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I open my eyes, but the sun is so bright I need to close them again. Tears squeeze out between my lashes.
“There you are, Beautiful.” It’s a woman’s voice. A kind voice. A voice that I realize I’ve heard, off and on for days.
“H— H—” I can’t make myself say a word.
She holds something to my lips. A straw. “There you go. A little water will clear that throat right up.”
I swallow. The water is ice-cold and it feels like magic. “Hello,” I manage on my third try. And then, because it’s the most important thing I can ask, I say, “Trap?”
“Mr. Prince is downstairs getting coffee. He’ll be back in just a moment.”
“Wh— who…”
“I’m Nurse Allen. I’m your daytime nurse.”
“How l— long…”
“You’ve been sleeping for a while. Ten days. Even Dr. Hanson was starting to get a little worried. If Mr. Prince had called her when this started…”
My eyes well up. Ten days.
I can remember bits and pieces. Losing my angel. Trap holding my head while I was sicker than I’ve ever been in my life. Trap talking to someone… Dr. Hanson, I guess. Trap muttering his filthy words like a mantra.
“None of that,” Nurse Allen says, and I realize I must be crying because she presses a tissue into my hand. I’m still dabbing at my eyes when she says, “Well here’s Mr. Prince now.”
He’s standing in the doorway. A cup of coffee shakes in his hand so violently that Nurse Allen steps forward to grab it and spare the floor.
“I’ll give you two a moment,” she says, stepping out of the room.
Trap closes the distance to the bed before the door is shut. His arms fold around me like he’s terrified he’ll break me. “Oh my fucking God,” he says smoothing down my hair. “I thought… I didn’t know… I wasn’t… Oh my fucking God…”
Wires trail from beneath the hospital gown I’m wearing, and electrodes pull at my skin. A plastic cap shifts on my finger, one of those readers that’s supposed to monitor my oxygen. Graphs leap on the screen next to the bed.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I’m crying again. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“I told you a long time ago, you never need to tell me that,” he whispers against my hair. “But sweet fucking Christ, what were you thinking?”
“I don’t know. I thought… I wanted… I was so scared…” I’m no better at getting out a sentence than he was, and for a long time, we simply hold each other.
But I owe him more than that. I force myself to sit back, to take a deep breath and say, “Leo bought the Crash from an orderly at—”
“I tracked the fucker down. The jizzstain was fired before your fever broke.”
That’s such a Trap response I have to laugh. But not for long, because I still have to make him understand. “When I found the Crash in Swallowtail, Leo and I fought. He said—”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what Leo said.”
And that is also classic Trap. And he’s right. This isn’t really about Leo. It’s about me. About us.
I find his hands. I squeeze them between mine, ignoring the pinch of the oxygen meter.
Words.
I’m supposed to use words.
I force myself to say something I should have managed long ago, “I took the Crash because I wanted to understand Leo.”
