Chapter 10 #4
The diamond was small compared to the kind of rocks men with more money and less conscience bought, but it was beautiful.
I had picked it because it looked like Georgia.
Bright without screaming. Warm. Classic.
Easy to imagine on a hand wrapped around coffee mugs and paint samples and someday a baby blanket if that was the life we built.
A life.
Not a dream.
Not a grave.
Not fire.
A life.
I clung to that thought because the alternative was admitting I had proposed to one woman while loving another, and there were not enough painkillers in New Mexico to make that truth bearable.
“You’re right,” I said.
Georgia stilled.
I forced the words up through my ruined throat.
“You’re my fiancée.”
Her breath caught.
“I asked you,” I said. “I gave you that ring. I made a promise.”
Her tears kept falling, but her eyes sharpened on me with desperate hope.
“I meant to keep it,” I said.
The sentence tasted like blood.
Georgia leaned closer. “Meant?”
I hated myself.
“Mean,” I corrected.
Her eyes searched mine.
I held her gaze because looking away would have been too honest.
“I mean to keep it,” I said again.
There.
The line drawn.
The plan back in place.
Georgia closed her eyes, and relief moved through her so visibly it almost broke me.
Almost.
But relief was not peace.
When she opened her eyes again, they were still wet. Still afraid. But there was fight in them now.
“Then we fight for us,” she said.
Us.
Another word that should have felt like an anchor.
Instead, it felt like chains I had forged myself and handed to a woman who thought they were vows.
I nodded.
Small movement.
Huge cost.
“We fight,” I said.
The monitor kept beeping.
Lie.
Truth.
Lie.
Truth.
It did not care which one my heart was telling.
Georgia bent and kissed my forehead.
Her lips were warm.
Soft.
Familiar.
I closed my eyes and let her.
Because this was the life I had chosen.
Because she had waited.
Because she deserved a man who did not turn every wound into an excuse to run toward the woman he should have claimed years ago or left alone completely.
Because Destiny had survived without me.
Because Destiny had built a life without me.
Because Destiny had just saved mine, and the only thing I could do now was not ruin hers again.
Georgia sat back down, still holding my hand.
She told me about the surgeon. About the next twenty-four hours. About Nate. About Callum in the waiting room looking like he was one bad update away from tearing the hospital down brick by brick. She talked because silence scared her.
I listened.
Or tried.
But somewhere under the medication, the pain, and Georgia’s shaking voice, Destiny’s confession kept playing like a pulse that belonged to someone else.
I never stopped loving you.
I love you.
Stay.
I turned my head toward the glass wall.
Movement passed in the hallway.
Blue scrubs.
Dark hair.
For one second, Destiny appeared beyond the blinds, carrying a chart against her chest. She stopped when she saw me awake.
The whole world narrowed to her face.
She looked exhausted. Pale. Beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with softness and everything to do with survival. Mandy’s diamonds glinted in her ears. Her hair was pulled back. Her eyes hit mine through the glass and went wide.
Georgia’s hand tightened around mine.
Destiny saw it.
Of course she did.
Her gaze dropped to our joined hands.
To Georgia’s ring.
Then back to my face.
The hallway, the machines, the woman beside me, the bullet wounds, the years, all of it stretched thin between us.
I wanted to lift my hand.
I didn’t.
Georgia was holding it.
Destiny’s mouth trembled.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
She gave one tiny nod.
A professional nod.
A stranger’s nod.
The kind of nod a nurse gave a patient’s family when there were too many things she was not allowed to say.
Then she walked away.
I closed my eyes.
Georgia’s thumb brushed over my knuckles again.
“You saw her,” she said.
I did not answer fast enough.
Georgia inhaled through the hurt.
But she did not let go.
That was Georgia.
Fighting.
Patient.
Better than I deserved.
“I’m here,” she whispered.
I opened my eyes and looked at the ceiling.
“I know.”
“She’s not.”
The words were not cruel.
That made them worse.
I turned my head toward Georgia.
She was crying again, but her jaw was set.
She was not surrendering.
She was not stepping aside.
She was the woman with the ring, the promise, the years of waiting, and the stubborn belief that love could still be chosen if a man would just stop looking backward.
And I was the man weak enough, guilty enough, scared enough to agree.
“You’re here,” I rasped.
Her fingers tightened around mine.
“Then stay with me,” she said.
The words echoed.
Destiny’s voice.
Georgia’s voice.
Same plea.
Different claim.
I looked at the woman wearing my ring.
I thought of the woman walking away beyond the glass.
Then I made the choice I had already made once because undoing it would hurt too many people and prove too much about the coward I still was.
“I will,” I said.
Georgia cried harder, bending over my hand.
I lay there beneath hospital lights, alive because Destiny had helped drag me back from death, holding on to Georgia because guilt had convinced me vows could become love if I bled enough for them.
Outside the room, Destiny was gone.
Inside it, Georgia stayed.
And for the first time since the bullet hit me, dying seemed simpler than living.