Chapter 12 #4
“With yourself.”
That shut me up.
Destiny stepped closer again, voice lower now.
“You keep telling yourself this noble story. Georgia is good, Georgia is clean, Georgia deserves you, Destiny needs freedom, Dylan is sacrificing, Dylan is honorable.” She shook her head.
“But from where I’m standing, you’re using Georgia to punish yourself and using me to keep your heart alive in secret. ”
That was the cruelest thing she had said.
Because it was the truest.
I looked away.
“Don’t,” she snapped.
My eyes came back.
“No more looking away.”
“I’m engaged.”
“I know.”
“I made a promise.”
“I know.”
“She loves me.”
“I know.”
The last answer broke.
I saw it.
Felt it.
She hated Georgia’s pain almost as much as her own.
That was why Destiny would always be better than the stories people had tried to turn her into.
“I won’t be her villain,” she whispered. “But I won’t let you make me your ghost either.”
I reached for her before I thought better of it.
Pain flashed, but I ignored it.
My fingers caught her hand this time, not her wrist.
She should have pulled away.
She didn’t.
The room narrowed.
Her hand in mine.
Warm.
Real.
Alive.
So damn alive.
“I don’t know how to undo this without hurting everyone,” I said.
Her eyes softened despite herself.
“You already are.”
There it was.
No mercy.
All mercy.
I tried to sit up.
Stupid.
Very stupid.
Pain tore through me so viciously my vision went white. The monitor shrieked its disapproval. Destiny moved instantly, nurse before woman, hands pressing carefully against my shoulders.
“Stop,” she hissed. “Are you insane?”
“Probably.”
“Lie back.”
“I hate this bed.”
“I hate your life choices. Lie back.”
Her hands pushed me down with firm, practiced control.
The second her palms touched my skin through the thin hospital gown, everything in me lit.
Not soft.
Not gentle.
Electric.
A live wire stretched between us, snapping through years, promises, distance, blood loss, Georgia’s ring, every excuse we had ever made.
Destiny felt it too.
Her breath caught.
Her hands stilled on my chest.
Right over my heart.
We stared at each other.
Her face was close again.
Too close.
Not close enough.
I moved first.
Barely.
Enough.
She could have stopped me.
She didn’t.
My mouth found hers.
It was not a hard kiss.
Couldn’t be. I was too weak, too ruined, too full of tubes and stitches to do anything the way my body wanted. But it was still a kiss that felt like the end of every lie I had ever told.
Destiny made the smallest sound against my mouth.
Pain.
Relief.
Want.
I didn’t know.
Her fingers curled in the hospital gown at my chest. For one second, she kissed me back.
One second.
One lifetime.
Then she pulled away like the kiss had burned her.
“No.”
The word came out broken.
She stepped back fast, one hand covering her mouth.
“No,” she said again, this time to herself. “No, no, no.”
Shame hit me so hard I almost welcomed the physical pain.
“Destiny.”
“That cannot happen again.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Her eyes were wild now. “Because you keep saying you know things and then doing whatever the hell you want with my heart.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop being sorry and be honest.”
I closed my eyes.
Honest.
The word I kept demanding from myself and dodging every time it aimed at the place that hurt most.
I opened my eyes.
“Maybe we’ll never be out of each other’s blood,” I said.
Her face crumpled.
“But I’m not going to blow up my relationship trying to figure out if this is real or if it’s just a wound we keep reopening.”
The hurt in her eyes changed.
Sharpened.
Dangerous.
I kept going because apparently I had decided if I was going to be a coward, I might as well be thorough.
“What if we do this?” I said, voice rough. “What if I end things with Georgia, and you and I go on a few dates, and after the fire burns out, we realize it was all a big what-if? What if we’re just addicted to the almost? To the trauma? To the fact that nobody ever let us find out?”
Her lips parted.
No words came.
For once, I wished she would slap me.
“Georgia is real,” I said. “She stayed. She wants the life I asked her for. I can’t just toss a grenade into that because you and I have heat.”
“Heat?”
The single word was ice.
I knew immediately I had chosen wrong.
Not the feeling.
The word.
Destiny stepped back.
Everything in her seemed to pull inward, away from me, away from the bed, away from the man who had kissed her and then reduced years of longing to heat because he was too scared to call it love in a room where his fiancée could walk back any second.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“Destiny—”
“No. That was helpful.”
“It came out wrong.”
“No, I think it came out exactly the way you needed it to.” She looked at the monitor, the IV lines, the chart, anything but me. “Your dressing is intact. Your IV is running properly. Your pain is elevated because you tried to sit up like an idiot. I’ll notify your nurse.”
She turned toward the door.
Panic ripped through me harder than the bullet.
“Don’t leave like this.”
She stopped.
For one heartbeat, I thought she might turn around softened.
She didn’t.
When she looked back, there were tears in her eyes, but her face had gone calm.
Too calm.
The calm of a woman choosing herself because no one else in the room had the courage to do it.
“You’re right,” she said.
I stopped breathing.
“Maybe it is just a what-if. Maybe it’s trauma and timing and a first kiss dressed up as fate. Maybe if we had a normal date, you’d hate how I order fries and I’d hate how you refuse to read instructions. Maybe we’d burn hot and fast and leave nothing but ash.”
“Beautiful—”
“But I was willing to risk finding out.” Her voice broke then, just once. “You’re not.”
I had no answer.
That was answer enough.
She nodded.
“Go marry Georgia,” she said softly. “Build your tomato garden.”
“Destiny.”
“And don’t flirt with me again.”
The door opened before I could stop her.
She walked out.
This time, she did not look back.
I lay there with her kiss still on my mouth, Georgia’s promise still around my future, and the brutal knowledge that I had just done exactly what I kept claiming I was trying to avoid.
I had hurt everyone.
And the worst part was, even after all that, my heart still reached for the woman walking away.
Dylan
Destiny walked out.
This time, she did not look back.
The door eased shut behind her with a soft click that somehow sounded louder than gunfire.
I lay there staring at the place she had been, her kiss still on my mouth, her words still cutting through me in clean, merciless lines.
Go marry Georgia.
Build your tomato garden.
Don’t flirt with me again.
Pain pulsed under my ribs in slow, brutal waves.
The monitor kept track of my heartbeat like it had any right to comment.
My hand still remembered her wrist. My chest still remembered her palms pushing me down.
My mouth still remembered the second she kissed me back before decency dragged her away from me.
I had wanted to call her back.
I had wanted to say the truth.
The whole truth.
Not the coward’s version. Not the noble version. Not the version where I kept Georgia safe and Destiny free and myself bleeding quietly in the middle like that made me honorable.
But I hadn’t.
Because I was good at bleeding.
Terrible at choosing.
I closed my eyes.
The room smelled like antiseptic, stale coffee, plastic tubing, and Destiny.
That was probably imagination.
Didn’t matter.
It still ruined me.
The door opened again.
For one stupid, impossible second, my heart leapt.
Destiny.
Then Georgia stepped inside with a coffee tray in one hand, a paper bag tucked against her hip, and a face so pale the guilt hit before she spoke.
She had heard something.
Not everything.
Maybe enough.
Her eyes moved to me first.
Then to the door behind her.
Then back to my mouth.
I knew the second she saw it.
Not bruised. Not obvious. Not some movie-style evidence. But Georgia knew me. Knew the guarded set of my jaw. Knew guilt when it had nowhere left to hide. Knew when a room held a woman’s absence like smoke.
She set the coffee tray down on the table beside the chair.
Carefully.
Too carefully.
The paper bag followed.
Her hands were shaking.
“Georgia,” I said.
Her name came out rough.
She flinched anyway.
Not because it sounded cruel.
Because it sounded guilty.
She stood at the foot of my bed, still wearing the ring I had given her. The diamond caught the ICU light, bright and wrong, a promise shining in a room full of lies.
“I came back early,” she said.
My throat tightened.
“I see that.”
Her mouth trembled, but she nodded like my useless answer confirmed something she already knew.
“I forgot my phone charger in the waiting area,” she said. “I was coming back to grab it before I went to shower.”
She looked toward the door again.
“She was leaving.”
I said nothing.
Georgia’s gaze came back to me.
“I heard her say something about marrying me.”
Every machine in the room seemed to grow louder.
Beep.
Hiss.
Click.
Beep.
Georgia swallowed.
“What did she mean?”
I could lie.
I had lied so many times without words. Let Georgia believe half-truths because she loved me enough to fill in the blanks kindly. Let Destiny believe I was protecting her because I did not have the courage to admit I was protecting myself.
But there was a point where lies stopped being shelter and became a grave.
I was tired of burying people alive inside me.
“She was angry,” I said.
Georgia laughed once.
Not funny.
Not soft.
“Women usually are when they’ve been kissed by engaged men.”
My chest went cold.
So she knew.
Of course she knew.
Maybe she had heard that too.
Maybe she had not needed to.
I looked at her.