Chapter 28 – REX
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
REX
The last of the bandages come off today.
Dr. Elm peels away the final layer of gauze with hands that are steady despite the slight pallor creeping into his face.
Professional to the core, that one. But I catch it anyway—the millisecond where his eyes widen before his training kicks in and smooths his expression into something approximating neutral.
They all do it. Every single one.
Doesn't matter that they've seen my chart, read the surgical notes, knew exactly what was waiting under those pristine white wrappings. The reality of seeing it—really seeing it—always hits different than clinical descriptions.
"Healing well," Dr. Elm says, voice carefully modulated. He's probably congratulating himself on not flinching. "The infection's cleared completely. No signs of necrosis in the debrided tissue."
Debrided. Such a clean word for what they did. Scraped away dead flesh like you'd scrape mold off bread.
I don't look at the mirror on the wall. Know better than that. Know what I'll see—the same thing that made Nash's face go carefully blank whenever he looked directly at me. The same thing that makes medical professionals with decades of experience lose a shade or two of color.
I look like the fucking zombies on the posters all over Raf’s room.
Dr. Elm circles around, examining from multiple angles. He won’t actually touch me, not even with gloves. No one does. His penlight traces over the topography of destruction like he's mapping terrain on an alien planet. Which, fair. My face probably does look extraterrestrial at this point.
"You can resume normal activities," he continues, scribbling notes on his tablet. "The surgical site is fully closed. Keep it clean, moisturize twice daily with the prescription ointment. If you experience any fever, renewed swelling, or drainage—"
"I'll ignore it like I always do?" I offer, tone flat enough to sand wood.
He has the grace to crack a smile at that. Barely. "Ideally, you'd come back immediately. But I've read your history. You won't."
Smart man.
"Anything else?" I ask, already reaching for my mask.
"Your vocal cords showed some strain during the exam." Dr. Elm sets his tablet aside, and I know what's coming. The lecture I've heard a thousand times. "You're pushing too hard. The scar tissue in your throat—"
"Isn't going to get better no matter how gently I sing," I interrupt. "We done here?"
He sighs. A good sigh, full of resigned frustration. The kind doctors reserve for patients they know are hopeless cases. "Yes. But Rex—"
I'm already standing, mask secure. The world narrows back to manageable proportions once the familiar leather separates me from direct observation.
"Thanks for not puking on my shoes this time," I mutter on my way to the door.
"That was one time," he calls after me. "And I was a resident."
The hallway outside is typical hospital sterile—fluorescent lights that make everyone look like corpses, that smell of antiseptic barely masking decay, people in various states of falling apart. I navigate it with the ease of someone who's spent too much time in places like this.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out, expecting updates from the studio or some bullshit from the label.
Nothing.
Same as it's been for three days.
Rafael's last text sits at the top of my messages.
[RAF: Emergency. Had to leave town. Will explain later.]
Later. Right. Because that's not suspicious as fuck.
I'm not worried. Definitely not worried that something happened to Bells and they're not telling me.
Or maybe she's fine, and they know her secret and that's why they fucked off together without a word.
But I'm definitely not jealous about the possibility that they're somewhere right now, probably tangled up in each other while I'm stuck getting poked and prodded by medical professionals who can barely hide their horror at my face.
Nope.
Not jealous at all.
Fuck.
I'm halfway to the parking garage when I stop. Turn around. Head back into the hospital's labyrinth with purpose crystallizing in my chest like ice.
Stephen Hughes is still here. Still recovering from what I did to him.
And I have questions.
Navigation through the hospital wings takes longer than it should. I have to ask directions twice—once from a nurse who takes one look at my mask and decides she suddenly has somewhere else to be, once from a security guard who's either braver or stupider than most.
"Stephen Hughes," I tell him. "What room?"
He checks his tablet. "366. But visiting hours—"
"Don't care."
Fourth floor. East wing. The elevators here are slower, older, probably haven't been updated since the building was constructed. I watch the floor numbers tick upward with glacial patience that makes my teeth ache.
366 is at the end of a quiet corridor. No nurse’s station nearby. No foot traffic. Just the mechanical hum of medical equipment and that pervasive hospital smell that gets into your clothes, your skin, your lungs.
I don't knock.
Stephen's propped up in bed, face wrapped in enough bandages to make him look like a cut-rate mummy. Both eyes are swollen almost shut, purple-black bruises spreading down to his bandaged and wired jaw. His nose is splinted, taped. He looks like he got hit by a fucking freight train.
Good.
Not good enough, but good.
Stephen's swollen eyes track my entrance with the kind of wariness prey animals develop right before they become someone's dinner.
Smart.
I close the door behind me. The soft click echoes in the sterile room, final as a coffin lid.
"Rex." His name for me comes out garbled through the wires holding his jaw together, each syllable grinding against metal. "Shou'n't be 'ere."
"And you shouldn't have put your hands on Bells." I move closer to the bed, boots silent on linoleum. "But here we fucking are."
His hands clench on the sheets. White-knuckled despite the pain it must cause. Good. I want him hurting. Want him to feel a fraction of what he put Bells through.
"Di'n't touch—"
"Bullshit." The word cracks like a whip. "I saw you. Saw exactly where your hands were before I rearranged your face."
Stephen's breathing quickens, shallow and rapid. The heart monitor beside his bed picks up pace, beeping faster. Part of me—the part that's kept carefully locked away since the accident—wants to rip that monitor off and watch the panic really set in.
Instead, I let the silence stretch. Let him marinate in fear while I survey the damage I inflicted.
Multiple facial fractures. Shattered orbital bone. Broken nose—compound fracture, from the look of the splint. Jaw wired shut. Probably going to need reconstructive surgery once the swelling goes down.
My work. My art.
Not bad for someone who can't even drink water without making a mess.
That's when I notice the patient information board mounted on the wall. Name, attending physician, care team, dietary restrictions. And there—
Designation: Alpha
“I thought you were a beta, Stephen.”
It's one of the only fucking reasons I agreed to work with him in the first place. Thought a beta manager would be less of a prick, since we were already a band full of alphas.
Joke's on me.
Stephen glances at the board, then back to me. A slight flicker of nervousness tightens his expression, but not for long.
"'S a joke," he manages through clenched metal. "'Tween me'n the nurses."
Liar.
Every instinct honed by years of learning to detect bullshit from across a room, of protecting Nash from people who smiled while planning to fuck us over—all of it screams that Stephen Hughes is lying through his wired teeth.
"Right." I lean against the windowsill, arms crossed. Casual. Like we're just two old friends catching up. "An inside joke about your secondary gender. That's totally normal and not suspicious as fuck."
"Wha' d'you wan', Rex?" Each word clearly costs him. Good. "Came to gloat?"
"Came to find out what the hell you were doing with Bells.
" I push off the windowsill, moving closer.
Not touching. Not yet. Just... occupying space.
Making him aware of exactly how much bigger I am, how easily I could finish what I started.
"By my studio. In that alley. What were you trying to do? "
Stephen's laugh is wet, painful. Blood flecks appear at the corners of his mouth where the wires dig into damaged tissue. "'M his manager. Was talkin' business."
"Bullshit. Business doesn't make someone freeze like that. Business doesn't make someone look like they're about to crawl out of their skin." My hands clench into fists at my sides so I don't undo every last bit of his healing and then some. "So I'll ask again. What. Were. You. Doing."
"Why d'you care?" The question comes out slurred but pointed. His visible eye sharpens despite the swelling. "Thought he's jus' your revenge plot. Your weapon 'gainst me."
The accuracy stings more than it should.
"He's my singer," I say flatly. "And you don't touch my band."
"Your singer." Stephen's laugh turns into a cough that makes the monitors chirp. When he recovers, that calculating look is back. "Tha's all?"
I don't answer. Don't give him the satisfaction.
"Y'got a thing for my songbird?" The words are deliberate despite the wiring. Each one chosen, weighted. "Tha' it? Gonna tell me the big bad Rex Steele caught feelings? That's a shame, considerin' the state o' your face. The look in your eyes suggests it." The corners of his dry lips twitch. "Eye."
My songbird.
The pet name makes my blood run cold, then flushes boiling hot.
"Shut your fucking mouth—"
"You think nobody took pictures in the OR?" Stephen cuts me off, and something in his tone makes my spine lock up. "Rex Steele, mysterious masked frontman of Vespyr, finally exposed? That's worth money. Lots of money."
The room temperature drops about twenty degrees.
Or maybe that's just my blood turning to ice.
"I have connections," Stephen continues, drool gathering on his swollen lower lip and dribbling down his chin. "Connections you wouldn' believe. Connections in hospitals, in media, in places you've ne'er e'en thought to look."
He's bluffing. Has to be. My mind won't accept that he isn't.
But I know firsthand that rules don't matter when enough money's involved. Know that someone in the OR probably had a phone in their pocket. Probably saw an opportunity. Probably—
"You want proof?" Stephen's visible eye is practically glowing with malicious satisfaction. "Han' me my phone. I'll show you exac'ly what I'll broadcast to the entire world if you don' end this bullshit with Bells and send him back to me."
My hand moves before conscious thought catches up. Grabs the IV stand. Yanks it toward me with enough force that tubing rips free from Stephen's arm, tape tearing skin, the catheter leaving a bloody mark in its wake.
"Fuck!" Stephen's scream is garbled by wiring. His hand flies to the wound, pressing against it reflexively.
The heart monitor goes ballistic. Alarms start shrieking. Somewhere down the hall, I hear running footsteps.
I lean down close enough that Stephen shrinks back.
"You better fucking pray they find a reason to keep you in this hospital," I whisper, voice dropping to something barely human. "Because the minute you're discharged? The second you're out there where I can reach you?"
I let that hang. Let him imagine exactly what I'm capable of. What I've already done and what I'll do again without hesitation.
"You're a dead man."
Stephen's puffy eyes are wide now.
"Oops." I straighten, letting the IV pole clatter against the bed frame. "Looks like I knocked something loose."
The door bursts open. Nurses flood in, all professional urgency and controlled panic. One of them spots me immediately.
"Sir, you need to leave—"
"Sorry. Shit depth perception." I gesture lazily toward the mask I can barely see through, already moving toward the exit, past the swarm of scrubs and concerned faces. "Visiting hours, right?"
I don't run. Don't hurry. Just walk with measured steps through the hallway while behind me the controlled chaos continues. Voices calling for a doctor. Stephen's garbled protests. The eternal beeping of his machines.
The elevator can't come fast enough.
When the doors finally close, sealing me in blessed solitude, I let my head fall back against the wall. Close the one eye that can still close normally. Try to remember how to fucking breathe.
Pictures.
Stephen has fucking pictures.
My entire fucking existence hangs on whether some underpaid OR staff decided whatever the fuck Stephen gave them was worth risking it all.
Because there’s no way in hell I’m letting that scumbag anywhere near Bells ever again.
And if that means I have to finish Stephen Hughes off myself, so fucking be it.
To be continued…