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It wasn’t.
Rafe was going crazy sitting there minute after minute, hour after hour, hoping, praying, begging, selling his soul to anyone who’d listen if only Jane would wake up.
To kill time, he’d tried pacing the room. It hadn’t helped. He’d tried goading her into a fight, hoping she’d sit up and argue with him or tell him off or swear at him or something. But that hadn’t worked either.
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
I’m so tired.
But he wouldn’t leave her.
Couldn’t leave her.
I promised.
His family had all stopped by at one time or another in the last couple of days, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups. They’d all tried to convince him to go home, to rest, to eat, shave, bathe.
In the end, Wolf and Abby had brought him clean clothes and a toiletries bag so he could shower and dress in Jane’s ensuite bathroom.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
Jane’s family came and went too. Her father and brother had flown home from Sydney as soon as they’d heard about the crash. Richard had pored over her medical charts, argued with the attending doctor and demanded another ultrasound “just to be safe”.
Her mother came during regular visiting hours and sat quietly by Jane’s side, stroking her hair and murmuring prayers, offering Rafe silent support and encouraging smiles.
But when her father visited, he just scowled.
He scowled at the doctors who told him there was nothing left to do but wait, he scowled at the nurses as they came and went, he even scowled at Jane, no doubt hoping as Rafe did that she’d wake up and scowl back. And he scowled at Rafe—at length—as if somehow this was all his fault.
Maybe it was. Maybe he should have fought harder for her, punched Sam in the face when he’d had the chance and stolen her away from him. Taken her to London or Paris or Melbourne or wherever she wanted to go and helped her live her dream.
Kept her safe.
“I was wrong.”
Alec Melville’s voice filled the room, those three softly spoken words somehow drowning out the endless loop of beeping and whirring emanating from the monitoring machines standing like sentinels on either side of the bed.
Rafe frowned at the older man, to where he’d suddenly appeared in the doorway with a plastic shopping bag clutched in his hand. “What?”
Entering the room, Alec closed the door behind him, then stood by the bed, his dark green eyes set on his daughter’s pale face. “I was wrong,” he repeated. “About you. About Jane.” He sighed. “About everything.”
The plastic bag rustled as Alec pulled something out of it and laid it by Jane’s side, tucking it under her small hand. Rafe’s heart sped up at the sight. A stack of papers bundled together with rubber bands, a British postage stamp sticking out from between the pages.
“My letters.”
“Yes.”
“When Jane asked Mary what had happened to them, she said she knew nothing about them.” The air whooshed out of him as though someone had punched him in the gut.
She’d lied to them?
“She didn’t,” Alec said. “I intercepted them before Mary or Jane could see them. I even read a few. You write well. Eloquent, even.” He sat heavily in the chair between the bed and the door and rubbed his knee. “She was so young, Rafael. Barely sixteen. I knew if she read your letters, she’d be lost to me.”
“Lost to you?” Rafe scoffed, his hands curling into fists. “What the hell did you think I was going to do with her? Sell her into human trafficking?”
“I thought I was protecting her,” Alec snapped. “But after you left—”
“You mean after you made me leave,” Rafe snarled, his lip curling back from his teeth.
