Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 59120 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59120 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
“I am family.”
She narrows her eyes. “Oh yes, prove that please.”
Shit. How the hell do I prove that? I would assume Chief is his emergency contact, considering he’s the only family he has, so I pull out my phone and call him.
“What’s happening?” he answers, his voice gravelly.
“I need to prove I am Travis’ family, because of all the insane fans trying to get in. Can you confirm with the nurse that I am allowed in?”
“Yeah, put her on.”
I pass the phone to the nurse and she takes it, her hand hesitant. She answers the call, and listens for a moment before nodding, her cheeks growing red, and handing me back the phone.
“You can go through.”
“Oh,” I squeak, as if I was kind of hoping she would send me out and I didn’t have to face this.
She explains to me how to reach the ICU. She then tells me she will call the nurses up there, and they will explain how I can go in. Nodding, I turn and head to the lift, stepping in and pressing the button for the third floor. I hold my breath the entire time up, and when I step out, it is all empty corridors.
Taking a breath, I can smell the bleach and cleaning products they have tried to use to make sure nobody gets any sicker than they already are in this damn place.
I remember these halls as a child, coming to retrieve Chief after another bar fight, or to bring soup to a neighbor laid up with stitches. I hated every inch of it. The way the walls seemed to close in, how the lights were always too bright. It’s the same, except now all the bad things in the world are waiting for me behind one room number.
The nurses at the ICU are far kinder to me than the receptionist, talking a million miles an hour as they put me in a set of clothes, boot covers, a hair net and mask, then lead me to the room where Travis lays. I feel physically sick, and no matter how much they talk, I just can’t seem to answer more than a simple nod, or whisper. I have never been so afraid of anything in all my life.
The moment they open the door and I step in, I feel my world close in.
He’s on the bed, tangled in tubes and wires, and his dirty blond hair is messy and unkempt, grown far longer than I have ever seen it, curling around his ears and falling over his forehead, giving him an almost boyish look. His face is bruised, his lip swollen and his chest is bandaged, along with his right arm. There’s no one else in the room, only the steady machine beeping in time to a heart that keeps beating whether he wants it to or not.
Travis Phoenix, the boy who once scaled the side of my house just to get through my window, is now just laying here weaker than I have ever seen him. He looks nothing like the space-filling, loud-laughing hurricane I ran away from, but everything in me recognizes him anyway. I press my hand to my face, trying to make myself go closer.
The nurse who let me in taps me lightly on the shoulder. “You can go over to him, honey. He’s in a medical coma to let his body rest but you can’t hurt him.”
I step closer, every sense screaming at me to run. The air in here is clean, too clean, and it burns my nose. My legs tremble as I approach the bed, and the closer I get, the more human he looks, the more I want to crawl out of my skin. Two years is a long time to be angry, longer to be scared, but even longer to be broken.
When I reach out and touch his hand, my knees nearly give out beneath me.
His knuckles are scabbed, layered with clear tape and adhesive, but the heat of him thrums under my palm. He always ran hot, even in winter. My throat closes around a sound that isn’t quite a sob, just a gasp, and I squeeze his fingers gently, hoping somewhere in that tangled place where he lives now he knows I’m here.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch.
I grip his hand tighter, afraid if I let go, he’ll disappear for good. There is so much I want to say—every apology, every why, every curse—but my jaw just locks and my teeth ache. I bring his hand up to my cheek, feel the prickle of tape and the warmth, and let the tears fall, silent and bottomless, until my face is wet and the only thing tethering me to this moment is the rough skin of the man I ran from, the only one I ever truly loved.