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“She just needs rest,” Nadine says. “You remember the state she was in when you got to her. Just because she was a mouthy little shit when we took her to the doctor doesn’t mean she wasn’t severely hurt.”
“I know she was hurt,” I reply more calmly than I actually am. “But Lynch isn’t fazed by pain. She’s stronger than this. She should be better by now. This isn’t like her.”
Nadine doesn’t get it. Willow isn’t just any person—she’s not like everyone else. She’s metal and fire and acid, she’s everything in this world that’s designed to endure, to destroy before it is destroyed.
It’s Woodrow who interjects this time. “She’s been through hell, sir. She just needs time.”
There’s a gentleness softening the formality of his tone. I can’t possibly imagine that Woodrow has developed any sort of affection for Willow; perhaps her injuries are brutal enough that they’ve disarmed even him.
I tilt my head in Woodrow’s direction with a slight smile. “Ned—you’re finally coming around to my new girlfriend?”
“She is a foul-mouthed hooligan, a thief, and a brute,” Woodrow says. “But my parents raised me to be a gentleman; I believe nobody should ever brutalise a woman this way, especially a restrained, helpless woman.”
Willow might have been bound when I found her in that basement, but she was far from helpless. I remember all too vividly the sight of her hitting and scratching at her attacker with all her strength, even as the air was choked out of her neck, even with her hands bound and her body beaten half to a pulp.
“She’s going to pull through,” Nadine says, straightening herself and crossing her arms. Despite the determination in her voice, her face is drawn and wan, her eyes tired and tinged with sadness. “She’s tough as anything—a true survivor. She’ll pull through, and if anything, she’ll probably be ten times more obnoxious when she does.”
She fixes me with a pointed look.
“She just needstimeandrest.”
What she means is: stop rushing her, stop hovering, do not touch her, do not antagonise her, do not hunt her like human prey.
I glance at Willow, then back at Nadine.
“One more week, Nadine. One more week, and then I’m dragging her home by her feet.”
Nadine’s face drops, but I turn and leave the hospital room before she can say anything else.
Willow takes three moreweeks to start recovering. I try to keep busy in the meantime, in any way I can. Work, CHOKE, Novus, fencing, archery, the dogs, swimming. The spring events have begun; I attend them all. When I’m questioned by journalists, I explain that my girlfriend is currently unwell, and I make promises to bring her to my mother’s gala in the summer. They probably don’t believe me, but they know they’re not going to get any more from me, so they leave me alone.
I try to visit Willow, but more often than not, I’m politely but firmly steered away by doctors and nurses. They all sing from the same hymn sheet as Nadine: Willow needs rest; she needs to recover.
What about whatIneed?
To see her, to question her. To pick at the uncertainty of her, to find out everything there is to know, all those mysteries she hides out of sight just like her scars.
To touch her, too. To hold her between my hands, like feeling the fractures on a newly repaired object. To make sure she’s alright, not broken beyond repair.
I know I just need to be patient, and patience has always been a virtue of mine. But how can I be patient when Willow Lynch lies alone in a hospital bed and I have no choice but to pace my house, Cerberus at my heels, wondering when I’ll finally get to bring her home.
I don’t get the phone call until April, and when I do, I don’t even finish the conversation before I’m in the car and on my way to the hospital. I traverse the clean halls of the hospital like an arrow, without stopping, until I reach the door to her room.
At the door, I pause and catch my breath. I have no intention of barging into Willow Lynch’s room breathless and desperate. So I breathe, and collect myself, and I enter Willow’s room calmly, pausing in the doorway.
Willow lies propped on a pile of pillows, picking at a yoghurt. Her wrists and neck are still in bandages, her hair is tied up in a messy ponytail. The swelling around her eye has gone down, replaced instead by a black pit of bruising. The cut on her mouth is still raw and shiny—she’s probably been picking at the scab with her tongue.
Given I’ve had sex dreams in the past about Willow and her bruises, I’m shocked by how viscerally displeased I feel when I see her. My fingers curl into tight fists, the leather of my gloves creaking. A white-hot hate curls at the pit of my stomach. I find myself wishing Simon Doughtry was still alive, just so that I could kill him again.
I should’ve killed him slowly. I should have gutted him alive for what he did, strangled him with a rope of his own intestines, stabbed every living part of him into a bloody swamp of flesh.
Willow looks up from her yoghurt with a grimace, and her eyes fall on me. For a split second, I see true emotion in her gaze—anger, pain, frustration, melancholy—but it disappears the moment she sees me. She throws her yoghurt and spoon on the hospital table suspended above her legs.
“All that money and you couldn’t spring for some decent hospital food?”
Her voice is a rasp like she has a cold, but the tone is unmistakably hers. Sharp as a knife, belligerent, full of scorn despite the pain she’s clearly in when she speaks. I advance towards her, a smile tugging at my lips.
“It really only took a few months away from Greenleigh to turn you into a spoiled brat, Lynch.”
