Page 110 of Something Borrowed

I’m sitting on the ground. It’s soft beneath me but I still can’t see anything. I can’t say anything because it falls to nothing when it leaves my lips.

And my throat aches.

No one can hear me, and no one knows I’m here.

Maybe they do. Maybe they’re searching for me, but they are just as lost as I am.

I gave up walking because I don’t know if I’m getting anywhere.

So now I’m just waiting.

I sigh. A blunt sound. Muffled.

I wish he was with me.

If he was here, I wouldn’t be so alone and empty.

He promised to burn the world down for me.

He promised to tear it apart if he ever lost me.

My heart pulls tight in my chest.

“Rufino.” I say, soundless and silent. “My Viking.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Rufino

Ihaven’t left the hospital for two days. Verity is still unconscious, and I’m terrified she will never wake up.

I’m completely drained and barely functioning without adequate rest, food, or anything else. I can’t focus on anything but her.

The smoke damage to her lungs was bad. They had her on a ventilator, pumping oxygen into her system for almost a full twenty-four hours before they were confident enough to take her off it.

Now she is on a drip and a cocktail of painkillers.

Between the dehydration and the smoke she is in not in a good way and they can’t tell me when–or if–she will wake up.

It’s killing me to not know.

Somehow I made it out in better shape than her. Which isn’t saying much.

I am in a great deal of pain. Every part of my body is pain. My have bruises all over, my lungs are heavy, and it’s hard to breathe, my skin is red and sensitive to touch. My face nowsports a long, aching scar from just above my right eye all the way down my cheek.

My face is half burnt, half cut. A thin row of stitches hold the skin closed.

Will she still love me when she sees me like this?

Will she still love me when she realizes I am the one who caused her all of this pain?

The doctors have tried to give me painkillers as well but I don’t feel that I deserve them after what I did. I deserve to be in pain. I deserve to be hurting. My body and my heart.

I don’t know if I even deserve to be with Verity anymore.

But I can’t let her go. I can’t give up on our love.

I’ve been sitting too long. Staring at her resting face. Sometimes she mutters in her sleep, wordless panic as she fights imaginary things. Fire. Heat. Pain. Smoke.

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