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My eyes flutter open,the early morning rays peeking through the half-closed blinds of the hospital window. It takes me a few seconds to realize I fell asleep, still resting close to Bastian’s body. My head is facing the couch, Lenix and Connor missing from their usual spot. Then I feel a hand stroke my messy hair, and I freeze, my heart falling into my stomach—because that can only be one person.
Bastian is awake.
I lift up my head, the hand that was in my hair falling back on the bed as I find his seeking gaze. His expression seems perplexed, like making out an impossibility while staring back at me.
“Baby Blue,” he rasps.
Those two words somehow hurt as much as they heal. I nod, the tears blurring my vision, unable to find even one single word to speak.
“But you’re dead,” he says slowly, still looking at me like he cannot believe what he is seeing.
My heartbeat triples. He said the same thing when we were in the van.
“Bastian, I am not—” Taking his hand in mine, I bring it up to my face, and press it against my wet cheek. “I am here. I have always been here.”
His right eye slowly blinks like he is trying to process something, and I suddenly realize that he must not be completely lucid.Maybe I should call a doctor. But I do not move, frozen in place, staring at the man who is looking back at me like I am a ghost.
“I built you a house near the water…” he says, licking his chapped lips. “But you’re dead.” His voice cracks and my heart shatters along with it.
“Bastian, you—you are not making any sense,” I say through choked tears.
He falls silent, and I do not think I can withstand anymore of this as I watch a single tear fall across his temple and onto the pillow below him. His throat bobs on a hard swallow and his hand slackens in mine, his eyelid slowly closing and I know I have lost him to whatever sedation the doctors have him on.
I do not move for what feels like an eternity, but an eternity watching him sleep, although painful and confusing, is better than an eternity without him.
It is not until the door opens and Lenix and Connor reappear that I look up. Even then it is hard to coax me away from Bastian. I am not sure what expression I am wearing but it is enough for Lenix to notice and ask me what happened.
I tell them he woke up, that he was speaking, but was not making any sense. Connor rushes out to get a doctor, and Lenix pulls me into her arms as I cry into her shoulder.
“He’s fine,” she soothes into my hair. “Everything will be just fine.” But I can hear the sliver of doubt in her tone and I latch on to it, sinking far and deep alongside it, unable to see the end.
41
“What are you doing here?” Connor barks as he walks into his study. I startle but pretend I didn’t, realizing I’ve been staring at my uncle’s portrait sitting over the fireplace for God knows how long. He and my father were twins. My gaze slides to my cousin, impeccably dressed in a navy three-piece suit.
“Meeting,” I simply say, finally turning away from the portrait.
“I know that, but what areyoudoing here?” he replies while pouring himself a mezcal on the rocks. Gesturing toward me asking if I want one, I shake my head. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“I’m fine,” I grit out.
Still, my hand unconsciously lifts up to the eye patch I’m wearing and I snap it back down as soon as I realize the gesture. The left side of my face throbs, reminding me that I’m missing an eye. As if I can forget.
We’ve been back in Noxport for a little over a week and a half now. Connor flew us all back as soon as I was stable.
Stable but still suffering from withdrawals and not close to being lucid.
It took me days to piece reality back together. It’s still a jumbled mess if I’m being perfectly honest. The most confusing part is still Lucy. My mind keeps believing she’s dead and every day I have to go through the shock of remembering she’s alive.
Especially those first few days at the hospital when I was so deep in my delusions that I couldn’t even tell if I was alive or dead, but she was still the first thing I’d see when I opened my eyes—eye?Fucking hell.
I must have told her countless times that she was dead. And she’d just shake her head with a watery gaze and tell me she was here, that she was alive.
I never believed her.
I’ve been avoiding her calls ever since we got back. And every missed call is like a small cut to the skin, always bleeding, never healing.
