Page 246 of Ruin My Life
I try to speak again.
“I…” My throat burns. The words scrape up from where they’ve been buried deep. “Lo…ve…”
His hand tightens.
“I know,” he says, his voice wrecked. “Say it again when this is all over, okay?”
But what if I can’t?
What if thisisit?
He won’t let himself believe that. Won’t letmebelieve it either.
So I nod. Or try to. It’s more of a twitch than anything else.
But he sees it. And for now… that’s enough.
Suddenly, I’m in his arms again.
One second he’s in the driver’s seat, and the next, he’s tearing open the passenger door, lifting me carefully against his chest.
He doesn’t pull his coat off me. He leaves it bundled tight, like it might shield me from the rest of the world.
It smells like him. Spice, amber, and lavender. That scent I’ve come to crave.
The orange glow of the setting sun vanishes in a blink, and suddenly it’s swallowed by stark blue ceiling light and sterile air.
“I need help!” Damon’s voice crashes through the ER, sharper than the beeping, the chatter, the fluorescent hum. “Someone help! My wife is dying!”
Wife.
The word hits deeper than the pain.
Is that what I’d have been, if life had given us time?
If the universe hadn’t dragged us together just to tear us apart twice as fast?
Hands appear. Doors swing open. I’m floating, half-conscious, dragged through too many hallways to count. My head lolls. I feel the shift when they lay me on a gurney, but all I can focus on is the warmth of Damon’s hand locked around mine.
I try to squeeze. IhopeI squeeze.
But I can’t tell if he feels it. I can’t even tell if I moved at all.
Words blur past me. Too many. Too fast. None of them stick when I try to pin them down into full sentences.
Fire. New York. Blood. Knife. Transport. Risk. Surgery.
Surgery.Again.
Another scar for the collection I never wanted.
But this one…
Maybe it’s different.
Maybe, if I live to see it, it won’t be just survival.
It’ll be proof. A reminder that I won.
