Chapter 60
Maksim
Idon’t leave the room.
Not when they wheel her bed into it. Not when the nurse checks her vitals. Not when someone asks if I want coffee, food, water, fucking air.
I stay exactly where I am.
In the chair beside her bed, elbows on my knees, good hand wrapped around hers while the cast on my other wrist digs and throbs every time I move wrong. The room is dim except for the glow from the machines. Soft beeping. The slow rise and fall of her chest.
Alive.
That word should calm me.
It doesn’t.
Alive isn’t awake. Alive isn’t her glaring at me.
Alive isn’t her sharp mouth, her rolling eyes, her smart-ass comments when she thinks I’m being an overbearing asshole.
Alive is enough for now. But it isn’t enough for me. Her face is bruised and it pisses me off.
My girl was perfect the last time I had her.
Before she left. Before she was taken.
Yellow shadows under her cheekbone. There’s a scratch at her temple. Her hair is a mess against the white pillow, blue, that matches mine still clinging to the ends in places, dulled now, but there.
I stare at it too long.
At her.
At every inch of her I can see.
If I look away, my head starts again. The container. The blood. Her body going slack in my arms. Her voice in the car getting weaker.
I squeeze her hand harder. She doesn’t squeeze back.
Panic moves under my skin so fast it makes me stand. I drag the chair closer when I sit again. Close enough that my knee presses the side of the mattress.
“Wake up,” I mutter.
Nothing.
“Come on, Beda.”
Still nothing.
The nurse told me it could take time. That her body needs rest. That the surgery went well. That she’s stable. Stable. A word doctors use when they want you to stop looking at them like you might kill them if they say another word.
I lean forward until my forehead almost touches the edge of the bed.
“I’m here,” I tell her quietly. “So wake the fuck up.”
The words come out rougher than I mean them to. Like anger. Everything in me always sounds like anger.
Minutes pass. Or hours.
I don’t know.
I just know the room stays dim and cold and the machines keep making noise and she keeps lying there while I keep breathing like a man trying not to drown sitting upright in a chair.
Then her fingers twitch.
I freeze.
At first I think I imagined it. My eyes lock on our hands.
Another twitch.
Then a faint sound leaves her throat. Barely anything. Just a rough little scrape of breath and pain and waking. I’m up so fast my blood rushes.
“Ayla.”
Her face tightens. Her head shifts a fraction on the pillow, brows pulling together like even that tiny movement hurts.
“Ayla.”
Her lashes flutter. That’s all it takes.
I’m moving before my brain catches up, shoving wires aside, climbing onto the bed like a fucking lunatic, careful and not careful at all, one knee sinking into the mattress, then the other, leaning over her, trying not to jostle anything and jostling everything anyway.
She groans.
“Fuck—sorry. Sorry, baby. Sorry.”
I ease myself down beside her as best I can in the narrow hospital bed, injured arm sliding under her shoulders, the other pulling the blanket and her, all of her carefully into me. Tubes shift. A wire tugs. Something protests in a soft electronic beep.
I don’t give a fuck.
She’s warm.
Warm.
Her body is warm against mine and I drop my face into her hair, breathing her in so hard it hurts. Antiseptic and her. Under all the hospital smell, those fucking marshmallows still linger.
A sound breaks out of me that I don’t recognize at first. Then I realize it’s me trying not to fucking cry.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper against her temple. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
Her breathing hitches. I hold her tighter, then loosen immediately when she makes another pained sound.
“Sorry,” I say again, lower this time, shaking now. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I just—”
I just thought you died.
I just watched your blood soak through my hands.
I just learned what fear really is.
The words crowd so hard behind my teeth I can’t hold them back anymore.
“I love you.”
Silence.
I shut my eyes.
There it is. Out in the open. Raw and true and too late and right on fucking time.
“I love you,” I say again, because if I stop now I’ll explode.
“I love you, Ayla. I love your mouth and your sharp tongue. I love how you look at me like I’m the problem every single time, even when I am.
I love the way you fight me. I love the way you never fucking listen.
I love the way you make everything louder, more complicated and better. I love you.”
Her face shifts against my chest.
Slowly, painfully, her eyes start to open.
The brown of them is cloudy at first. Heavy. Confused. She blinks like the light hurts even this dim. Her lips part, dry and swollen.
I think my heart actually stops.
“Hey,” I say, and my voice comes out wrecked. “Hey. There you are.”
She frowns at me and I’ve never loved that crease between her brows more.
Relief hits so hard I almost laugh right there.
Her throat works. “Why,” she rasps, barely audible, “are you so damn close?”
I let out something between a breath and a laugh and press a kiss to her forehead.
“Because you weren’t waking fast enough.”
She blinks slowly. Looks at the wires. Looks at me. Looks annoyed.
And perfect.
So fucking perfect.
“You look like shit,” she whispers.
I laugh then. An actual laugh. It rips out of me sharp and helpless and a little insane.
“Yeah,” I say, dragging my nose against her hair because I can’t stop touching her, can’t stop making sure she’s real. “You should see the other guy.”
Her eyes narrow the tiniest bit. “Did you get him?”
“No, I went for you. All that matters is you.”
No hesitation. No softness. Just the truth.
Her lashes lower.
I lift my head enough to look at her. Really look at her.
“I’ll get him. I’ll gut him. But first I’m marrying you.”
She stares at me.
I don’t even think before I say it again, because almost losing her has burned every useless hesitation out of me.
“Marry me.”
Her brows pull together, she shakes her head. “No.”
I go still.
Then I laugh.
I can’t help it. I laugh harder, the sound breaking out of me like something unhinged, because she’s alive. She’s awake. She’s in my arms saying no to me like she’s got all the time in the world to argue.
Her frown deepens. “You’re so loud. What’s funny?”
“You,” I say, still laughing a little, my forehead dropping to hers. “I hate that fucking word.”
Her eyes are barely open, but I see the spark anyway. The edge. The her of her.
“But from you?” I murmur. “It’s perfect.”
She makes a weak little sound that might be disapproval. Might be confusion. Might be the beginning of a smile. Then her face pinches, pain cutting through the fog.
I shift immediately. “What hurts?”
She gives me a look so offended I almost grin again.
“What do you think hurts, idiot?”
“Okay. Fair.”
I reach for the call button with my good hand. A nurse can deal with the pain meds. Everyone else who comes into this room can deal with whatever the fuck they need to deal with. But no one is moving me.
Her head settles under my chin again, her breathing shallow but steadier now.
“You scared me,” I say quietly.
The words slip out before I can stop them.
Maybe I would have, before. Maybe I would’ve swallowed them, made them into anger, buried them under orders and threats and something easier to survive.
Not now.
Her eyes close again, but she’s still awake. I can feel it.
Her voice is little more than a breath. “Good.”
I bark out a stunned laugh. “You’re a menace.”
She huffs quietly. “Sorry I left. I was going to come back. I changed my mind”
I look down at her. “Beda—”
“I know they don’t trust me, but I’ll make them,” she murmurs
I go still. “Who?”
She shakes her head the tiniest bit against me. “Your men.”
My brows raise. “Our men are waiting outside this room to see you.”
She looks up at me. “They are?”
I brush my mouth against her temple. “They are.”
Her lips twitch.
I close my eyes and hold her while the machines beep and the room hums and the fear slowly, slowly begins to unclench its fists around my throat.
“They can see you later though,” I tell her softly. “I’m not leaving this room.”
She doesn’t answer right away. For a second I think maybe she drifted off again.
Then she murmurs, “Still not marrying you.”
I smile into her hair.
“We’ll see, Beda.”
Her breathing evens out against me. The fight to stay awake leaves her body inch by inch, but I know better than to mistake that for surrender. Ayla doesn’t surrender. She survives. She bites. She comes back sharper.
I look down at her and feel it settle, heavy and final, somewhere deeper than bone.
Ayla. My Beda. Chaos in my house. Chaos in my bed. Chaos in my blood.
She tore through my life like a lit match dropped into gasoline. And now there is no version of this world I want if she isn’t in it.
I drag my mouth over her hair and close my eyes. I was never a man made for soft, but I understand simple.
She’s mine.
She’s the only thing in this world that can take me apart with her bare hands.
And I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure no one else gets close enough to try and take that away from me again.