Page 64 of How to Blow It with a Billionaire

Unfortunately, I was knackered and wrung out, and Caspian’s words had wrapped me up, as warm as the coat he’d bought me, as strong as his arms around me, and so I fell asleep before I heard the end.

* * *

For the rest of the week, I spent most of my time in the hospital, popping back to the hotel to shower and sleep in rare horizontal luxury. Mostly I was floaty and dislocated, drifting through an eerie non-space where time had lost its meaning. My entire world: two rooms with beds in them. Though one of them, at least, was filling up with flowers from well-wishers. As for Nik, he was in a lot of pain and on a lot of drugs, and we had good days and bad days, just like the doctor said we would. The bad days, when I couldn’t make him laugh or speak to me sometimes, were rough. But, somehow, the good days were even worse because I saw how much they took out of him, and I knew he was doing it for me, and that was…kind of heartbreaking. And made me feel more helpless than ever. Even if Caspian had said being here was enough.

And then we got the talk. The real talk.

The one about rest and rehabilitation and prognosis. And Nik said nothing the whole time, leaving me to try and ask Dr. Sharma all the useful and intelligent questions you were supposed to ask in these situations. Of course, I’d been to google, but I was rapidly coming to the conclusion there was no right way to do handle this.

To think, all that time at Oxford looking at Elizabethan politics in Sidney’s Arcadia when they should have been teaching me what to do when your best friend was severely injured and only had a seventy percent chance of ever walking again.

Eventually the doctor left, promising to check back soon, the silence getting heavier and heavier and spikier and spikier until it was like being crushed in an iron maiden.

Nik was staring at the ceiling.

“Um,” I asked helplessly, “are you all right?”

He still wouldn’t turn his head. “No, I’m not fucking all right. You heard what she said.”

“Yeah but…but…I mean, we sort of knew—um. We did sort of know, didn’t we?”

“Of course I knew. I’m not an idiot.”

Except he didn’t have to tell me: this had made it real.

“It’s not all bad stuff,” I tried. “And it could be a lot worse.”

His hand flailed around weakly. Rumpling the covers and dragging the IV line back and forth.

“Nik, don’t do that. You might pull something out or hurt yourself or—”

“Shut up. Just…shut up. Shut the fuck up.”

I froze. Too shocked, at first, even to be upset. He’d never spoken to me like that. But then I noticed the tears slipping from beneath his lashes. And since he couldn’t very easily dash them aside or turn away, it was the most defenseless thing I’d ever seen.

“Oh Nik.” My own voice broke. “Please don’t cry. It’ll be okay.”

“Stop telling me it’s going to be okay. It’s not okay. It’s not going to be okay. And I’m not going to pretend otherwise to make you feel better.”

I knew Nik wasn’t actually trying to hurt me. Or, if he was, it was more of a load-sharing exercise than anything. But the sandstorm of his anger and fear and grief still flayed me raw. Made me shed a few tears of my own.

“What the fuck do you have to cry about?” he snarled.

“Nothing. I don’t know. I’m sorry.” I let out a shaky breath. “It’s all really scary. I mean, I could have you lost you. You could have died. That’s such a terrible thing to have come so close to happening that I can’t even bear to think about it.”

There was a long silence.

“I’d rather be dead.” He eased his head round, so that he was looking out of the window, away from me. “Just leave me alone.”

I almost kicked up a fuss, wanting to stay and fix it. But even I had enough self-awareness to recognize it would be for me, not Nik—who was telling me pretty clearly he needed something else right then.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll go get a drink. And if you still want to be by yourself when I’m done, I’ll head back to the hotel.”

Nik didn’t reply.

So I slipped out, closed the door as quietly as I could, and made my way through corridors grown as familiar as unspooled thread until I came to the coffee place near the lobby. I ordered a smoothie and cream cheese bagel, and crept into a corner with them.

Silence enfolded me, soft and stifling. Hospitals were kind of like airports—sad airports—full of distilled time and echoes.

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