Chapter 41
brOOKE
Ifell in and out of sleep, waking periodically when Ms. All-Business Nurse (Beth, her nametag said) came to check my vitals.
Each time, I had no concept of how many minutes or hours had passed. The beep, beep, beep of the monitors became my ambient soundtrack. The sky outside the window was dark as ink. The storm still raged.
Suddenly a form filled the doorway. Too big to be Nic this time.
It was Cade, his breath coming out in gasps, his chest heaving. His face looked exhausted, his expression wild. Drops of water dripped from his golden-brown hair, darkening it to more fully brown.
He clutched my letter in his hand. When his eyes locked with mine, he released a giant exhale.
“Baby . . . please don’t scare me like that again.”
His eyes roamed my face as if looking for exposed wounds. My stomach flipped.
He’d called me baby.
Surely just an old habit. No use getting my hopes up. Sure, he’d wanted to hang out tonight like old friends, but I’d be foolish to hope he could ever want to try for more with me again. But he came . . .
“I got your letter,” he said softly, interrupting my mental spiral.
Every word I tried to process felt like it scraped against my addled brain.
I’d had it all planned: he’d read the letter at the reunion, and then we’d talk. I’d give him the explanation he’d been waiting for for years. He’d forgive me—or he wouldn’t.
I didn’t foresee the many complications to the plan that this night would end up bringing. Now that the moment was here, nothing was going the way I’d planned.
Frustrated and overwhelmed with exhaustion, I rolled over in the hospital bed, tears welling up and sliding down my cheek to land on the itchy white pillow. All this work on myself, and when the time came, still the words stuck in my throat.
Cade came to my bedside and clutched my hand.
“Shhh . . . I’m here. I’m here.”
He kissed my forehead.
“Why don’t you just give up on me, Cade?” I choked out, between tears.
He shrugged.
“You’re worth waiting for.”
He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and I realized then that no one had ever or could ever love me as deeply as this man. He climbed in the hospital bed with me and held me and let me cry.