Page 5 of Fallen Empire
I leaned in close. “Vannah?”
No sound. But her mouth shaped the words like a prayer:Is it over?
My breath caught as her eyes fluttered. Just for a moment. Then she slipped away again. Soft and weightless. Like she hadn’t surfaced at all.
But I knew what I saw.
And so did Ben. He came back into the room just as the nurse rushed in behind him.
“She tried to speak,” he murmured, voice rough.
I nodded, heart still racing. “She’s in there.”
The nurse leaned over Savannah, checking her vitals and murmuring something under her breath. Then she straightened, eyes alert.
“I’m getting the doctor,” she said quickly, pressing a call button on the wall. “This could mean she’s coming out of it.”
She turned back to Savannah, gently brushing her knuckles along her cheek. “Come on, sweetheart. Stay with us.”
Silence wrapped around us again—tight, suffocating.
Then Ben looked at me. “You think we should call him?”
My stomach twisted. “I don’t know.”
“You saw him, Mills. He was spiraling. We call him now and she slips under again... it’ll wreck him.”
“I know,” I whispered. “But if she’s waking up… it could snap him out of it. Sober him up. Give him something to hold onto.”
He exhaled through his nose, rubbing the back of his neck. “Or it’ll break him worse if it’s a fluke.”
I looked back at Savannah. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t feel it—hope trying to bloom in the middle of all this grief. She was still pale. Still bruised. But breathing. Fighting.
Because at the end of the day, she was just that.
A fighter.
If I’ve learned anything from the wreckage she’s been pulled out of, too many times to count, it’s that Savannah Sinclair doesn’t give up. She doesn’t stop. Doesn’t fold. Doesn’t break, even when she probably should.
She fought when no one fought for her. She kept going when she had nothing left to hold on to.
And now? Now she has us.
She has me. She has Jaxson. She has Ben. Hell, even Nic adores her.
She has something to come back to.
And I felt it—deep, certain, unshakable.
She’d fight through hell to get back to us.
So yes, Jaxson should feel it, too. “I’d want to know,” I said quietly. “Even if it was just for a second.”
Ben stared at me for another beat, then gave a tight nod. “I’ll call him.”
He stepped away toward the window, pulling out his phone.
And I prayed like hell. Not just that she’d survive—but that she was already fighting her way back.
