Chapter 37
My stomach twists as I stare at Bella. She looks like a mascara-smeared panda perched at the end of my hospital bed as she clutches a pillow. I’ve never seen her so breakable.
Before she got here, I ran through everything I wanted to tell her.
I had a plan.
An order.
Bullet points in my head to expand on. I rehearsed it repeatedly. Like maybe if I said it perfectly it wouldn’t hurt. But the second she burst through the doors and saw me awake for the first time since I’d been admitted…
I wasn’t twenty-one anymore.
I was twelve-year-old Lucia again. Scared, small, and being saved by her for the first time. That burning surge of fire in my veins returned.
The plan?
The order?
Gone.
I word-vomited all over her, crying and apologizing in one messy and sniffling monologue while she just stared with wide eyes until they were filled with tears.
By the time I stopped talking, I felt hollowed out but better.
And honestly?
Finally saying it.
Finally letting her in… liberating.
“Bella,” I whisper. My fingers twitch against the blanket, bracing for anger or disappointment—anything but silence.
Her lip wobbles, and she drags her forearm under her nose.
“You kept this to yourself all this time?” she rasps, her voice scratchy from crying.
Shame creeps up my neck, hot and crawling, because hearing it out loud makes it sound even worse.
“I-I was scared, Bella. After everything I dumped on you guys about Roger and Griff when I ran away… I didn’t want to add more. And I was afraid I’d look insane.”
Her mouth flattens. She loosens her death grip on the pillow, then smacks me in the head with it. “Idiot.”
The light thump startles a laugh out of me, even with the ache wrapped around my ribs.
“Hey, I’m injured.”
“I’m increasing the punishment. You’re grounded for, like…forever.”
She shuffles forward and wraps her arms around my neck. Her touch is gentle but solid. She smells of coffee and vanilla lotion—safety. It’s as if she’s squeezing years of fear right out of the places I’ve been carrying it the most.
“Yeah…somehow I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem,” I murmur. “Not with Drill Sergeant Harper roaming the halls. I know he told you he’s moving me in and promised he wouldn’t let me out of his sight.” The thought of him pacing the hallway brings a laugh to my lips.
Bella snorts and pulls back. Her green eyes glow against her blotchy but flawless skin. “Thank you for telling me. I understand why you didn’t. Just… don’t keep anything like that from me again. Okay?”
“I swear I didn’t hide it to hurt you. I’ve wanted to tell you for years. I just… I thought the best place for it to be was in the past.”
“If I ever see your bitch-ass mother, I’m—”
Hearing her mention my mother makes my pulse stutter. “Hey,” I cut in quickly. “She’s not worth you going to jail. And please don’t form some sort of sibling Avengers club with Griff and go on a manhunt.”
“I’d look hot in a Black Widow outfit.”
“You’d be terrifying,” I snort. “Now go back to working on the club with Brodie. They’re letting me go home in a few days, and I already know what the next few weeks will look like—bed rest, a skyscraper of books, and a hot hockey player at my beck and call.”
“I don’t want to leave you,” she whispers, and a familiar tightness grips me. We’ve been here before, specifically when she found me in the diner. I won’t take her dream from her again.
“I’ll check in with you every day. Texts, FaceTime calls—whatever you want. But you can’t put your life on hold for me. We need to keep moving forward.”
“Us against the world, baby sister.”
“Us against the world,” I echo, leaning into her as thirteen years of weight finally slide off my shoulders.