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“How long?” I demand.
His face falls. He’s the least professional cop I’ve ever spoken to. Usually police officers have a diplomatic way of explaining things, an emotional distance. Not this dude. Every single time he looks at me, I think he’s going to have a fucking breakdown. Every time he talks to me, I get the distinct impression that he would shoot anyone who walked through that door without my blessing. Weirdly, his lack of professionalism doesn’t worry me. The way he looks at me, like he knows me? It’s oddly comforting in a sea of otherwise shitty circumstances. It’s as if he’s got skin in the game. Even though that’s probably because he’s seen a fair amount of my skin on camera.
“Six weeks,” he says.
“Huh,” I reply blankly. “It felt like so much longer.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AVERY
Will enters the room, his face stricken. He’s trying to go for gentle, I can tell, but I’ve known this boy since we were teenagers making out behind the bleachers. This has fucked him up.
He closes the door behind him, staring at me for a moment. Then he does something completely unexpected. He turns and faces the door, his shoulders hunched, his hand over his mouth. He can’t even look at me.
“Will,’ I say softly. He continues to face away from me, shaking his head. He puts a hand on the closed hospital room door, bracing himself.
“Will.” Louder this time. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
He turns around, and it’s sadder than watching my mother’s coffin be carried into the family mausoleum. Sadder than watching the paramedics zip up the body bag as my sister’s blue-tinged face disappeared from view. It’s all the sadness in the universe held in this one expression on Will’s face, an expression that makes him look like a scared little boy.
I raise a hand to my stiff hair soaked in blood and sweat and God only knows what else. “I’m sorry, I didn’t have time to go to Dry Bar before you got here.”
My attempt at humor at least sparks something in him.Recognition. It’s like he finally realizes this broken girl in the hospital bed is actuallyme. His mouth tugs up at one corner ever-so-slightly, even as his eyes fill with tears.
“You can come over here,” I say gently. “I’m messed up. I’m not dead.”
I watch his eyes as he gets closer to the bed. They dart between my face and my bleeding arm. The blood trickling out of the matching pin pricks in my throat. The bite marks. The itchy little sores that won’t heal because I keep scratching them. The bruises that cover me from head to toe. My left eye, swollen half-shut. I’m gaunt and pale, and I’m sure my eyes must look completely fucked up from being in the dark most of these past months.
He sits in the seat beside my hospital bed and takes my hand. His breath catches when he sees the blood seeping from the busted stitches along my arm.
“I’m sorry,” he says, squeezing my hand as he buries his face in the hospital blankets that cover my thigh. His back shakes as he weeps in my lap. With my free hand, I run my fingers through his light brown hair, the familiarity of another life stirring a deep rift inside me. I wished for this moment. I wanted so desperately to see him. And now that we’re here, he’s like a stranger, a faded photograph. I still love him, somewhere inside myself, but I don’t know how to find that part. I’m vaguely aware of its existence, but not its location. I’m not the girl I was the last time we saw each other. And I don’t know how to find her.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. His hair is so soft. His shampoo smells like musk and spice, and it brings me great comfort in this moment.
Will finally lifts his head and finds my eyes again. “I thought you were dead,” he says. “You were gone for so long.”
I smile wryly, acutely aware of the throbbing in my abdomen. Whatever was in the pills Rome and I took? It was dreamy. And it wears off in sharp increments, each stage of numbness wearing off more harrowing than the last.
“Takes more than that to kill me,” I say, but there’s not a lot of conviction between my words. BecauseI almost did die.
“I was so fucking terrible to you that day,” he mutters, his eyes glassy. “I was so rough, and I hurt you, and—”
Jesus, I’d almost forgotten that afternoon in the mausoleum. WhenNormally Restrained Willrealized I was going to be marrying Joshua, and he morphed intoAngry Hulk Will.
“I deserved it,” I cut him off. “And you didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do.” Except maybe when he made me call myself Daddy’s Little Whore.
It’s funny, but then I remember my father is in a coma, and probably going to die, and suddenly, the funny is all gone.
Will looks mortified. “I went crazy, Aves. I don’t know what came over me.”
I squeeze his hand. “You reacted like anyone would. I blindsided you. I was the asshole in that situation.”
He bows his head again. I take the quiet moment to drink him in. I still love him. So fucking much. But there’s a chasm between us. I’m not the girl he thinks I am, not anymore. Not after this.
His clothes are hanging off him, and the black circles under his eyes tell a story of sleepless nights and anxiety-ridden days. Guilt stabs at me. Whoever did this, didn’t just do it to Rome and me. Will suffered. The people who love us all suffered.
“Will.Hey.” His shoulders shake with silent sobs as he presses his face into the blankets.
