Chapter 33 Finn
thirty-three
Finn
I wake woozy and disoriented, body aching and throat dry, the air sharp with the scent of disinfectant, and something beeping obnoxiously by my ear. It takes me too long to realize I’m alive, then no time at all to remember what happened.
“Rosie?” I call out, or at least I try to.
It’s little more than a strangled croak, and I start throwing off my blankets and pulling at the tubes and wires stuck to my chest, arms, and hands.
A sharp pain shoots through my thigh, and I groan as an angel flies across the room, gently pushing me back onto my pillows with sweet, shushing sounds.
“I’m here,” she whispers. “I’m right here. Don’t move, baby. Lay down. I’m not going anywhere.”
I’m swept away by relief, and it leaves me weak enough that I can’t fight the soft pressure of Rosie’s palms on my chest. I don’t want to. She’s here, and right now, she’s doing much better than I am. That’s all I need to know.
“Songbird?”
My eyes drift shut on their own accord, so I reach out my hand, and relief swamps me as Rosie twines her fingers around mine. The warmth of her skin and the subtle flutter of her pulse are the most magical things I’ve ever felt.
“You’re all right,” I say with a sigh as I force my eyes open.
Her tired smile swims in my vision. “I’m all right,” she echoes. “And so are you, or you will be.”
I grunt at the discomfort in my left leg, glancing at the dressings wrapped around my thigh. “Is it bad?”
“She got your femoral artery,” Rosie says, trying to sound clinical even with her voice shaking. “You’re going to be fine, and with rehabilitation you’ll make a full recovery, but if John hadn’t been there or if he hadn’t known what to do…”
Fuck. A close-range gunshot wound to the femoral artery is… not good. I’ve seen first-hand how it can play out for the worse, and I take a moment to process how close I came to the end.
I’m intimately acquainted with death. I’ve had wounds that could have killed me and watched enough people die to have long ago come to terms with my own mortality.
It’s part of the reason why purpose has been essential to me—and so elusive.
Nothing in my life has ever felt so significant or so profound it’s made me afraid to die.
But then again, I’ve never had a reason like Rosie to keep living.
“Why was John there?” I ask. “How did he know?”
“Drew heard everything over the phone,” she says. “He called John for backup.”
“Ah.” I sag back in the bed with a small sense of triumph. “At least I did one thing right.”
“What were you thinking throwing yourself at Lauren like that?” Rosie chokes up as tears leak over her cheeks. “It was rash and reckless and selfish.”
Something about the way she says it, like she knows how silly it sounds but sticks with it anyway, makes my eyes well and my mouth tick up. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” she retorts but the words come out thick with emotion.
I try to swallow, but it hurts. Rosie responds to my wince with a cup of water and a straw to my lips, and I struggle to sit upright before I take a sip.
“Are you hurt?” I ask, my focus drifting until it snags on the blood staining Rosie’s dress. There’s a bandage wrapped around her upper arm, and the machine beside us starts beeping erratically.
Rosie hurries to stroke my hair. “Shh. It’s okay. I’m fine. The bullet barely grazed me. It doesn’t even need stitches. I’ve also got a slight bump to the head where I fell against the wall, but I’ve had every scan and test available. The doctor says it’s nothing to be concerned about.”
I wonder briefly why nobody has brought her clean clothes to wear, then realize I have no idea how much time has passed. I don’t have the energy to ask right now, so I close my eyes, breathing slowly through the easing panic and rising pain. And guilt. So much guilt.
“I’m so sorry, Rosie.”
“Oh, baby. What for?”
“For missing the signs. For not realizing before it was too late that Lauren was a threat to you. I was distracted. I was too busy loving you when I should have been protecting you, and I got my priorities all backward. If anything had happened to you…”
I trail off with a broken groan.
“But it didn’t,” Rosie says as she lowers herself into the plastic-upholstered chair by the bed. She picks up my hand again, taking care not to disturb the tubes wrapped around my wrist, and carefully kisses my fingers. Her tears hit my knuckles in warm, wet splashes.
“Please don’t cry,” I beg. “Please.”
“I’ve never been so afraid in my entire life,” she confesses, head bowed and gasping in breaths between choked-back sobs.
Rage for Lauren and what she put Rosie through fires in my system, barely dulled by the pain medication. “Lauren is going to pay for what she did today,” I growl. “I promise I won’t rest until—”
“She was arrested,” Rosie interrupts. “She’s going away for a very long time, but that’s not what I meant. I wasn’t afraid of Lauren. I was afraid I’d lost you and I—I—couldn’t—”
She can’t talk through her tears, and my heart breaks into a thousand pieces, shattered into oblivion by regret for all the things I did wrong this last month.
And frustration at all the choices I made that led us here.
And devastation that Rosie trusted me to keep her safe and I failed.
Worse. She handed me her heart believing I would never break it and I’m watching it fracture before my eyes.
I sweep my fingertips over her cheek as best I can with all the machines and sedatives hindering my coordination. “Marry me,” I say.
Rosie’s head jerks up and her baby blue eyes, red-rimmed and watery, grow wide. “What?”
That stupid machine starts beeping wildly, and I pretend it’s not giving away how fucking terrified I am. This is the stupidest and most impulsive thing I’ve ever done. It’s also the first thing to ever feel this right.
“Marry me,” I say again. “I know I haven’t done enough to prove that I deserve to put a ring on your finger, but I’m going to spend every day for the rest of my life earning your love, earning your trust, and earning the privilege of being the man who wakes up next to you every morning, falls asleep beside you every night, and watches you fly to greater heights every goddamn day of his life, knowing that the brighter you burn and the more music you make, the better the world will be. ”
“You can’t mean that,” she whispers.
The ache in my thigh is nothing compared to the agony of waiting for Rosie to answer my question.
“I mean every word of it,” I say.
She shakes her head and I blink away tears, preparing to accept her rejection with as much composure I can manage.
And she’d be right. I blame the meds. What the fuck am I thinking proposing to this magnificent woman when she’s got blood on her clothes and I’m half wrecked on intravenous pain relief?
Instead, Rosie carefully climbs onto the bed, arranging herself on my right side and tucking her body against mine. She rests her head on my chest.
“How can you say you’ve done nothing to earn my love or my trust?
” she asks. “How can you look at what happened last night and believe that you didn’t demonstrate your commitment in a split second that’s going to last a lifetime and more?
How can you lay here and tell me you need to prove anything when you literally sacrificed your life to save mine? ”
The lump in my throat has nothing to do with my physical well-being anymore and everything to do with the vulnerability swelling too quickly in my chest. If she hasn’t thought of this herself, I don’t know why I’m determined to point it out. Maybe I do have a death wish.
“I’m the reason Lauren was there in the first place,” I tell her. “I’m the reason you were ever at risk.”
Rosie glances up, fierce enough to murder me with her bare hands, and I’ve never loved her or been prouder of her than I am in this moment.
“You’re the reason I’m alive,” she says, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks all over again. “And you’re the reason we’re going to be…”
Her chin quivers, bottom lip trembling and eyes overflowing with tears.
“What is it?” I ask, tightening my arm around her as best I can. “What are we going to be?”
Rosie shakes her head as a hesitant smile steals across her lips. “We’re going to be parents,” she says in barely a whisper.
My brow furrows and I’m certain the medication is scrambling my head as well as my hearing because I can’t make sense of what she’s saying. “Parents? What do you mean?”
She places my other hand on her flat stomach. “The hospital ran routine labs to make sure I was okay after the shooting and a doctor just told me…”
Something in my face must be reading all wrong, because Rosie frowns and swallows deeply.
“I didn’t know but it all makes sense now. The extra weight? My cosmetics smelling so strong they made my stomach turn? They’re early signs of pregnancy. And it is early—just a couple of weeks. My birth control must have failed. I didn’t—”
“I’m going to be a dad?”
Rosie replies with a silent nod, and I stare into nothing as my entire future flashes before my eyes. Rosie. Children. A family. The tears I’ve been so valiantly holding back start to fall. All this time I’ve been searching for purpose and here it is. Love.
“Finn?” Rosie squeezes my hand where it still rests on her stomach. “Say something. Please.”
“I love you,” I tell her, hoping she can see the weight of those words shining in my eyes.
“I want to give you and our child the life and the love that my parents gave me. Every day of the rest of your life will be filled with joy and laughter and pleasure and fulfillment because it’ll be my mission here on this planet to make it so.
I love you, Songbird. Marry me. Please.”
“Yes.”
“Yes? Are you sure?”
Rosie laughs, and when she leans in to kiss me, it’s soft and sweet until I tangle my hand in her hair and press her mouth harder against mine.
“Yes,” she says again. “I’ll marry you.”
I can’t stop kissing her, and I don’t—until the incessant wild beeping of my heart monitor sends the nursing staff running.