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“Leave me alone.” He didn’t need to see this. It was ugly. Humiliating.
“Shut up and fucking cry,” Johnny said. “God knows you need it.”
I tried to scoff, but the sound was horrible, making me fight harder to get a grip.
“She looks so small,” Johnny murmured, making me choke on another breath.
“Fuck it, Johnny, you’re not helping.”
He patted my back, letting the hand rest on my shoulder. “I’ll be outside.” The hand slid away. Then he was gone, and I wanted to shout at him to stay. To fucking stay with me and save me from myself. With him there, I had something. A goddamn reason to hold on. To fight for the last fragments of sanity.
The beeping from the machines echoed in my head. Each beep taunting me with what could have been. With life taken away. I squeezed my eyes shut to trap the fucking tears, gritting my teeth to keep from sobbing or screaming.
Gripping her hand tighter, I let the word blast my consciousness, hoping she would feel it somehow.
Stay.
I repeated it over and over until thinking it wasn’t enough.
“Stay,” my voice was nothing but a broken whisper, but I repeated it out loud too, needing her to hear it. To feel it in her bones.
“Stay with me, stay! STAY! FUCKING STAY!”
“Why’re you screaming?” Her voice seared through me like a shot of electricity. The words, weak and muffled by the tubes were the most beautiful thing I ever heard.
I jerked upright, removing her hand from my face to stare at her. “Kaylie?”
Her eyes fluttered open, skipping back and forth over the white room before focusing on me. She tried to speak, to move, and confusion filled her eyes.
“Marc?”
I struggled to find the words, to think through the shock. The door burst open, and a medical team came rushing in. They shoved me aside, and in my confused desperation to be with her, I fought back. Pushing my way through to her.
“You need to stay back, sir,” one of them said. “Let us take care of her.”
No. She asked for me. I almost lost her. I refused to leave her again. Even for one second. I couldn’t—
“Hey.” A hand landed on my arm and yanked me back. “Let them do their job.”
“She’s awake.” I needed to feel her. To hold her. I needed—
“Marc!” Johnny snapped, forcing me to face him with an abrupt pull and twist motion. “Get a fucking grip!”
I yanked his hands off me, spinning away from him as he reached for me. I held out my hands in a back-off gesture and tried to breathe. To think. To fucking snap out of it. He was right. I was losing it. But the rollercoaster from hell had me reeling, and I couldn’t seem to get my bearings.
She was alive. She’d make it. She had to. She fucking had to. Because there was no way in hell I could go through this again.
One week later
“I’m sick. Dying.”
Her words haunted my mind like restless ghosts. Hiding in the corners and skidding across my consciousness every time I relaxed.
“It was a lie.”
I raked a hand through my hair, gripping it as if the tight sting in my scalp could tear the words right out in the open. What was the lie? What part of the truth could I believe?
She lay so small and innocent in the bed. Her skin was as white as the sheets and her black hair spread like liquid ink around her.
