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Around midnight, she’s exhausted her stories. She curls her legs up underneath herself, somehow fitting her entire body onto the small square of the chair. I don’t know how one person can make herself that small and still fill a room.
Darren stirs. His eyes flutter open, and he groans. I lean forward, “Darren? Can you hear me?”
He mumbles something incoherent, and one of the machines monitoring his vitals hits a high note. I shoot a glance at Hope.
“It’s okay,” she says, though her attention never shifts from the screen.
“You’re at the hospital. They had to—” The words get caught in my throat. “They had to pump your stomach, and you’ve got some nasty cuts and bruises, but the doctors said you’ll be fine. Probably hurting for a few days, but okay.”
“You came.” Darren’s voice is like nails against sandpaper, and weak. Still, that note of surprise breaks through and shatters me. Even in this state, his instinct was to assume I wouldn’t come. That I would run in the opposite direction.
His eyes drift closed.
“Darren?”
His head lolls to the side; a quiet snore slips from his mouth.
Something in my chest deflates. I feel heavier than I did a moment ago.
“He knows you’re here,” Hope says, as if she knows exactly what I need to hear. The concern in her voice shatters me further.
I’m not sure I deserve that concern.
“It never should have come to this. My mother gone, the Inn barely holding on, my brother—”
A machine beeps. The rail-thin body barely visible underneath the white sheet doesn’t stir.
“Will, this isn’t your fault.”
It is, though. I was too little, too late.
I need space. I need air. The walls of the room press in closer, and too much energy pulses in my bones. I can’t sit here. Doing nothing for Darren, failing him. The same way I’ve failed so many other people in my life. My father. My mother. Even my agent, when I ran out of town the moment things stopped going the way I’d planned.
I’m up and running, my legs moving toward the exit as if propelled by muscle memory.
I turn left and right, hardly seeing where I’m going. An exit sign glows in the distance, but it doesn’t seem to be getting closer.
Her voice reaches me before she does. A featherlight touch grazes my arm. My body comes to a stop.
Green eyes the color of stormy seas lock onto mine. “You didn’t let me run alone. I won’t let you either.”
She’s forgetting that I did let her go. I didn’t keep going after her. But her arms wrap around me, and I can’t bring myself to remind her. She holds me to herself, anchors me to the place I need to be.
My arms wrap around her as if they have done so a thousand times before. She fits perfectly against my chest. When my heart rate slows, I find the words I should have found so many times before. “Thank you for being here. I couldn’t do this alone.”
“You’re not alone,” she says, the vibration of her words rippling across my chest. “I’m right here.”
She looks up at me. Her lashes dust her cheeks when she blinks. I want desperately to read the expression on her face. Reading people has always been my talent, but Hope is the exception.
“There’s nothing more for you to do tonight,” she says. “We should go.”
The events of the night puncture the bubble we created in these stolen moments.
“Oh. Yeah. I’ll ... drive you home.” It’s the last thing I want to do.
“No, not home,” she says and takes my hand. “My turn. Will you trust me this time?”
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