I laugh this time. It’s a hysterical laugh. I can’t help it.
“Right. I’ll just … cover up my bruises with makeup.” I hold the oversized sweater against my chest. I’m wearing clean clothes now; Beast must’ve undressed, washed, and redressed me earlier. I just need a bra, some leggings, and my toiletries. My shirt and panties are fresh. “I need to use Crown’s bathroom.”
Beast nods and opens the door, escorting me out and upstairs.
And then off to the hospital we go.
Me, young and pretty and … married to a much older outlaw, covered in bruises with a swollen face that no amount of concealer can hide. Fuck. I’m a walking, talking liability to the club right now.
But regardless of what it looks like, I know this: the man who hit me is as dead as he deserves, and I am no innocent little girl.
I am, and always will be, a wary predator.
Unsurprisingly, all eyes turn to me as soon as I step foot into that hospital. A nurse agrees to take me back to see Sin if only I’ll head inside a closed exam room for a moment, just to see if that swelling around my eye isn’t something to be worried about.
I allow her to examine it, even as I grit my teeth against the irony of the situation. There are so many domestic abuse victims who need this sort of help, but I am most definitely not nor will ever be one of them. If one of my boys hits me, I’ll cut his balls off in his sleep with my own two hands.
Then I’ll leave him. Permanently.
So anyway, the help offered I empathize with, but I most definitely do not need. After agreeing to at least look at a few carefully selected pamphlets on domestic violence, I pass them back to the nurse and stare her dead in the eye.
“Now, you promised me,” I remind her, and she reluctantly escorts me—and not Beast—to a hospital room where Sin lies comatose, a bandage on the side of his neck and little tubes connected to his arms. I bite my lower lip. Fuck. His skin is so pale, and he’s more comatose than I’ve ever seen him.
This look … it’s different than simple sleep.
“Let me in there,” I command without bothering to look over at the nurse. She gives me another sad, sympathetic sort of expression and gives a slight shake of her head.
“You’re not family, and he isn’t in a state to accept visitors.” The woman puts a hand on my arm, and I can see that she’s already desperate to get away from me. More aptly, she’s probably grossly overworked and freakishly underpaid which is why nurses deserve mad props and a fucking raise.
I sure as shit know that I don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with human beings each and every day at a job. I’d be more like one of those serial killer nurses who murder their patients.
“Is he … okay?” I ask, putting my fingers up on the glass, knowing that I’m wasting this woman’s time but finding it hard to care about that in the moment. You’ve survived the worst pain there is more than once. If something goes bad with this, you’ll live. You’ll be okay.
But somehow, this seems different.
I’m not entirely sure I would survive this.
When my sisters died, I was able to offload some of that burden onto Sin’s shoulders. I felt it that day in the cemetery, with ash and rain swirling all around us while we kissed in the most inappropriate way possible. He might’ve been a dick to me. Might’ve kept being a dick to me. But he was hurting, and I was able to commiserate with him.
If he dies now, it’ll be like witnessing three deaths all at once. Him, Queenie, Posey. A recurring nightmare that I just can’t seem to wake up from.
“I can’t answer that, I’m sorry.” The woman removes her hand from my arm and steps back. “The other gentleman you requested to see is actually on his way to surgery …”
A sound rings out, and voices echo on the loudspeaker.
A code is called, and my blood chills. My eyes go wide as the nurse gestures back in the direction of the waiting area.
“I need you to go back and sit down. Can you do that for me?” And then she gives me a sharp look, like she knows I should be escorted back to the waiting room but maybe also that she’s the only person on the floor who can attend to the code being called over the PA system.
The nurse reluctantly moves away and then starts jogging. I hesitate briefly before following after, my own walk turning into a run that takes me down the hall, to the right, and down another hall. I follow the nurse through a set of swinging doors and find myself in a room filled with low chatter and rhythmic beeps.
This is a resuscitation room.
My eyes drift down to the patient’s face.
It’s Grainger.
It’s … always Cade motherfucking Grainger, isn’t it?
I just stare at him, frozen there in the doorway, watching as the team inserts an IV. Everyone in here looks quietly frantic to me. And that’s terrifying.
“Raelynn Grainger?” a voice asks, and I blink as I turn my head to the side, as if there’s a physical force keeping my gaze locked on Cade’s face. Did she just … did she say Raelynn Grainger?
Who the fuck is that?
He doesn’t … I wonder briefly if he has like, a fucking wife or something, but then I realize in that moment that I really don’t give a fuck either way. He can’t die. He cannot fucking die. That’s … it’s impossible.
What is life without Cade motherfucking, cocksucking Grainger? He’s the most annoying and arguably the most attractive man on the planet. I … can’t stand him. I …
I clamp a hand over my mouth, cringing slightly at the pain in my face but not caring.
I’m finally crying again, as freely as I used to before my sisters died, as if I still have tears actually left to shed. That’s what love does. It fills your heart up with saltwater; it lets you tip right over and drown yourself in stormy seas.
I’m in love with Grainger, and he’s dying?
He isn’t allowed to die.
“I’m the hospital’s family liaison worker.” The woman pauses beside me, but then frowns heavily. “You’re not Raelynn Grainger,” she says, as if she could somehow know that.
“Yes, I am,” I say, realizing that nobody’s kicked me out of the room yet. That must mean if I’m Raelynn, I get to stay, right? “I am.”
“I highly doubt that,” she corrects gently, as if she thinks I might be confused as opposed to simply being a liar. I take a step forward and the woman looks as if she’s going to reach out to stop me. “Are you … his girlfriend, perhaps?” The woman looks down and frowns at the ring on my finger. “Married?” She checks her paperwork.
“We just got married today,” I whisper, rubbing my finger across the surface of the ring.
The woman looks alarmed and not entirely like she believes me, but she makes a split-second decision when she notices the team working on chest compressions.
I should be panicking.
Instead, I’m completely numb. That dizziness from earlier overtakes me, but I refuse to let it affect me. Not right now. I can collapse later if … if things go differently than I want them to.
“If you’d like to stand beside him and hold his hand, that’s okay. We’ll work around you.” The liaison puts her hands on my shoulders and guides me forward. “You’re the only person in the room that he might respond to.”