Chapter 13
DESTINY
Georgia left before midnight.
I knew before anyone told me.
But something had ended.
Lily appeared beside me at the nurses’ station with two coffees and that carefully blank face she wore when she was about to deliver bad news.
“No,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything yet.”
“You have information face.”
She handed me the coffee. “Drink first.”
I took it. It burned my tongue. Good. Pain I could handle.
“Georgia left,” Lily said quietly.
The words landed soft. That somehow made them worse.
I stared at the cup. “Left like… she’s coming back later, or left like she’s done?”
Lily’s silence answered.
“Oh.”
That was all I could manage.
She was gone. The woman with the ring. The one who had slept in that chair and cried in the waiting room and brought him breakfast with shaking hands. The one who had every right to hate me and somehow didn’t.
Part of me felt relief. I hated that part.
Lily bumped her shoulder against mine. “That is not the same as you doing this to her.”
“I was in his room.”
“You were his nurse.”
“I kissed his forehead.”
“He was unconscious.”
“I told him I loved him.”
Lily sighed. “Yes. And he couldn’t even hear you properly. It’s messy. Life is usually messy.”
I looked toward Room 412. The blinds were half-closed. I couldn’t see him, only the glow of monitors.
Georgia stepped out of the elevator at the far end of the hall.
Maybe not quite gone after all.
My entire body went still.
She had changed clothes. Jeans, a loose sweater, hair in a messy knot. Her eyes were red and swollen. She looked younger without the ring.
My gaze dropped before I could stop it.
Her left hand was bare.
She saw me looking.
For one second, neither of us moved.
Then she walked toward me.
Lily shifted like she might throw herself between us.
I touched her arm. “It’s okay.”
Georgia stopped a few feet away. Close enough that I could see she’d been crying again. Far enough that we both had room.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
Her voice was quiet. Not hostile. That made me more nervous.
I nodded.
We ended up in the empty family room down the hall. Two worn couches, a muted television, a box of tissues, and a fake plant that had given up years ago.
Georgia stood near the window. I stayed by the door.
“You don’t have to stand like I’m going to hit you,” she said.
“You can, if you want.”
A broken laugh slipped out of her. “Tempting.”
I folded my arms around myself.
Georgia looked down at her bare hand. The absence of the ring felt louder than any jewelry could have been.
“I gave it back,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
Her eyes came up fast. “Don’t. Everyone keeps saying that. Dylan. You. Even Callum, in his own way.”
I stayed quiet.
She looked toward the door. “There’s no easy way to do this, so I’m just going to say it. I heard enough. I know he loves you. I think he’s loved you for a long time.”
My throat tightened.
“I wanted to hate you,” she continued. “It would have been easier. If you were cruel, if you came in here trying to take him, I could’ve made you the villain. I could’ve fought. But you didn’t do that.”
“I still hurt you.”
“Yes.” Her voice cracked. “You did. Both of you. But I’m not going to stand here and pretend I didn’t see how he looked at that door every time someone walked past. I’m not going to lie to myself anymore.”
She wiped under her eyes with the heel of her hand.
“I loved him,” she said. “Really loved him. That doesn’t just disappear because it wasn’t enough.”
“I know.”
“No. You don’t. Not yet.” She looked at me then, eyes red but steady. “He’s going to come to you. Maybe not today. Maybe not while he’s still hooked up to machines. But he will.”
I looked away.
“Don’t make it easy for him,” she said.
That brought my eyes back to her.
Georgia gave a small, tired shrug. “I’m not saying that because I want revenge. Okay, maybe a little. I’m human. But mostly because Dylan is very good at suffering instead of actually changing. He did it with me. He’ll do it with you if you let him. He’ll bleed nobly in a corner and call it love.”
I almost smiled. Almost.
“Don’t let him turn this into some tragic story he can worship instead of live,” she said. “Make him come honest. No noble lies. No secret touches. Make him say what he wants without using guilt as a translator.”
I nodded. “I will.”
She stood there for another second, then picked up her purse.
“I need to go. My dad’s coming to get me. I can’t drive like this.”
“That’s good.”
She paused at the door and looked back.
“I hope she makes you brave, Dylan,” she had told him. “Because I couldn’t.”
I stood in the family room long after the door closed, the words settling into my chest like stones.
When I finally stepped back into the hallway, Lily was waiting near the vending machines, pretending she hadn’t been close enough to intervene.
I walked straight to her and leaned my forehead against her shoulder.
She wrapped one arm around me and patted my back with a bag of pretzels.
“There, there,” she said. “Everything is emotionally catastrophic, but at least no one is actively bleeding right now.”
I laughed into her scrub top. Then I cried. Just a little. Just enough.
After that, I did not go to Dylan’s room.
I finished my shift.
I went home.
And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like the secret wound anymore.
The next few weeks did not fix anything.
They only made everything quieter.
Dylan stayed in the hospital long enough for the story to stop being dramatic and become routine.
Dressings changed. Tubes came out. Medications were adjusted.
Physical therapy started with a nurse walking him six steps down the hall while Nate, still pale and stitched together in his own room, yelled encouragement like an obnoxious football coach with a punctured lung.
The Royal Bastards took over one corner of the ICU waiting area until administration gave up pretending they were temporary.
Callum came and went with coffee, paperwork, and the kind of silence that made doctors explain themselves twice.
Edge showed up once, stood at the end of Dylan’s bed, looked at him for a long, deadly moment, and said, “Heal first. Then we talk.” Dylan, apparently not completely brain damaged, only nodded.
I stayed off Dylan’s care team after that night.
Not because I couldn’t do the job, but because doing the job had become its own kind of lie.
I could chart numbers, hang bags, check wounds, and take vitals with steady hands, but none of that changed the fact that my heart reacted every time someone said his name over the station.
So I worked other rooms. I took extra shifts.
I let exhaustion become a wall. When I passed his hallway, I kept my eyes forward.
When Lily gave me updates, I pretended not to hold my breath.
When Nate sent me ridiculous messages through Lily—tell Rourke I lived because I’m too pretty to die—I smiled, answered with something rude, and did not ask whether Dylan had asked about me.
He did.
Lily told me anyway.
Not right away. Not cruelly. Just one night after a twelve-hour shift when we were sitting on my apartment floor eating takeout straight from the containers while Cupcake stalked a plastic fork like prey.
“He asks every day,” Lily said, like she was commenting on the weather.
I stared at my noodles. She went on, softer.
“Not in a pushy way. Not like he expects access. He just asks if you’re okay.
” I hated how much that hurt. I hated how much I wanted to know if he looked toward the door when he asked.
I hated that the answer mattered when Georgia had already left the hospital with a bare finger and red eyes because Dylan and I had spent years pretending a fire had not branded us both.
Georgia did not come back.
That was the part nobody said loudly. Her things disappeared from Dylan’s place in San Diego two weeks later, packed by her father and shipped by Nate because Dylan was still too weak to stand for longer than a few minutes, and Georgia had been clear: he was not allowed to turn returning her sweaters into one more tragic apology scene.
I heard that from Lily, who heard it from Nate, who probably exaggerated at least thirty percent of it because Nate believed information was best served with seasoning.
But the part that mattered was true. Georgia was gone.
Not because she had been beaten by me. Not because she had stepped aside gracefully.
Because Dylan had finally told the truth too late, and Georgia had loved herself enough to stop bleeding in his chair.
I thought about her more than I wanted to.
Not all the time. Not dramatically. But sometimes, in quiet moments, her face would come back to me.
Her bare hand. The red around her eyes. The way she had looked at me in that family room and told me not to let him hide behind guilt.
I did not need her forgiveness to know she had deserved better from both of us, even if I had never meant to take anything that was hers.
That was the thing about love triangles no one put in songs.
Someone always ended up standing outside the music, holding the bill.