Chapter 12 #5
She stood there in jeans and a sweater, hair damp at the ends from the rain outside or maybe from washing her face in some hospital bathroom. She looked exhausted. Terrified. Humiliated in a way no woman deserved.
Especially not Georgia.
Especially not because of me.
“Did you kiss her?” she asked.
No screaming.
No throwing coffee.
No drama for the nurses outside the glass.
Just one question, quiet enough to destroy the room.
“Yes,” I said.
Georgia closed her eyes.
The word landed anyway.
I watched it hit her. Watched her shoulders draw in, like her body needed a second to survive the truth before her heart could.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Her eyes opened.
Something sharp moved through them.
“Don’t.”
I shut up.
“Don’t say sorry like that fixes anything.
” Her voice shook now, but she did not cry.
Not yet. “Don’t lie there looking half-dead and tragic and sorry, because you know what that does to me.
You know I want to comfort you. You know I want to take your hand and say we’ll figure it out.
You know I have been doing that for years. ”
I deserved every word.
More.
“I know.”
“No, Dylan.” She stepped closer. “I don’t think you do.”
The coffee on the table steamed faintly. She had brought me coffee I probably could not drink and food I probably could not eat because love made people bring offerings to the sick like soup and caffeine could bargain with pain.
“I waited,” she said. “Do you understand that? I waited while you disappeared inside your own head. I waited through the pauses. Through the way you went quiet whenever someone said her name. Through the nights you held me like you wanted to be there but something in you was standing at a locked door somewhere else.”
Her voice broke on the last word.
Still, she kept going.
“I told myself you were healing. I told myself men like you didn’t hand over their whole hearts at once. I told myself patience was love. That if I stayed soft enough, steady enough, safe enough, you would stop bracing for impact every time happiness touched you.”
I closed my eyes.
“Look at me,” she snapped.
I did.
Tears had started now, but she looked furious through them.
Good.
She deserved fury.
“I fought for you,” she said. “Not against her. Not at first. I didn’t even know how real she was. I fought against whatever had hurt you. Whatever made you think you had to earn rest. I thought if I loved you right, one day you’d wake up and realize you were home.”
Her hand lifted.
The ring flashed.
“But I was never your home, was I?”
My chest hurt so badly I almost wished the bullet had finished the job.
“You were good to me,” I said.
She stared.
“That is not an answer.”
“No.”
“What was I?”
The question was worse than did you love me.
Because the answer had too many pieces.
Georgia was warmth. Clean life. Study dates.
Sunday dinners. A father who trusted me with a grill and a loose cabinet hinge.
A mother who hugged me like I had not walked in carrying club violence under my skin.
Georgia was proof, or I had tried to make her proof, that I could become a man who did not belong to the worst parts of his past.
She was not a lie.
But I had lied around her.
“You were someone I wanted to deserve,” I said.
Her face crumpled.
“No,” she whispered. “No, don’t make it beautiful.”
“It’s not beautiful.”
“It sounds beautiful when you say it like that. It sounds like I should be honored you tried.” She shook her head hard. “I don’t want to be the woman you wanted to deserve. I wanted to be the woman you wanted.”
I had no defense.
None.
The truth filled the silence, ugly and complete.
Georgia looked toward the door again. “Do you want her?”
My mouth went dry.
“Yes.”
She breathed in like I had struck her.
“And me?”
“I love you.”
Her eyes flashed.
I forced myself to keep going before the coward in me grabbed the softer lie.
“But not the way you love me. Not the way I promised. Not the way marriage deserves.”
Georgia’s tears spilled faster now.
“Then why did you ask me?”
I stared at the ring on her finger.
“Because I thought choosing you would make me better.”
She recoiled a little.
Not physically.
Worse.
Inside.
“Wow.”
“I know.”
“No.” Her voice went flat in that dangerous way hurt people got when pain finally became bigger than tears. “I don’t think you do.”
“Georgia—”
“You asked me to marry you as a redemption project?”
“No.”
She laughed, sharp and wounded. “That is exactly what you just said.”
“I cared about you.”
“I know you cared about me!” she snapped.
The monitor jumped.
I did too, then regretted it when pain tore up my side.
Georgia saw it. For one second, instinct moved across her face—the urge to come closer, check me, soothe me.
She stopped herself.
Good.
She had to stop.
We both did.
“I know you cared,” she said, quieter. “That’s the part that makes me feel insane. You weren’t cruel. You weren’t some cold man using me for fun. You met my parents. You studied with me. You fixed my sink. You remembered my coffee. You proposed on the beach and your hands were shaking.”
They had been.
“I thought that meant something,” she whispered.
“It did.”
“But not enough.”
The words sat between us.
I could not soften them.
“No,” I said.
Georgia pressed both hands over her mouth.
The ring rested against her cheek.
She cried then.
Not loud.
That would have been easier.
She cried like she was trying to keep some last piece of dignity intact while her future broke apart at the foot of a hospital bed.
I wanted to reach for her.
I did not.
For once, I understood touching would be selfish.
“I heard her,” Georgia said after a long moment.
My pulse kicked.
“I heard her say she wouldn’t forgive you if you made both of you heartbroken for the rest of your lives. I heard enough to know she is not chasing you. Not like I wanted her to be.”
Her mouth twisted.
“I wanted to hate her.”
I closed my eyes.
“She would have let me,” Georgia said. “If she were cruel, if she were smug, if she came in here trying to take you, I could hate her. I could make her the villain. I could fight dirty. I could stand in this room and say I’m your fiancée, and she has no right.”
I opened my eyes.
Georgia looked exhausted now.
Destroyed.
“But she keeps walking away,” she whispered.
Because Destiny was better than both of us.
That was the truth.
Destiny had every reason to claw for what she wanted after years of being denied it, and she kept choosing not to become the story people had once written for her mother.
Georgia looked at me.
“And you keep letting her.”
That one hit differently.
“She walked away tonight because you gave her nowhere else to go,” Georgia said. “And I think I stayed because you gave me just enough to hope.”
I swallowed hard.
“I’m sorry.”
“I told you not to say that.”
“I don’t have anything else.”
“Then don’t have anything.”
She wiped under her eyes with the heel of her hand, then looked down at the ring.
I knew what was coming before she touched it.
“No,” I said.
Not because I wanted to keep the engagement.
Not because I had any right.
Because watching her take it off while I lay there useless felt like having my failure made visible.
Her fingers closed around the ring.
She twisted once.
It did not move.
Her breath hitched.
That small human struggle nearly undid me.
I had put it on her hand. Slid it over her knuckle while she cried happy tears and said yes like I was giving her forever. Now she had to fight it off in a hospital room because I had made forever out of cowardice.
She twisted again.
The ring came free.
Her hand looked bare without it.
Wrong.
Maybe everything did after a promise died.
Georgia held it in her palm for a second.
Then she walked to the side table and set it down beside the coffee she had brought me.
Not gently.
The small sound of metal against laminate cracked through the room.
“There,” she said.
My throat closed.
“Georgia.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“I never wanted to hurt you.”
“That doesn’t matter as much as you think it does.”
Fair.
She picked up her purse.
“I fought for you while you were fighting yourself,” she said. “I can’t win that.”
I had no words.
She looked at me one last time.
Really looked.
At the bandages.
The tubes.
The face she had loved.
The mess I had made.
“I’m not giving you permission to go to her,” she said. “Do you understand me?”
I nodded once.
Small.
Painful.
“I am not stepping aside so the two of you can turn this into some grand love story where I was the sweet girl who learned to let go.” Her voice hardened. “No.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t get to make me the woman who stood in the way of your great love story.”
Her eyes shone.
“You did that, Dylan. You stood in the way.”
That was the cleanest wound of all.
I let it bleed.
Georgia moved toward the door, then stopped with her hand on the handle.
“When you’re better, you can have someone send my things.”
“I’ll bring them.”
“No.” She did not turn around. “You won’t.”
Of course.
I had lost that right too.
“My dad will get them,” she said. “Or Nate can ship them, if he survives his own idiotic need to be bulletproof.”
Despite everything, a broken breath left me.
Almost a laugh.
Almost a sob.
Georgia heard it.
Her shoulders trembled.
Then she opened the door.
Before she stepped out, she looked back.
“I hope she makes you brave,” she whispered. “Because I couldn’t.”
Then she was gone.
The door shut.
The room went quiet around the empty chair.
Her ring sat on the table, catching light.
A small, bright thing.
A life I had tried to build with good intentions and a heart turned the wrong direction.
I stared at it until my eyes burned.
I did not know how much time passed.
Minutes.
An hour.
Pain shifted under my skin. The medication blurred the edges of the room but not enough. Nothing blurred enough.
Eventually, the door opened again.
Callum stepped inside.
He looked from my face to the ring on the table.
Then back to me.
For once, he did not say anything right away.
He crossed the room, picked up the ring, and held it between two fingers like it weighed more than metal and stone.
“She gone?” he asked.
I nodded.
Callum placed the ring back down.
Carefully.
“She take it off or did you ask for it?”
“She took it off.”
“Good.”
I looked at him.
He pulled the chair closer and sat with the tired patience of a man who had seen too many brothers confuse pain with honor.
“You alive enough for hard truth?” he asked.
“No.”
“Too bad.”
I closed my eyes.
Callum’s voice stayed calm.
That was worse than anger.
“You didn’t do Georgia a kindness by choosing her with half a heart.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. Not yet.” He leaned forward. “You keep thinking suffering makes you decent. Like if you bleed enough, lie still enough, deny yourself enough, all the damage becomes noble.”
I stared at the ceiling.
“You don’t marry one woman to punish yourself for loving another,” he said. “That’s not honor. That’s cowardice with a ring.”
The words hit so hard my breath left.
Callum let them sit.
He was good at that.
Then he said, “You love Destiny.”
I swallowed.
No point lying.
Not now.
“Yeah.”
“How long?”
I closed my eyes.
Fire.
Smoke.
Blood on her mouth.
Red paint on her hands.
Cabo moonlight.
Santa Monica glass.
Her voice in the ICU.
“Since the fire,” I said.
Callum nodded slowly.
“Then when you can stand without ripping yourself open,” he said, “you’re going to fix what can be fixed.”
“I don’t know if she’ll let me.”
“She shouldn’t make it easy.”
“No.”
“You made her pay for your fear.”
“I know.”
“And Georgia.”
“I know.”
“And yourself.”
I laughed once, bitter and weak. “Running list.”
“Long one.”
I looked toward the door Destiny had walked through.
“She said she’d never forgive me.”
“For what?”
“If I fucked this up and we both ended up heartbroken for the rest of our lives.”
Callum leaned back.
“Then don’t.”
I looked at him.
He stood, moving the chair back into place.
Like Georgia might still come in and sit there.
She wouldn’t.
That was mine to live with.
Callum paused at the door.
“One more thing.”
“What?”
“You go after Edge’s daughter, you go honest. No secret touching. No almost. No using hospital corners and longing as excuses. You clean up your mess before you put a hand on that girl again.”
I nodded.
I deserved worse.
Callum opened the door, then glanced back.
“And Dylan?”
“Yeah?”
“If you break her heart after all this, I’m not protecting you from Edge.”
The door closed behind him.
I lay there alone with Georgia’s ring on the table, Destiny’s kiss on my mouth, Callum’s words in my chest, and the first honest truth I had spoken in years burning through what was left of me.
I loved Destiny Rourke.
I had loved her since the fire.
And if she never forgave me for taking this long to say it, I would deserve that too.