CHAPTER 14 #2
The hallway smelled like antiseptic and cold metal, a scent that felt designed to strip everything human out of a moment like this. My shoes echoed too loudly against the tile as the attendant stopped in front of a plain door and reached for the handle.
I felt the attendant’s eyes on us, judging me. Her gaze dipped to our fingers laced together, then back to my face, like she was rearranging the story in her head.
Widow. And not alone.
Heat crept up my neck, but I didn’t loosen my grip.
I knew Jagger was a stranger and that something was wrong that I hadn’t argued or questioned it or even thought to call anyone else when he’d told me he would come with me.
And I’m sure tomorrow I would ask myself why I’d shown up at the morgue with another man’s hand in mine, but right now .
. . I was having trouble letting go of it.
“You don’t have to stay,” I finally whispered, not meaning anything I was saying. “You should go. You shouldn’t have to see this.”
Jagger’s eyes met mine, the deep brown shot through with silver at the centers, like metal catching firelight.
The contrast made his stare feel almost unreal, warm and cold at once.
When he looked at me, the noise around us seemed to recede, the world compressing until there was only the comforting, exhilarating weight of his attention.
“Is there anyone else you want with you?” he asked as he softly stroked my cheek with the hand I wasn’t holding.
There should have been an obvious answer to his question. A name. A person. Someone who fit. But there was nothing. It was just another reminder of how Ryan and I had built a life in Vegas that wasn’t a life at all.
And now I was truly alone in it.
I swallowed, wincing at the burn in my throat. “No,” I murmured, and suddenly I was sobbing again. I pressed my hand to my mouth like that might keep me together, but it didn’t work.
“Oh, baby,” he said in an aching voice, as though he was experiencing all my pain and sadness right along with me. He let go of my hand and slid his arm around my shoulders, holding me upright with effortless ease. “I’m here,” he said quietly. “You’re not doing this alone.”
I let out a broken breath that might have been a laugh if I weren’t crying so hard. “I don’t even know you.”
His mouth tipped into the faintest smile. “You know my name, remember . . . which means we’re friends.”
The attendant cleared her throat softly, clearly uncomfortable, and then opened the door. The room beyond was stark and unforgiving with its white walls and stainless steel. There were several tables lined up in a row, but only one with a sheet drawn neatly over a body.
I froze, and my legs refused to move as I began to panic. This was it. The point of no return. Once I saw him like this, I couldn’t unsee it.
My stomach dropped, and my limbs went distant, suddenly no longer feeling like my own.
Was I about to pass out? The air in here felt thinner, like it wasn’t actually oxygen at all.
Jagger’s arm tightened around my shoulders just enough to remind me he was there. “You don’t have to look,” he murmured.
“Yes, I do,” I told him in a choked voice. Step by step, I forced myself forward. My heart pounded so loudly I was sure everyone could hear it.
The attendant gripped the edge of the sheet and folded it back in one smooth, practiced motion, and Ryan’s face emerged, all his color drained to a waxy gray, his lips tinged faintly blue.
One side of his jaw was swollen and mottled with dark bruising that crawled down his neck.
A jagged scrape cut across his forehead, stitched but still angry and red against the pallor.
His hair was stiff with dried blood near the temple.
My breath snagged as I stared at him in shock.
More of him came into view as the sheet lowered to his chest. Purple-black shadows bloomed beneath the thin hospital gown. His collarbone jutted at a wrong angle. There were abrasions along his shoulder, and road rash all over him.
Ryan’s mouth hung slightly open, like whatever he’d been about to say had been stolen mid-breath . . . his last words never making it out. His lashes lay still against skin that looked dusted in ash, no rise, no flutter—nothing left to argue with or forgive.
This morning he’d been standing in our living room. Now he looked carved out from the inside, as if someone had scooped away everything that made him Ryan and left only the outline behind.
The color was gone. The restless energy. The constant commentary. Even the tension I’d carried toward him felt misplaced here, with nowhere to land.
I remembered him on that playground swing years ago, pushing off with his sneakers, grinning at me with the easy certainty that I was already his future. He’d kissed me with the reckless confidence only young men have and promised forever as though it was something he could manufacture.
That boy didn’t exist on this table.
This—this was a shell arranged under fluorescent lights. A body zipped open and stitched closed. A story cut short without punctuation.
Whatever spark had once animated him was gone.
And I was staring at the aftermath.
The sob that ripped through me felt feral. Loud. Uncontained.
It wasn’t graceful grief. It was ugly and shaking and full of too many things at once—shock and guilt and memory. It clawed up my throat and left me trembling in its wake.
Jagger pulled me into his chest, and I clung to him. “It’s going to be all right, Eden. I promise, baby.” The conviction in his voice undid me even more.
Because it just reminded me that Ryan had promised we’d be all right once, too.
And here I was, standing in a room that smelled like chemicals and endings, wrapped in another man’s arms while my husband lay cold on a metal table behind me.
I felt split open.
Part of me was grieving the boy on the playground swing, the reckless promises, the version of us that had once felt simple.
Part of me was staring at the table behind us, knowing that whatever we’d become lately—resentment, frustration, exhaustion—it would never be resolved now.
No closure. No final conversation. Just an abrupt, brutal full stop.
I would never get to say the words I’d rehearsed in my head.
And now they would live inside me forever.