Chapter 19
First Glimpse
ADRIAN
For a second, I thought I had imagined the twitch of his mouth, the flutter beneath his lashes. I’d been hallucinating versions of him for days now: the sound of his laugh, the feel of his lips on mine, waking me from sleep. But then his eyes opened.
And Jesus, they were really open.
Not some reflexive flutter. Not a flicker of the nervous system firing off the last of its sparks. His eyes found mine. Saw me.
I forgot how to breathe.
The team moved around us in a blur—removing the tube, monitoring vitals, calling orders—but the world narrowed to a pinpoint. Just him. Just the sound of his broken voice scraping my name.
Hearing it shattered me. I leaned in so fast that I nearly ripped the IV line. My voice came out shredded.
“Yeah. I’m here, baby. Right here.”
He looked at me as if he didn’t believe it. Like maybe he’d wandered somewhere too far to ever find his way back and was shocked that I’d waited on the other side. I pressed my forehead to his, shaking.
“You scared the hell out of me,” I whispered. “Don’t you ever—ever—do that to me again.”
He made this small sound, something between a sigh and a hum, the barest flicker of a smile ghosting across his lips before he slipped back under.
His vitals steadied. Oxygen leveled out. The nurses murmured something about keeping him sedated, giving his body time to adjust. I nodded numbly, thanked them, watched them file out, and then the door clicked shut, and I was alone again—with him, but not really.
The silence was deafening. My pulse felt wrong in my throat.
I sat down hard in the chair, elbows braced, my face in my hands. Every bone in my body quivered, every muscle finally giving out after days of pretending to be steel.
My hand found his again, thumb brushing over the rough edge of the bracelet. The vine had dried and darkened over the years, but it still circled his wrist, unbroken.
“Every year,” I murmured. My throat hurt as if I’d swallowed glass. “Every damn year, I’ll take you back there. Just wake up all the way first, okay? We’ll start over. We’ll do it right this time.”
His pulse thrummed beneath my fingers, slow and steady, the faintest reminder of a promise we hadn’t finished keeping.
My hand was still wrapped around his when I pulled my phone from my pocket. The screen blurred twice before I even managed to unlock it. I’d rehearsed this call a hundred times over the last few days, but all the versions ended with excuses, condolences, apologies. Not this. Not good news.
My thumb hovered over “Mom the edges softened by dusk.
He’d woken once. Just once.
Long enough for me to see his eyes, unfocused and glassy, but his.
Long enough for my name to stumble out of him, barely a sound, before the sedation took him again.
The team said it was normal, that he needed rest, that his brain had to heal slowly.
I nodded like a man who understood, but I hadn’t stopped quaking since.
Now it was just us again. The stillness felt different this time—fragile, tender, a place to recover instead of a harbinger of death.
I’d moved my chair close, our hands still joined. His parents had gone to stretch their legs after I’d convinced them it was okay to rest. I couldn’t. I didn’t dare.
I traced the curve of his wrist with my thumb, brushing the edge of the bracelet. His skin was warm under my fingers. Healthy. “You scared the hell out of me,” I whispered. “You always knew how to make an entrance.”
Just like the day we met, when he doused me in coffee and foam, but all I could see was his blinding smile.
A quiet laugh escaped me—half-broken, half-relieved. My voice sounded foreign, hoarse from disuse. “You should’ve seen me, Eli. God, I lost it. Everyone in this hospital saw me fall apart like a first-year intern who didn’t know what to do.”
Silence answered, but not the same hollow kind as before. This one hummed, waiting.
“I thought I’d have time,” I went on softly. “To fix things. To make us right again. I kept thinking there’d be another day to say I love you like I meant it. Like it wasn’t a reflex.”
I took a breath, my chest tightening. “When you said my name earlier…” I swallowed hard, feeling it all over again. “You have no idea what that did to me. I’ve replayed it a hundred times in my head already. It’s the only thing keeping me upright.”
I leaned forward, my voice breaking. “You hear me? I’m right here. You come back when you’re ready. No rush. Just… don’t leave again, okay?”
My thumb brushed the vine at his wrist. “You still have this,” I murmured. “Guess you kept your promises better than I did.”
The monitor kept its patient beat, and I found myself matching it, inhaling, exhaling, syncing my world to his.
“Do you remember the vineyard?” I asked quietly, even though he couldn’t answer. “You said we’d go back every year. You said the vines looked like veins, like the world had a pulse. I didn’t get it then. But I do now. Everything you touched—everything we built—was alive because you were.”
My voice cracked again. “I don’t care how long it takes. I’ll sit here and tell you stories until you open your eyes, and when you do, I’ll tell you I’m sorry and that I love you, and this time you’ll know I mean it.”
I pressed my lips to his wrist, feeling the faint flutter of his pulse beneath the skin. “There you are,” I whispered. “That’s all I need.”
A nurse slipped in briefly to check vitals, soft-footed and kind-eyed, then slipped back out. The door clicked shut, and the quiet swelled around us again.
I lay my head on the bed beside his hand, eyes heavy. Breathing in deeply, I tried to find his scent buried beneath the strange ones, the clinical smells, but couldn’t. It’d been too many days since Eli was himself. Outside the window, the light faded from gold to gray to blue.
For the first time in weeks, I let myself close my eyes.
Not to escape, but to stay.
Because even if he was sleeping, we were finally in the same place.