Chapter 19 #3
Cole stills for half a second, then pulls me in and wraps both arms around me. “Then we make him fall for you all over again,” he says. “Because there’s no way in hell any version of Damian Kade looks at you and doesn’t go mine.”
I grip him harder because I hope to god he’s right.
Cole slings an arm around my shoulders as we walk. I don’t fight him anymore. I let him steer me. My feet feel like bricks, my chest like concrete, but I move.
We pass the vending machines on the way and Cole stops, digs into his pocket, curses when he realizes he’s still wearing his blood-streaked hoodie from the crash, but somehow, he still finds a few coins to slam them into the machine.
“Don’t make a joke about the water costing more than my dignity,” he mutters.
I don’t. I can’t. I just stand there blinking while he presses the buttons and grabs the bottle when it clunks down.
“Here,” he says. “Hydrate or die-drate.”
I actually snort. Just a little. It still comes out broken.
He hands me the bottle, and I cling to it. We head for the front entrance, pushing through the rotating doors and into the thick, heavy night air. It’s not cold. But I shiver anyway.
And there it is, Damian’s car, still parked like a ghost on the edge of the lot. Engine off, headlights dead and the driver-side door is wide open.
Cole whistles low. “You left it like that?”
“I didn’t care,” I mutter, hoarse.
“No shit,” he mutters. “Could’ve been robbed.”
“Don’t care.”
He nudges me toward the open door, then leans against the hood and exhales.
I climb in slowly. The seat still smells like Damian. That mix of leather and cologne and something sharp, peppermint or pain. My throat closes up again. I clutch the bottle and stare out the windshield, letting the silence settle between us. Cole doesn’t break it right away.
When he finally does, his voice is low. “He’s gonna wake up, curls.”
I don’t answer.
“He’s gonna wake up and the first thing he’s gonna want is you.”
I grip the bottle harder. He leans down, arms folded over the open window. “And when he does? You’re gonna be right there. Got it?”
I nod. Barely.
Cole knocks once on the hood. “Good. Drink your water. And then we go back.”
The parking lot hums with distant traffic and bad lighting, the kind that makes everything feel like a dream just sideways of real. I twist the cap off the water bottle and take a sip. Then another. My throat still burns from crying, from screaming, but it helps. A little.
Cole doesn’t say much. He watches the sky, one foot propped against the bumper, arms crossed like a sentry guarding what's left of me.
After a few minutes, I whisper, “Let’s go back.”
He nods, pushes off the car, and falls into step beside me again.
We take the elevator in silence. Back through the white halls, past the same nurses who don’t dare meet my eye anymore. Past the security guard I almost decked. Past the vending machine and the blood in my veins still buzzing.
We step back into Damian’s room, and the sound hits me first. That familiar, relentless beeping—steady, consistent, mechanical—still fills the air.
My eyes go straight to the bed, to the shape of him beneath the thin blankets, and something inside me eases enough to breathe again.
He’s still there. Still fighting. But he hasn’t moved.
Cole’s hand finds the small of my back, grounding and light. A gesture of quiet reassurance. He leans in close. “I’ll be outside.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak. I take a step forward, heart hammering, like I’m walking back into something sacred and shattered at the same time. My feet feel too loud on the tile. The room hasn’t changed, but I have. Just five minutes gone and I’m already different.
Damian doesn’t stir. There’s no twitch of his fingers. No shift in his chest beyond the rise and fall that the machines are doing most of the work for. No flicker of his lashes. He looks too still. Too quiet. Too pale. It’s wrong. All of it. And it guts me.
I take another step. There’s bandages up his arms and chest, a breathing tube still threaded between bruised lips, and his lashes don’t even flutter when I reach out and touch his wrist. But he’s warm and alive.
I climb back up into the bed slowly. Half on my side, curled against his good shoulder like I used to do on long bus rides when he was tired and I was feral.
My fingers find his, searching through the thin blanket and past the IV line until they wrap gently around his hand.
He’s warm, but not in the way he usually is—not that sunburn heat he carries after games, not that electric buzz of adrenaline or touch or laughter.
This warmth feels borrowed. Manufactured.
Maintained by the machines that keep the rhythm of his heart playing quietly beside us.
His fingers twitch once. A breath of movement so small I almost miss it. It’s not enough. Not yet. But it’s something.
I press closer, eyes slipping shut as I lean in and tuck myself against him, into that familiar place where my mouth brushes the crook of his neck.
The space where my voice has always known how to belong.
And I whisper, soft and careful, like I’m afraid the words might break him, or maybe me.
“You know I once got stuck inside a vending machine?” I smile.
A twitch of my mouth that’s more memory than joy, more ache than humor.
“I was seven. Tried to climb it because I wanted a Kinder bar. Got stuck halfway in. My mom laughed so hard she forgot to pull me out. I cried. She took pictures.”
Damian doesn’t move.
“But I kept the chocolate. Ate it in the bath while my brother yelled at me for being stupid.” I pause. “He was right.”
I take a short second and continue. “You’d have called me an idiot too.” My voice cracks. “But then you’d have made me promise to never do it again and told me I was still your center.”
I press my lips to his shoulder. “Please wake up, cap. I’ve got a million more stories and only one person I want to tell them to.”