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“Cole, please, don’t do this,” Hadley begs, but I refuse to look at her.
“I’m fine. Clearly I fucked up something else, seeing as I’m still here.” Both the nurse and Hadley gasp at my words.
“Cole, please. Just do what you’re told for once and stay put.”
My teeth grind as her words rattle around my head. There’s a huge part of me that wants to do everything she tells me, she’s that important to me, but there’s still a nagging part that wants to get the hell out of here.
“I need you to stay here, just for a little bit. I need to know you’re okay.”
Glancing at her pleading eyes, my jaw pops with frustration. With a sigh, I fall back on the bed and let the nurse do what she needs to do.
“All your vitals are looking good. You were very, very luc—”
“Don’t,” I bark. “Don’t tell me that I was fucking lucky. If I were that, then I wouldn’t have found myself here in the first place, would I?”
The nurse pales before rushing out, probably about to demand that someone else deals with the psycho in whatever room I’m in.
I see Hadley’s lips part out of the corner of my eye, and I know that she’s about to rip me a new one.
“I need a drink,” I tell her, cutting her off before she even starts.
If she were anyone else, she’d refuse to do anything for me right now, but that’s not who she is. The second I ask, she jumps up and grabs me a cup of water with a straw.
The moment she places it to my lips, I greedily swallow down the lot. My throat fucking kills, my stomach too. Everything, actually.
I have so many questions. I might remember the alcohol and the little packet of pills in the back of my drawer, but how did I end up here? Who found me? How close was I to succeeding?
Did I really want to die? That question is the loudest as I try to get my head around my impulsive decision to fill my body with that much poison.
Hadley’s stare drills into me after she places the empty cup back down. She doesn’t offer me anything else, and I can’t say I’m surprised. I don’t really want to be nice to me right now, so she sure has no reason to.
I’m shocked she’s even here after the way I treated her. After what she’s already been through.
“You can leave, you know. I don’t expect you to be my nurse or anything.” I keep my eyes closed as I say the words, but that doesn’t mean I miss her gasp.
“You really are fucking clueless, you know that?” she snaps, but I don’t have it in me to reply. Instead, I allow the darkness to consume me once more.
When I come back to, however long later, I wonder if the whole thing was just a really bad nightmare, but then I hear voices, their words flowing through me, and I know it was very much real.
“What was he like, when he woke?” Remi asks.
Hadley blows out a breath. “A prick.”
“He should be groveling at our fucking feet after putting us all through that,” Ace mutters, the anger in his voice clear.
I clench my fists, but unlike last time, there’s no hand in mine, no support from the girl I know is sitting beside me.
Why didn’t she leave? I gave her permission to.
Dragging my eyes open once more, the electric light from above burns into them and makes me wince.
“Cole, you’re awake,” Remi says, pushing to a stand and racing over.
Her eyes are soft and full of tears as she takes my hand in hers.
My muscles tense, my need to pull away from her strong, but I know I need to suck it up. I’ll only be here a short time and then I can lock myself away in my room, away from all their attention and sympathetic, concerned eyes.
Ace comes to stand beside her, his arm wrapping around her waist, but he makes no move to comfort me.
