Page 153 of The Ache That Stayed

A nurse stood a few feet away, speaking low to someone else.

“She’s been like that for over an hour,” she said. “Won’t respond. She was—”

I didn’t hear the rest.

“Roxanne?”

She didn’t respond. Just kept staring ahead as though she was waiting for someone to appear. She had never looked this fragile.

It looked as though life had carved everything out of her and left only the shell behind. And I didn’t know how to reach her.

That frightened me more than the blood staining her hands.

The only times I had ever seen her unguarded were in the quiet aftermath of us—when her body relaxed against mine, when sleep took her before she could rebuild her walls. Even then, it had never felt like weakness. This felt like absence.

I had seen her withdraw before. Small, fleeting moments where her gaze went distant, where she slipped somewhere I couldn’t follow. I had learned not to push then. Learned to wait until she came back on her own. But this—

For the first time since I had known her, I didn’t know how to reach her.

“Amore?”

I kneeled in front of her and gently stroked her cheek. Slowly she looked at me. Like pulling her back from somewhere she hadn’t come back from yet. For a second she just stared, as though she were looking right through me, not at me.

When she finally saw me, it wasn’t gradual. There was no transition, no control—just a complete collapse, as though whatever had been holding her together had given way all at once. The sound that left her didn’t even resemble a sob. It sounded torn out of her—deeper, raw and unfiltered, as she stumbled forward and clutched at me like I was the only thing keeping her upright.

“Promise me,” she choked, her fingers tightening in my shirt as if she could force the answer out of me. “Promise me he’ll be okay.”

The words landed heavier than they should have. I didn’t know. I didn’t have that answer. But she wasn’t asking for truth. She was asking for a lifeline to hold onto.

“Promise me… please—” she hiccoughed.

“I promise,” I said.

I had no idea if it was true. But she looked at me with the desperation of a drowning woman. And drowning people don’t need truth. They need hope to hold onto.

The moment the words left me, she broke completely, her body giving in to the weight of it as she collapsed into me, sobbing in a way that had no restraint left in it.

“I—he—” she tried.

“I didn’t tell him,” she choked out. “I was going to tell him, and I didn’t.”

The words dissolved into another sob. I held her steadily.

Even then, a realisation had begun taking shape.

Her fingers curled into my shirt instinctively, gripping like she needed an anchor beneath her hands, a reality that wouldn’t disappear. It was a familiar movement—one I had felt before in the quiet of the night, when she would reach for me in her sleep without waking, as though some part of her always needed to confirm I was still there.

But now she clung to me as though she was already losing something. Or someone.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” I said gently.

I had built my life on control. On knowing how things moved, how people broke, how situations turned before they happened. Everything had a pattern. Variables. Systems. Rules. Things I could understand. Things I could control.

But her—she had never fit inside anything I understood.

And despite that, I had never once considered letting her go.

She looked toward the corridor leading to the operating rooms and clutched me tighter before moving. I guided her forward, past Sean without a word, the quiet acknowledgement between us enough for now. There would be time for questions later. Time for answers. Time for consequences.