Chapter 17 #2
I grit my teeth, my chest tightening with frustration.
I’m about to argue when a shadow falls over us, long and imposing.
I glance up, heart sinking, and see my father standing there, hands clasped behind his back, perfect posture, perfect expression—an expression that masks calculation and menace in equal measure.
“What seems to be the problem here?” His voice is calm, deliberate, but there’s an edge underneath it that makes my stomach twist. Kyle straightens, suddenly polite, like he’s just a pawn in some larger game.
“I need to leave,” I say quickly, stepping toward him. “Magnus—he’s been hit. I have to see him.”
My father’s gaze sharpens, and I feel the weight of it like a physical blow. “Alaric,” he says slowly, deliberately, “if you leave now, you will be cut off. Completely. No trust fund, no access to anything. You leave tonight, and you will not receive another penny from me.”
The words hit harder than any argument with Kyle could.
My chest tightens. The world narrows around that single threat, that single ultimatum.
My father is cold, precise, and utterly merciless.
I can see the calculation in his eyes—he knows exactly how to manipulate me, exactly which strings to pull.
I swallow hard, heartbeat erratic. I glance at Kyle, who now looks smug, satisfied with the tension he’s helped create. He’s practically counting on me to fold.
I say nothing because I know arguing won’t help. Instead, I make the decision in a single, swift heartbeat.
“Fine,” I mutter, voice low, trembling slightly with suppressed fury and fear. “Fine.”
I pivot sharply and stride toward the door, ignoring Kyle’s protests, ignoring my father’s stare. The voices around me blur, the polite clinking of glasses, the laughter, the camera flashes—all meaningless. Nothing matters but Magnus.
Molly’s eyes follow me, wide and anxious. She doesn’t say anything, just offers a tiny nod, a small gesture of support. I catch it, and it’s enough to steady my hands, enough to remind me that I have someone in my corner. Someone who understands.
The hallway stretches ahead, bright and sterile, but I barely notice it. My phone is clutched in my hand, useless, silent—I have no need for distractions. The world has shrunk to a single point: the hospital. Magnus. Maybe hurting. Maybe scared. Maybe needing me.
Kyle’s voice cuts after me, but I don’t answer. He’s shouting, cursing, but it’s white noise now. I move faster, ignoring the luxury cars waiting outside, ignoring the valet. My mind is too full of Magnus.
I can hear the city around me, honking cars, muffled voices, the hum of streetlights, but I’m not present for any of it.
I’m running, metaphorically and almost literally, toward Magnus, toward the person who has upended everything in my life in ways I can’t articulate, who has made me realize how hollow my existence can be without him.
Every second of hesitation, every polite smile I’ve forced, every compromise I’ve made—it all evaporates.
There’s only urgency now. Only the pounding of my own pulse and the distant memory of his laugh, his touch, the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching.
I clutch the phone tighter, wishing I could hear his voice, wishing I could know he’s alive, wishing I could undo every moment that led to him lying in some hospital room with someone else making decisions for him.
I break into a run, ignoring the stares of passersby, the drizzle soaking me through. The city lights blur around me, the hum of traffic a distant echo. Nothing exists but him. Magnus. Alive, and waiting.
And I don’t stop.
? ? ?
The fluorescent lights in the emergency department make everything look too white, too clean, like a painting of life where the shadows have been erased. My shoes slap hard on the linoleum as I barrel through the sliding doors.
“Excuse me!” I shove past a woman holding a sleeping toddler, past a man with an arm in a sling.
The automatic doors whoosh shut behind me. I don’t stop until I’m at the nurses’ station, breath tearing out of me in raw, jagged sobs.
A nurse looks up, calm and efficient. “Sir, can I help—?”
“Where is he?” I don’t even know who I’m yelling at. The words tear out of me like a palpable thing. “Where is Magnus Flint? Tell me where he is. I need—” I break off because my voice has become paper-thin and wet.
The nurse’s expression shifts, trained concern folding into real worry. “What’s your name, sir?” She’s asking for paperwork, protocol, the things that make hospitals run, but I can’t think about forms. I push my phone into her hand like it’s a warrant. My fingers are slick with sweat.
“Alaric Hale,” I say, and for one suspended second the world holds its breath.
“Sir, please wait here.”
Wait? The word feels obscene. I pace, boots scuffing, the plastic chair rings when I push it back too hard and the sound startles me.
People try to be polite, offer half-steps of space, like someone might hand me back the person I lost if I just asked nicely.
I am not patient. I have never been patient when it comes to things that matter.
A man in scrubs comes out, one of those clean, calm faces. “Mr. Hale?”
“Yes.” My throat closes. “Where is he? Is he—?”
“He’s been cleared to go,” the man says, and my knees nearly give out.
“He had minor bruises, some scrapes; not anything like they’re reporting online.
Someone pulled him out of the way in time.
He’s awake. He’s… We actually discharged him a short while ago.
He should be in the lobby if he’s still here. ”
My chest constricts with a combination of relief and a new, slippery fear.
I go toward the exit like I’m a man at the end of a rope.
The lobby is a horizon of seats and people and a television mounted on the wall blaring some daytime show.
I scan, frantic, until I see someone leaning against a pillar, hood up, face angled down.
He looks smaller than the headlines make him.
He looks raw. The hood is up but it doesn’t hide the bruise blooming along his jaw or the dried flecks of something at his hairline.
His lips are swollen, his eyes rimmed in red—the look of someone who’s been scraping at the bottom of something that used to be a life.
“Magnus,” I say before I can stop myself.
He starts, head whipping up. For a beat we just look at each other and the weight of the last week drops like a stone between us.
Then he’s moving. Stumbling forward with a kind of ferocious speed that makes the hair on my arms lift.
He wraps his arms around me and the world collapses into the press of his chest and the smell of him—stale whiskey and sweat, and under all that, faint and stubborn, that clean, impossible scent of him I can never quite scrub from my memory.
“Al, what are you doing here?”
I pull away, checking his body. “I saw on the news that you were hit by a fucking car.”
“You know the media likes to be dramatic.”
Hot tears well in my eyes. “Shut up.”
He bends down to look at my face. “Hey, hey. I’m okay, baby.”
I break. Tears spill, hot and unexpected.
“I left everything,” I say, because it needs saying.
I need him to know. I need him to understand what I was willing to throw away.
“Dad. He said he’d cut me off if I left.
If I left for you.” My voice trembles. “I told him—” The sentence breaks.
I close my eyes against the memory of my father’s flat, cruel voice.
“I said fine. I said fine and I left. I left. I came here. I came to you.”
Magnus can’t hide his surprise before looking around. He pulls me into an empty stairway with cold blue lighting leaking from some vending machines.
For a heartbeat Magnus is still, like he’s processing the weight of it. Then he laughs, the sound brittle and almost painful. “You did what?”
“I gave it all up,” I say, the words burning. “Money, advantages—everything. I don’t care. I can’t—” My fingers find the bruise on his cheek, light as if touching a mirror that might shatter. “I can’t find a way to be anything other than yours. I can’t—”
He interrupts me then, voice quieter, so low I have to lean in to catch it. “I thought you wanted to be safe. I thought you wanted his life. I thought you’d rather—” He gulps, eyes pleading now. “I thought you’d rather never feel as messy as I make you feel.”
“That’s not true.” I cup his face with both hands and feel the grit of the day under my palms. “I love you, Magnus. I don’t care about safe.
I don’t want safe if safe means losing you.
I—” My voice cracks, and I squeeze his cheeks like I can stop the words from spilling all at once.
“I am here. I chose you. I’m sorry about all that shit I said. I didn’t mean it.”
He covers my hands with his own, fingers trembling.
From this close, I can see where the bruise spreads purple across his jaw, and there’s a dark crescent at his temple where the skin is broken.
He looks tired in a way that isn’t just from the accident.
It’s the exhaustion of someone who’s been at war with himself for too long.
“I thought you didn’t want me,” he says into my hair, voice raw. “I thought you walked away. Thought you chose…everything else over me.”
I let out a sound that’s half laugh, half sob. My hands go to his back and hold him like I could anchor him to me and keep him from floating off into whatever dark he keeps falling into.
“No,” I whisper. “No, you idiot. My father said he would get you kicked off your team. That he’d never let you play hockey again.
I couldn’t...I couldn’t take that from you.
” The words choke out. I can feel the blood pricking behind my eyes.
I am not composed. I am unmade. “I’m sorry.
I love you,” I barely manage to whisper.