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A loud gasp hisses from her as she closes her eyes. For the few seconds she clenches them shut, I am left bereft. I want to pry them open so that she only ever looks at me. So that I am the only thing she sees ever again.
When she opens them once more, my lungs squeeze all the breath from me with all the fire burning in them.
“I miss you too,” she tells me, appearing as if she’s about burst into a full-on sob.
Worry sets in at her remark. My hand rounds her head to make sure she’s not had a hard knock to it. There doesn’t seem to be anything, but maybe the impact jarred her too much. Or it could be that she’s still in shock. Georgina’s normally so good with her words. I think it’s part of the problem with me and her. She’s so open—the complete opposite to me.
“I was texting you—” Georgina swallows hard, choking on her tears as she tries to silence her sobs. “—when it happened. I was texting you that I miss you too.”
My heart stutters at her words. Half-seconds tick by, and even if the sadness doesn’t leave her eyes, Georgina smiles. For this one moment, a reprieve from darkness, life isn’t only about surviving. With her in my arms, I’m living. Every beat of her heart. Dazzle of her soul. Flutter of her lashes and lick of her lips. There’s nothing I won’t do for just another moment with her. She’s my heaven, and of all my wrongs, hurting her is by far the greatest. The one regret that I will carry with me to my grave.
While we settle into the silence, I pull out my phone and text Casper to bring her some clean clothes. It may not be much, but getting her cleaned up seems like the best way to look after Georgina right now. It’s the only thing I can do to even begin to make her feel better. And that’s all I want to do. To take care of her in all the ways that she has cared for me even when I didn’t deserve it. Because like she whispered to me endlessly in the shower when I desperately needed something to ground me—“It’s you and me, Swan. Always, you and me.”
* * *
An hour later and the doors open ahead of us. Georgina practically tries to leap up off my lap, only to lose her balance and almost fall to the side. I need to get her looked at. A part of me wants to tear Cooper a new one over the fact he didn’t get her seen by a doctor. But then, I know what she’s like. The fact that we still have no idea what was behind the accident means that he was operating on keeping her as calm as he could so that he could control the situation.
The nurse walks past us into the room, and Georgina moves to sit beside me. As much as I want to pull her back onto my lap, I use the opportunity to get a better look at her legs. While we’ve been sitting here, I managed to get a good feel of her arms without her noticing. I’m no doctor, but she seems to be okay.
“There really is nothing wrong with me,” she tells me again. “Only a few grazes and scratches. Nothing serious.”
Perhaps I haven’t been as discreet as I thought I was being.
“I need to be sure. I…”
With a defiant purse of her lips, she grasps my chin. “I was wearing my seat belt. You always nag me about it and…and…I don’t know, I put it on this time.”
“Good.”
“He didn’t, and when Cooper pulled him out—” Tears flood her eyes, and before I have a chance to wipe them away, they sluice down her cheeks. “—when they pulled him out, his head and his face…”
Nestling an arm around her, I tuck her into my side while I trace the tear of her leggings lightly, making sure that there’s nothing more sinister beneath. I want to keep telling her that her friend is going to be fine, but the reality is that they were in a collision with a fucking truck that sent them flying. It would be a miracle if he was all right after hitting a normal windshield, but a bullet- and impact-proof one—he’s lucky he’s alive for now.
“You’re not telling me he’s going to be okay,” she murmurs.
“Jordan’s fit, and clearly he’s putting up a fight in there.” I don’t tell her to prepare herself for the worst, and I won’t. That’s what I’m here for. To make sure that when the bad news comes, she has me to fall back on.
“He’s going to die, isn’t he?”
“Possibly.” Absolutely, and it’s killing me to know that she’s going to be devastated.
Georgina looks over at the family the nurse is ushering towards the lift. They sound relieved as they talk to her, and with every sigh that we hear, she pales a little more. “That family got here after me, and their person is done. We’ve been here hours.”
“I’ve been here an hour, and Cooper called me when Jordan was taken into surgery. He’s been in there under two hours. His injuries would be far too complex for them to be done yet.”
“Karen should be here by now. Jordan would want her here. He needs his mum. He…he…he…”
“What he needs right now is for the surgeons to do their job. His mother being here won’t change anything.” My retort is sharper than I intend, and immediately I try to make up for it by pulling her closer.
“She should have arrived already,” she blows out on a whisper, defiant as ever.
“Look at me, Georgina.” Tucking my legs beneath me, I part hers and kneel between them. Sadness and worry draw at her brows as I cup her face. It’s impossible to get my heart in check. Impossible for me to ignore the pang that echoes between us while I look into her eyes and try to somehow take some of the anguish in them. “There is nothing you can do. There is nothing that you could have done.”
“I thought he was dead at first. I tried to pull him back, but we were hanging upside down, and my seat belt was stuck. I was stuck, and I was panicking so much that I couldn’t breathe.”
If she doesn’t stop this, she’s going to have another panic attack. We can’t have that right now. Especially not if the worst is yet to come.
“But you can breathe now,” I tell her, stroking my thumbs over her cheeks while she blinks the tears from her eyes. “I’ve got you.”
