, Ben. My mom needed to come first.”
Ben didn’t think anything could get him to take his eyes off Liv, but that had.
He closed his eyes. That’s the way it was, wasn’t it? It wasn’t about him, or what an absolute fucking idiot he was. It wasn’t about him unintentionally duping millions of people, who now thought he was the scum of the earth for lying to them.
It wasn’t about the pain he carried in his heart, his head, throughout his body for the last two months. Or him thinking he wouldn’t have the chance to tell the incredible woman in front of him, how much he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
No, this wasn’t ever about him.
Paige and Renie left, but Ben didn’t move. Liv was right in front of him, and her eyes were open. He’d dreamt about it, prayed for it to happen, but he couldn’t move.
“Why?” he asked. “And don’t say this wasn’t about me. Don’t.”
“It was all about you,” she answered.
“All about me?” Ben scrubbed his hand over his face.
“I guess you didn’t think about the other people in my life who would be affected by this. Do you have any idea what this will do to the band? Forget about me, think about the band, and the crew, all the people we employ. We’re done, Liv. People think we’ve been conning them. So you wanna tell me how this was all about me?”
He was angry, hurt, and confused, but when he saw her tears, it all went away. None of it mattered. The need to touch her overwhelmed him.
He stalked toward the bed and leaned down close to her. “I don’t want to physically hurt you, but I’m going to kiss you, and I’m going to kiss you hard. So if there’s a part of you I can’t touch, tell me now.”
Liv shook her head, and wiped at her tears.
When Ben’s lips met hers, his mouth devoured hers and dared hers to respond. His hand came up and stroked her face. He tasted the saltiness of her tears as they ran down her face and into their mouths. He heard her cries, but he chose to ignore them. He needed to take this from her and let everything else be damned. She pulled at him, trying to bring his body closer to hers.
“Don’t make me hurt you, Liv,” he said as he pulled back from her. “It isn’t your body I want to hurt, just your heart.” His eyes were dark, not from hunger, but from rage. “Are you even going to try to explain?”
“I never meant to hurt you. I wanted to protect you. We promised.”
He backed away from her. “Protect me? Is that what you said? You wanted to protect me? From what? Peace? Sanity? Do you have any idea how these last few weeks have been for me?”
He stood up and walked toward the window. “Every day I called. Every. Single. Fucking. Day. I’d ask how you were. And every single day, Paige lied to me.”
“It wasn’t her fault. I made her do it, to protect you.”
“Look at me. Can you see me? I’m not a man who has been protected. I’m a man who has had his insides chewed up every day for the last two months. My body has been racked with pain. Every single fucking day.” His eyes welled with tears. “I would’ve crawled into that body, taken the coma on myself and set you free. I didn’t care about me, only you.”
Her leg moved, a reflex, and it startled her. It had been so long since she felt anything below her waist. She gasped.
“What?” Ben asked.
“My leg moved.”
Since Ben hadn’t known she’d come out of the coma, he also hadn’t known she was paralyzed. He didn’t know that she had surgery, and that they’d been waiting to see whether it was successful.
