Page 12 of Oblivion
“I wish I'd never met you, you know?” I chuckled and dried my cheeks. “Maybe if you never saw me, you wouldn’t be lying here. I broke you. I broke us, and I am so fucking sorry.”
But my words never had the intended effect. As I looked at his face after I sat down, there was no change. Not even the smallest flinch that would tell me he was listening.
I wished I could keep hoping, keep praying, but time was passing by and I had no idea how long we could do this.
All of us.
* * *
My neck officially hated me,and I realized that I had to stop falling asleep like this—with my butt on the highly uncomfortable chair and the upper part of my body on the bed. Birds chirped on the outside and only then did I realize that someone must have left the window open.
I had no idea how I missed it last night.
But after the information Indigo threw at me and my own emotional fuckery, checking the room was the last thing on my mind—and it should have been the first. With everything going on, I needed to be more careful. The last thing we all needed right now was for me to fall apart emotionally.
I had to be strong—for Storm, for the club, for everyone involved in this.
There was no place for mistakes, and one simple mess-up could cost us our lives.
I pulled myself away from the bed, cracking my neck left and right, wincing as the familiar throbbing in my body reminded me that I had to be more careful. I wasn’t eighteen years old anymore, and after everything I’d put my body through, even sleeping in a fucked-up position meant a miserable morning.
There was no change as I looked up at Storm. The machines kept beeping, his steady heartbeat showing on the monitors, and those fucking IV fluids attached to his arms gave me goosebumps. I played this game every single morning I was here—wake up, bitch about the sleeping position I was in, look at him, look at all these machines, and feel the hope dying in me when I finally realized there was no change.
I should’ve gotten used to it by now, but there was no way I could ever get used to this sight of him.
The sound of the door opening had me whipping my head to the side and jumping up from the chair, ready for an attack. But when a familiar face appeared, holding a cup of coffee I desperately needed, I relaxed, dropping my guard down.
“Well, you look beautiful today.” Atlas grinned.
“Shut up,” I mumbled and walked toward him. His arms spread out, welcoming me into a hug I didn’t know I needed until that moment. “How are you?” I asked, squeezing his sides before stepping back.
He handed over the coffee cup and kept on his brilliant smile, but I hated seeing the shadows around his eyes and the demons glaring at me from his irises. Something was bothering him. Something he didn’t want to say. Whatever it was, it could wait for another day.
“I’m good. You know me. Nothing can ever stop me.”
I highly doubted that, and the chirpy fucking sound of his voice betrayed him. He was masking something. But if he didn’t want to tell me, then fine. I could wait. I didn’t want to coax it out of him if I didn’t really need to. Whatever was bothering my friend had him fucked up and I would find out what—one way or another.
“Yeah, I know.”
“I heard Indigo spoke to you last night?”
Ah, there we go—one of the reasons behind those dark shadows around his eyes.
“And I hear you told him I would be here last night.” I narrowed my eyes on him.
“Hey.” He lifted his hands. “He asked. I told him. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“No, there’s not, except for the fact that you don’t want to tell me what’s going on when it’s clear that something’s been eating you up.”
The vein on the side of his neck ticked, and he avoided my eyes, looking at Storm instead.
“It's nothing, Phee. How’s our boy?”
“Atlas—”
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he blasted. “I really don’t, so please stop asking.”
“Bottling things up isn’t exactly helpful, Atlas.”
