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Pain.
It seared my veins and licked up my spine.
My eyelids snapped open to harsh, fluorescent lights as a strangled cry burst from my chest.
“Hey there,” an unfamiliar voice said before a scrub-clad man filled my blurred vision, his voice composed when he continued. “Try to stay calm. You’re in the emergency room—you’ve been in an accident.”
“Wha—” I sucked in air through my teeth as a wave of pain slammed into me just before the world went black.
Everything came back slowly that time, my vision and hearing not quite right. Dulled and warped. As if I was trying to see and hear everyone through murky water. But their urgency...I sensed that. The movement beneath me...I felt that too.
The lights above me raced quickly by, seeming to blur together, before I was brought to a jarring halt in a room. The world continued dipping in and out, and panic began unfurling in my chest when my shirt was cut away from my body as the nurse entered my line of sight again.
“We’ve got you,” he said, firm and determined. “You just keep fighting.”
But that pain was consuming.
My lungs felt constricted in a way that warned and had that panic flaring.
And everything around me was going so, so dark.
Harper.
A gasp tore through me and shifted into a hiss when pain raced down my side. My chest heaved with shallow breaths as I tried to draw in oxygen, but each movement had that pain increasing.
Each breath was sharper than the last, even as I tried to calm and control them.
“Chase?”
My brow furrowed at the unfamiliar voice, and I tried to open my eyes to see who it belonged to. To see the girl behind the relief and worry.
But I was so focused on trying to breathe around the pain—trying to figure outwhythere was pain.
Harper...
The accident...
Shit.
“Oh God, Chase!” A hiccupped sob left the girl. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” she said softly. “Just try to slow your breathing. Try to—”
Quick steps sounded before a man asked, “He’s awake?” just as a hand slipped into mine in a way that shouted familiarity when I didn’t know either of the voices in the room.
I tried to move my hand away.
Tried so damn hard to open my eyes.
But all I managed was a raspy, wheezed curse as I took a semi-decent breath.
“Yeah,” that same girl said, the word sounding like a cry wrapped in laughter. “He hasn’t opened his eyes yet though.”
“He will,” the man said, closer to me now. His voice gentle and clinical as he continued. “Welcome back to us, Mr. Grayson. You’re in the hospital. You were in an accident and gave us a few scares, but you’re doing fantastic, all things considered. Just continue working on leveling out your breathing for me, and let’s see if we can open those eyes.”
I tried.
But this new pain threatening to pull me under? It was different.
Because I was having flashes of the days and minutes leading up to the accident. The absolutely fuckingblissof being with Harper and planning out our future with our baby she was carrying.
