Page 143 of Iced Up Love: Part Two
“I need you,” I admit, the truth of it hitting hard, undeniable. “I don’t care how selfish that makes me. I can’t do this without you. I don’t want a life without you in it. I won’t have one, I won’t, I can’t!”
My body shakes with it now, everything catching up all at once, the fear, the guilt, the loss I almost felt and still feel like it’s coming if she doesn’t come back to me.
“Come back to me,” I whisper into her hair, my voice barely holding together. “Please, angel. Just come back to me. I’ll fix everything. I swear I will. I’ll be better. I’ll protect you. I’ll protect both of you. Just don’t leave me like this, don’t leave me like this!”
The room stays quiet.
The machines keep moving.
She doesn’t.
My breathing eventually slows, not because I calm down, but because there’s nothing left in me to sustain that level of emotion.
Exhaustion pulls at me, heavy, unavoidable.
I don’t let go of her.
Not even as it takes me under.
I stay wrapped around her, my hand still resting over her stomach, my face pressed into her hair, holding her like she might disappear if I loosen my grip.
And eventually, I fall asleep like that.
Still apologizing.
Still holding on.
thirty-one
Jackson
By the time we get back to the hospital, my arms are full and my patience is gone.
Zach has the rest of it slung awkwardly against his side, Lia’s pillow tucked under one arm like it actually matters that it doesn’t touch the floor, like it’s something fragile, something we can’t afford to damage, and neither of us says it out loud, but we both know why we grabbed it.
Because it smells like her.
Because if she wakes up, when she wakes up, she’ll want something that feels like home.
We don’t speak much on the way in. There’s nothing left to say that hasn’t already been said in a hundred different ways, and the silence between us isn’t empty, it’s tight, stretched thin with everything sitting underneath it, everything we’re both trying not to touch.
The automatic doors slide open and the hospital air hits me again, too clean, too sharp, and I hate it all over again, hate thatthis is where she is, hate that this is what we have to come back to.
I see them before they see us.
Evelyn is standing just outside Lia’s room, her arms wrapped loosely around herself like she doesn’t quite know what to do with them, like she hasn’t settled since we left, and Lucian is beside her, not touching her, not close enough to draw attention, but close enough.
Watching her.
Not like a friend.
Not like someone who’s just there because he has to be.
The way his attention lingers, the way his focus tracks her when she shifts even slightly, the way he angles himself toward her without thinking about it, I know that look.
And something in my chest tightens immediately.
It’s not the time.
