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Don’t answer that,I tell myself.Don’t you dare answer that, because if you do, then the last pillar holding up this disastrous fucking house of cards will tumble and everything will come crashing down.
I take a deep breath and prepare to lie…
And then the truth comes out instead.
“Because I need you alive,” I hear myself say. “I need you with me.”
Taylor blinks at me as though she’s sure she heard me wrong. Something starts to surface in her eyes—hope, perhaps. It has to be hope. I know that glow, that trust, that daring to believe that a better world is possible.
I saw it in my car while rain poured around us and Taylor came so beautifully on top of me.
That hope needs to die.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I shouldn’t have asked you to stay.”
I drop my hand, letting the dirty towels fall to the floor. Then I get up and walk out of the room. I try to leave the regret behind, too, but I don’t have much luck.
It follows me wherever I go.
52
TAYLOR
Who would have guessed that twenty-four hours could go by so slowly?
I watch every passing minute with hope and dread. Hope that Celine will wake up. Dread that another minute will waste away without any update, bringing us that much closer to the three-day cliff where all my dreams will die.
I stay in my room unless I’m visiting Celine. The first time I go, I stay an hour. I try to talk to her, but nothing I think of saying seems right. Nothing I’d come back from a coma for if I were the one in the hospital bed.
The second visit, I whisper a few clumsy words. It ends up feeling more like a eulogy than an apology. I slip out again, tears burning tracks down my face.
The nurses keep telling me to rest. I know they’re right, and it’s not like I haven’t tried. But every time I close my eyes, I think about the fact that Celine can’t open hers. I think about the fact that our mother will never open hers again. And then I remember that Dad is still in the hands of the psychopath who killed our mother and abducted Celine.
It’s too much. I’m sinking under the weight of it all.
The only time I feel a spark of something like energy is when I hear Ilarion’s footsteps down the hall. He comes to check on me as faithfully as I go to check on Celine.
And every single time, I rush into bed and pretend to be asleep. He’ll walk in, hover over my bed just long enough to make sure I’m still breathing, and then he leaves again.
I try not to read too much into it. I also fight the urge to ask him if he sits with Celine this often.
I’m perched on the window seat, staring unblinkingly into the gardens outside, when I hear footsteps again. Same old song and dance—I race into bed, pull the covers up over my chin, and let my breathing settle into the soft rhythms of a fake sleep.
The door groans softly as it opens. I barely hear Ilarion as he circles the bed and his shadow falls across my face. His scent is off, though. The dark muskiness that I’ve come to expect has been replaced with nutmeg and merlot.
“Cut the shit, girl. You’re not fooling anyone.” My eyes fly open and I sit upright to see Mila standing over my bed with her arms crossed. “Mhmm. That’s what I thought.”
Sighing, I draw my legs into my chest. “Are the Zakharov siblings on suicide watch or something? There’s really no need for all the random check-ups.”
Mila looks mildly interested at that tidbit. “Ilarion’s been checking up on you?”
Dammit.
“Uh…no?”
She rolls her eyes at my terrible lie and nudges my legs away so that she can sit down. It’s weird how she feels so familiar now. Like a sister I never knew I had.
“I hear you’ve been visiting Celine like clockwork. I’ve come to tell you that you’re going to drive yourself crazy.”
