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I frown in confusion. We’re parked outside a hospital?
But Stone and Ian are already jumping out of their doors, so I guess there’s nothing left for it but to follow. My legs are wobbly when I stand upright, but my brother is by my side in an instant letting me lean on him for support as I watch Stone retreat inside the building.
“What are we doing here?” I ask Ian, but he shakes his head.
“Ask him.”
Confused does not begin to describe the riot of emotions warring in my gut right now. Stone just saved my life. Saved my brother’s life while he was at it, too. Yet our lives wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place if not for him.
But then someone else would’ve pulled me into the mess. One of those other faceless idiots. Not him. Not someone who would have risked everything.
Maybe Stone had set out to trick me, but it doesn’t change the fact that he saved my life. That I fell for him, hard and fast.
I swallow back the lump in my throat and wrap my arms tightly around my stomach. Then I head into the building after him. He’s at the front desk. I stare at his back for so long, so intently, that it takes me a long time to realize he’s having a conversation with the woman behind the desk. A conversation that’s making the woman touch his arm gently and nod.
Shaking, I inch closer to him.
“It’s time,” he saying. “It’s been time for a while, honestly.”
The woman nods again and glances at me now. If she’s curious, she doesn’t say anything. Just spares a small, sad smile for Stone as she waves us past. Ian lurks in the waiting room, and when I shoot him a curious glance, he just shakes his head. Mouths, I’ll stay here.
“What are we doing?” I ask as I fall into step beside Stone.
“Saying goodbye,” he replies simply. We reach the door to a small, quiet room in a near-empty wing of the hospital. A rush of memories strike me suddenly. Mom, in her final weeks. In and out of wards. Emergency rooms at first, but later, after it became clear that she wasn’t going to win her fight, a wing like this. Quiet. Almost peaceful.
Full of people waiting to fall asleep for good.
“Skye, I…” Stone’s voice catches in his throat.
I glance up at him, startled to find his eyes red and bloodshot.
“I know I can never make up for what I did to you. For using you, at first, but everything I feel for you is real.” He swallows hard. “I don’t want to have to let you go too.”
As much as it hurts to admit it, I don’t want to let him go either, even though I’m not quite sure yet what’s going on. What this place is. What we’re doing here.
“Maybe this will help you understand me, a little bit. Why I did what I did.” He pushes open the door, and I blink at the dim, quiet room, empty save for the soft beep of machinery, the mechanical in-out breath of someone deep asleep. And a woman, positioned in the middle of the hospital bed sheets, her dark blonde hair fanned around her head, the same color as Stone’s.
“Skye, this is the reason I agreed to work for Rich, all those years ago. When she was still alive. Still awake. My brother had already written us both off, but Rich swore he could help her. It … it was a bunch of seizures, one after another, that finally took her away for good.”
“Xander,” I whisper, taking a step closer to him, but he keeps going.
“A coma at first and then—” He draws in a deep breath and grits his teeth and there’s nothing more I want than to touch him. To protect him this time. Because no matter how much I try to deny it, I care for this man. Love him, despite how wrong he may be for me. “She’s not in there anymore, Skye, but I held on. I held on and I asked for Rich’s help to do it.”
I wet my lips, unsure what to say, how to ask the words burning the back of my throat. Turns out I don’t need to. He fills in the obvious blanks for me.
“Skye, this is my mother.”
33
Stone
We don’t stay long at the hospital. There’s not time for it, and I’d said everything I needed to say a long time ago. I stopped by today to let her go. To make sure I was the one next to her, and not Rich, when she finally breathed her last.
But I already grieved. I already made my peace with her death. I hope, maybe, sharing this last moment with Skye will in some ways make up for everything I couldn’t share with her before. For every lie I told, and every promise I broke. I hope she can understand me now.
That’s probably all I can hope for, but I’ll take it. I’ll take anything that keeps me from being just one bad nightmare of a memory if we don’t wind up together. If she leaves me now.
From the hospital, we take a rental car and hit the turnpike. In Elizabeth, far enough away from Atlantic City that they won’t trace us too quickly, Ian pulls over at a gas station and uses the burner phone to place his call while he paces outside the car. Skye hovers over his shoulder, an anxious frown on her face, as we both listen to him recite the story. He tells the feds that the wire recordings are already in their box. He and I had dropped them off this morning, before we met at the casino.
