Chapter 21
Five days in the hospital. Five days of monitors and IV drips and Darla’s grounding exercises and the particular fluorescent purgatory of a building designed to keep people alive, not comfortable.
Five days of watching Cat’s body knit itself back together while her mind replayed the basement on a loop she couldn’t shut off.
The ribs are stabilizing. The fourth one—the one that lacerated the tissue near her lung—has settled back into place without surgery.
Dr. Patel called it lucky. Cat called it stubborn.
The chemical burns are healing under the bandages—red and raw, the skin rebuilding itself the way skin does after burns, which Cat knows better than anyone.
They’ll scar. More scars on a body that’s already a map of survival.
The infection in her wrists is responding to antibiotics.
The concussion symptoms are fading. The veterinary tranquilizer has cleared her system. The STD panel came back clean.
She’s coming home. Not to her home—to mine.
Thomas won’t set foot in the O’Farrell house.
Not because of the house itself but because Fiona is there—the police don’t want her leaving the area, so she’s confined to the property while the investigation determines her level of involvement.
Thomas can’t look at her. Can’t be in the same building.
The betrayal isn’t the kind that gets processed in a few days—it’s the kind that rewrites a marriage from the foundation up, and Thomas doesn’t have the capacity to do that reconstruction while his daughter is in a hospital bed.
So my parents opened the house. Guest rooms for Thomas and Cat. “For as long as you need” is what my mother said, and she meant it, because Saoirse Monaghan does not offer shelter conditionally.
I carry Cat’s bag from the car. She walks—slowly, one hand on the railing, the other pressed against her left side where the ribs protest every step.
She’s in the clothes I brought her yesterday—my sweats, a long-sleeve that covers the bandages, her Vans.
My lacrosse sweatshirt over everything because she asked for it specifically, and the sight of MONAGHAN across her back as she walks into my house does the thing it always does.
Thomas has the guest room on the second floor.
Cat has—well. We both know she’s sleeping in my room.
Thomas knows it too. Nobody discusses it.
The front-door speech has been replaced by the silent understanding that his daughter sleeps better with my arm around her and his daughter sleeping is the priority over his daughter’s boyfriend’s proximity.
I get her settled. Pillows arranged so she can sit up without the ribs protesting. The TV on low. Water on the nightstand. Her meds—just ibuprofen now, nothing stronger, because Cat refused anything that could alter her consciousness after what they injected her with.
She looks around my room. At the balcony door. At the bed. At the nightstand drawer where the edibles used to be—still there, but she hasn’t asked for them since the hospital.
“This feels different,” she says.
“What does?”
“Being here. In your room. It used to feel like…hiding. Running from something. Now it just feels like…” She pauses. Looks at me. “Like I live here.”
“You do. For now.”
“For now,” she repeats. But the way she says it—softly, testing the weight of the words—makes me think she’s imagining a version of “for now” that extends much further than either of us has said out loud.
She reaches for my hand. Pulls me down to the bed beside her.
We lie on our sides, facing each other, the way we’ve lain a hundred times in the dark.
But the light is different today—afternoon sun through the curtains, warm and gold, and her face in it looks less like the girl in the hospital and more like the girl in the garden who smiled at flowers and said yes to homecoming.
“Kaid.”
“Yeah.”
“In the hospital. The doctor told me I asked for you. When I woke up the first time. Before my dad.”
“Yeah. You did.”
“I still don’t remember it. But I’ve been thinking about why. Why your name would be the first word out of my mouth before I even knew where I was.”
Her fingers trace the tattoo on my forearm. The vine. The thorns. The one that covers the first scar.
“And I think it’s because you’re where I feel safe.
Not my house. Not my dad’s arms. Not any therapist’s office or hospital room.
You. Your voice. Your hands. The way you hold me like I’m something worth being careful with.
My body knows that before my brain does.
So when I surfaced from whatever they put in me, the first thing my body said was your name. ”
My throat closes. My eyes burn. “Cat.”
“I love you, Kaiden.”
The words are quiet. Simple. Delivered in the afternoon light of my bedroom with no drama, no crisis, no basement or balcony or bathroom floor. Just a girl lying on a bed looking at a boy and saying the truest thing she’s ever said.
I press my forehead to hers. Close my eyes.
“I said it first,” I say. “In the hospital. You were sedated. You couldn’t hear me. But I said it. Against your knuckles. And I meant it then and I mean it now and I’m going to mean it for a very long time.”
“How long?”
“Longer than you’re ready to hear about.”
She smiles. Not the ice princess smile. Not the polished one or the cold one or the razor one. The real one. The one I’ve been collecting since September.
“Try me.”
“Forever sounds dramatic. But I don’t have a smaller word that’s accurate.”
She kisses me. Soft. The gentlest version of us—the one that exists in the spaces between the rough and the dark and the desperate. The one that says “I’m here and I’m not leaving and this is real.”
When she pulls back, her eyes are wet but she’s not crying. The ice princess is not fully offline—she’s just standing down. Watching. Letting the girl have the moment.
“They’re going to say we’re too young,” she says.
“Probably.”
“Too fast.”
“Definitely.”
“Too damaged.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you care?”
“Not even a little bit.”
She tucks her face into my neck. I pull her closer—carefully, minding the ribs, the bandages, the hundred points of damage on her body that are healing. She fits against me the way she always does—like the space was measured for her, like my body was built with a Cat-shaped gap that only she fills.
The afternoon light moves across the room. The house settles. Downstairs, my mother is making something that smells like soup, and Thomas and my father are talking in low voices about lawyers and court dates and the machinery of consequence.
Up here, it’s just us. The word “love” sitting in the room like a new piece of furniture. Taking up space. Making everything rearrange around it.
She falls asleep against my chest. I hold her. Don’t sleep. Watch the light change.
Getting ready for school in the same bedroom is an exercise in self-control that should qualify me for sainthood.
Cat is in the bathroom doing her makeup.
The eyeliner is back—sharp, precise, the black wings that are her armor.
She applies it with her right hand because the left is wrapped in bandages to the elbow, and the concentration on her face as she draws a perfect line one-handed is the most attractive thing I’ve seen in my life.
She’s in her school uniform. The plaid skirt lifting up as she bends closer to the mirror. The white shirt. The tie—loose, the way she wears it. The blazer draped over the chair because she doesn’t put it on until the last second. Her Vans by the door.
“Stop staring at me,” she says. Eyes on the mirror. She can see me watching in the reflection.
“You’re in a school uniform in my bathroom bending over my sink and I’m supposed to not stare?”
“Yes. That is exactly what you’re supposed to do. Like a gentleman.”
“I have never once in my life been accused of being a gentleman.”
She finishes the eyeliner. Turns. Gives me a look that would melt steel at a hundred yards. “How do I look?”
“Like the reason I’m going to fail every class today because I won’t be able to think about anything except the way that skirt—”
“Kaiden.”
“You asked.”
She rolls her eyes. Puts on the blazer. Grabs her bag. We head downstairs.
The kitchen is full. My mother at the stove—eggs, toast, coffee, the Saoirse Monaghan morning infrastructure. My father at the island with the paper. Thomas at the counter with a mug, wearing the expression of a man who has been up since five and has already spoken to three lawyers.
Cat kisses her father’s cheek. “Morning, Daddy.”
Thomas looks at her. At the uniform. At the eyeliner. At the particular set of her chin that means she’s decided something and the decision is final.
“You’re sure about today?”
“I’m sure.”
“You don’t have to. The school understands. They’re sending work—”
“Daddy. I’m going.”
He nods. The nod of a father who knows his daughter and knows that this particular tone means the conversation is over. Then, lighter: “Don’t leave the boys’ sight.”
“They’re in all my classes.”
“Good. Because if I have to come to that school, I’m bringing the National Guard.”
Cat rolls her eyes. My mother sets a plate in front of her—eggs, toast, fruit. Cat picks at the eggs. Eats half the toast. Drinks the coffee like it’s oxygen.
Thomas watches. The particular watchfulness of a parent whose child was recently in a hospital and who is now cataloguing every bite, every breath, every micro-expression for signs of distress. The vigilance is exhausting to witness. I can’t imagine what it’s like to carry.
My father folds his paper. “Kaiden. Drive safe. Both of you—text when you arrive.”
“Yes, sir.”