Chapter 8 #3
“He was in and out,” I said carefully. “He knew we were helping him.”
Georgia nodded quickly, desperate for scraps.
I hated myself.
Then I hated him.
Then I hated the ring.
Then I hated the part of me that wanted to ask if he loved her, if he said her name too, if she knew he drove to Santa Monica for Thai food just to orbit a life he kept pretending not to touch.
“Thank you,” Georgia whispered.
I nodded once.
Professional.
Kind.
Useful.
Safe.
Then I turned and walked away before my face could betray me.
I made it past the nurses’ station.
Past the vending machines.
Past the family bathroom where someone was crying behind a locked door.
Past the exit alarm that never worked right if you knew how to push the handle just so.
Then I was outside on the back fire escape, the metal steps cold beneath me, the night air hitting my face like a slap.
I did not remember buying the coffee.
I had one in my hand anyway.
Black.
Hot.
Bitter enough to punish.
I also did not remember taking the cigarette from the little emergency stash one of the night-shift nurses kept hidden in a plastic bag taped beneath the loose brick near the door.
I had one of those too.
I had not smoked in years.
Not really.
The first drag burned so badly I coughed until my eyes watered.
Then I took another.
Because apparently I had decided to collect vices like souvenirs.
The door opened behind me.
Lily stepped out.
She said nothing at first.
Just came down two steps and leaned against the railing beside me, staring out over the back lot where ambulances idled and cigarette butts glittered like tiny sins near the curb.
Then she looked at the coffee.
Then the cigarette.
“Going for all the vices tonight, huh?”
I laughed.
One ugly sound.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” she said.
“I don’t.”
“You’re doing a convincing impression.”
“I’m expanding my hobbies.”
“Terrible hobby.”
“I’m aware.”
She held out her hand.
I gave her the cigarette.
She took one drag, coughed harder than I had, glared at it, and handed it back.
“That is disgusting.”
“Yeah.”
“You going to tell me?”
I stared at the ember.
Orange.
Tiny.
A little controlled fire.
How poetic.
“I think I’m still in love with him,” I said.
There.
The words left my body.
The night did not end.
No lightning struck. No ambulance exploded. No god came down to tell me I was wicked for loving a man with another woman’s ring waiting upstairs.
Lily’s face softened.
“I know.”
I closed my eyes. “Don’t say that.”
“Okay.”
“You weren’t supposed to know.”
“I’m your best friend. Knowing is kind of my unpaid internship.”
I pressed the heel of my hand to my chest because something there hurt in a way that made breathing feel optional.
“I never stopped,” I whispered. “I thought I did. I thought it faded. I dated Daniel. I loved Daniel, or I tried to. I built a life. I graduated. I became useful. I became sane. And then Dylan comes through those doors bleeding out, and it’s like…
” I shook my head. “It’s like nothing ever healed.
It just scarred over with him still underneath. ”
Lily’s eyes filled behind her glasses.
“He was the one that got away,” I said. “My young, foolish teenage heart’s stupid unfinished chapter.”
“Des.”
“He saw the ugly pieces.” My voice broke. “He saw me after the fire. After the grave. After red paint and blood and all the things I couldn’t make pretty. He saw all of it and didn’t run.”
The cigarette trembled between my fingers.
I stared at it because looking at Lily would make me cry.
“Daniel didn’t even know about the fire,” I said. “Not the real version. Not everything. He met my family and ran from the edges. He couldn’t even handle bikers as in-laws. Dylan saw the worst of me before I even knew how to put it into words, and he called me Beautiful.”
Lily wiped beneath one eye with her wrist.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“He’s engaged.”
“I know.”
“That should matter more.”
“It matters.”
“It doesn’t change anything inside me.”
“No,” Lily said softly. “It usually doesn’t.”
I took another drag, hated it, and stubbed the cigarette out against the metal step.
“I need Regan.”
Lily was already handing me my phone.
Of course she was.
I stared at the screen for a long second before pressing the name.
Regan answered on the second ring.
“Destiny?”
The sound of her voice broke me.
Not loudly.
Not all at once.
Just one clean fracture straight down the middle.
“Hey,” I said, and it came out wrong.
The line went silent.
Then Regan’s voice changed.
“What happened?”
I covered my face with one hand.
“Dylan was shot.”
She inhaled sharply.
“Nate too. Border run, I think. They brought them here. Albuquerque General.”
“Are they alive?”
“Yes.” I forced the word out. “Nate’s going to make it. Dylan…” My throat closed. “Dylan is critical. Surgery was bad. He flatlined once. They got him back. Next twenty-four to forty-eight hours are fifty-fifty.”
“Where are you?”
“Fire escape.”
“Are you alone?”
“Lily’s here.”
“Good.”
I could hear movement on her end. A door. Voices. Regan covering the phone and saying something muffled to someone else. Probably Edge. Maybe Tarak. Maybe both. The machine would start moving now. Calls. Flights. Men waking from sleep with weapons and fear.
“Tell me what you need,” Regan said.
That was Regan.
Not, Are you okay?
Not, Calm down.
Tell me what you need.
“I don’t know.”
“Then tell me the truth.”
I laughed once, broken and wet. “I still love him.”
Silence.
Not shocked.
Not judgmental.
Heavy.
“I know,” Regan said.
My tears spilled then.
“I hate that everyone knows.”
“Honey,” she said softly, “you were never subtle about Dylan.”
“I tried to be.”
“You were terrible at it.”
A sob caught in my throat and somehow came out almost like a laugh.
Then the laugh died.
“He’s engaged,” I said.
That silence was different.
Sharper.
“What?”
“Georgia. Blonde. Pretty. Ring on her finger. She was in the waiting room. She said she’s his fiancée.”
Regan said nothing for a long moment.
Then, very quietly, “That idiot.”
“Regan.”
“No. I mean it. That absolute idiot.”
“He moved on.”
“Did he?”
“She has a ring.”
“A ring is not a marriage.”
My eyes squeezed shut.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t make it sound simple.”
“It isn’t simple. It’s awful.”
“She loves him.”
“I’m sure she does.”
“She was crying. She was terrified. She looked at me like I had answers that could keep her world from ending.”
Regan’s voice softened. “And you did.”
“I don’t want to be like her.”
“Georgia?”
“No.” The word scraped out of me. “Mandy.”
Regan went still on the other end.
The night air moved cold over my wet cheeks.
“I don’t want to become some villain in another woman’s love story,” I whispered. “I don’t want to be the girl who shows up and ruins everything because she thinks fate owes her a man. I don’t want to take what isn’t mine. I don’t want to be the ghost in someone else’s engagement.”
“Oh, Destiny.”
“I mean it.” My voice shook. “I’ve spent years trying not to become the worst version of the stories people told about my mother.”
“You are not Mandy.”
“But what if this is how it starts?” I asked. “Wanting what belongs to someone else. Telling yourself your love is bigger. Telling yourself destiny matters more than decency.”
Regan exhaled.
When she spoke again, her voice had changed.
Lower.
Rawer.
“What if I’m the villain?”
I froze.
“What?”
“What if I was the villain for keeping you apart?” she asked.
“What if I looked at an eighteen-year-old girl, freshly minted and bleeding from every place life had cut her, and decided I knew better than fate? What if I thought I was saving you, and all I did was teach both of you how to suffer politely?”
My breath caught.
“Regan.”
“No. Listen to me.” Her voice trembled now, but there was steel inside it too.
Always steel. “You were eighteen. Barely. You had just survived hell. How could I have known? How could I have looked at Dylan, a patched man with blood on his hands and want in his eyes, and said, yes, go ahead, take my girl’s heart?
I couldn’t. I did what I thought a mother should do. ”
“You were protecting me.”
“I was. And maybe I was wrong anyway.”
I pressed my fist against my mouth.
Lily stood beside me silently, close enough that her shoulder touched mine.
“What if Dylan is the villain?” Regan said.
My heart stuttered.
“For marrying a girl he doesn’t love.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Don’t we?”
“No.” I shook my head even though she couldn’t see it. “No, we don’t. We don’t get to decide that for him. Georgia is real. She’s not some obstacle. She’s a person.”
“I know.”
“She loves him.”
“I know that too.”
“And maybe he loves her.”
“Maybe,” Regan said.
The word was gentle.
Unconvinced.
I hated that.
Needed it.
Hated that I needed it.
“I can’t know,” I whispered.
Regan was quiet for one beat.
Then she asked, “Was it her name he breathed on his lips?”
My whole body went still.
The fire escape disappeared.
The hospital disappeared.
The ring, the waiting room, the smell of coffee and smoke, Lily beside me, the night pressing cold against my scrubs—all of it fell away.
Beautiful, is that you?
Destiny.
Stay with me.
My name in his mouth while blood tried to take him.
“No,” I whispered.
Regan’s voice softened until it nearly broke. “Then there’s your answer.”
Tears slid down my face.
“That’s not fair.”
“Love rarely is.”
“I don’t want to hurt her.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to hurt myself anymore either.”
Regan let out a shaky breath. “Oh, honey.”
“I saved him,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“And now I have to watch someone else hold his hand.”
“Maybe.”
The single word held too much.
Hope.
Danger.
Permission.
Warning.
I looked down at my bare hands. No gloves. No ring. No cuff. Just skin scrubbed raw from trying to wash away Dylan’s blood.
“What do I do?” I asked.
Regan’s answer came quiet and fierce.
“You do what you’ve always done. You survive the next hour. Then the next one. You let him wake up. You let the truth stand in the room with all of you and see who’s brave enough to look at it.”
I closed my eyes.
Upstairs, Dylan was alive.
Engaged.
Critical.
Mine in no way the world respected.
Maybe mine in every way that mattered and no way that counted.
Lily slipped her hand into mine.
Regan stayed on the phone, breathing with me through the silence like she could hold one end of my unraveling from miles away.
Inside the hospital, machines kept Dylan alive.
Outside, under the metal stairs and bitter smoke and cold New Mexico night, I finally stopped pretending the past was past.
Dylan Degan had come back into my life bleeding.
And somehow, impossibly, the wound was mine.