Page 63 of The Shape of my Scar
“Please,” she whimpered, backing into the edge of the cot.
A boy’s laugh, sharp and familiar. A bang.
Then the room filled with light.
White, clinical, too bright.
She gasped awake, her heart battering against her ribs like it was trying to escape her body.
Her mouth opened on a silent sob
And he was there.
Thane was bent over her, too close. His hands braced on either side of the bed, knuckles white against the edge of the frame. One hand reached toward her, then stopped mid-air, trembling.
Those eyes.That impossible mismatch—hazel with flecks of green, and the other a vivid, unreal blue.
His face was pale, lips parted like he’d been about to speak.
“Faolan,” he breathed, voice thick and ragged with emotion.
Then, quieter, more broken, “Dory… please.”
She flinched.
No one had called her that in years…not since she’d buried it in a file labelledthings that hurt too much to think about.
The world tilted sideways.
She could feel the hospital again now—the pulse monitor clipped to her finger, the rough sheet beneath her hips, the ache where her ribs knitted slowly beneath her skin. The night nurse stood next to Thane, as if afraid to approach.
Her chest rose and fell too fast. The line between nightmare and reality smudged like charcoal. She saw the man in front of her, the one who had pulled her out of her nightmare. And she didn’t know whether to reach for him or scream.
He noticed.
He stepped back, pain flickering across his face. “I shouldn’t have…fuck. I’m sorry, I just… You were thrashing, and I thought you couldn’t breathe.”
He was still reaching. Not touching. Hovering.
“Don’t touch me,” she whispered.
But it came out fractured, weak.
Thane’s breath caught, and his hands fell away. His jaw tightened, and for a second, he looked like the Thane she used to know. The one who talked to her through a hole in the wall, silent but loyal. The one who kept her hoping. The one who never came back.
That boy was gone.
But some part of him still lived in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. Then he turned and walked out, every step a visible fight to keep from looking back.
She sat frozen long after he had turned the corner.
And when the nurse came in later, adjusting her IV and offering her tea, Faolan simply asked, voice steady, “Can you make sure no one visits after ten?”
Chapter 31
If Faolan thought that would be the last she saw of Thane for a while, she couldn’t have been more delusional.
