Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Edwina
The first thing I registered was the faint drip of an IV, the slow slide of clear fluid threading through the line, its rhythm matched by the constant beeping of machines syncing with my pulse, louder than it should’ve been in such a still room.
I blinked until the white ceiling stopped swimming above me, until the weight of the blanket pressed against my chest reminded me that I was alive, even if my lips were cracked and my throat burned like I’d been breathing in frost. My limbs felt heavy, uncooperative, as if someone had poured stone into my veins.
I tried to move my fingers. They trembled weakly against the sheets.
“Hey.” The voice barely reached me, soft and frayed at the edges.
I turned my head, slow and uneven, and found Aster slumped forward in a chair beside my bed.
Shadows sat deep beneath her eyes, exhaustion carved into every line of her face.
Her hand caught mine almost immediately, thumb brushing across my knuckles in a nervous rhythm, as though she needed proof I wasn’t some ghost.
“You’re awake,” she said, her voice splintering mid-word. “God, Edie, you scared the shit out of us.”
Across the room, Gwen stirred. She’d been asleep, folded awkwardly in a chair, knees drawn to her chest, hair a wild mess from hours of worry. She blinked, dazed, and when her eyes focused on me, she exhaled hard, a mix of relief and disbelief.
“Oh, thank fuck,” she breathed, pushing up in her seat. Her voice trembled but she tried for levity. “Do you have any idea how dramatic you are? Getting lost on a mountain during a blizzard? That’s some next-level main character bullshit.”
I tried to laugh, but it came out wrong, half cough, half gasp.
Aster moved quickly, grabbing the cup of water from the bedside table and guiding the straw to my lips. I drank slow, each swallow scraping my throat raw before easing it.
“How long…” My voice broke mid-question, the effort enough to make my head throb.
“A day,” Aster said quietly. “They brought you in last night. Hypothermia. Mild frostbite. Your body temperature dropped too low.”
“You could’ve died,” Gwen whispered, not joking now. “You nearly did.”
I closed my eyes. The memories came in shards, wind screaming, snow burning against my skin, my own voice swallowed by the storm. Then warmth. Arms around me. The sound of my name spoken through clenched teeth.
“Who…” I swallowed hard, breath faltering. “Who found me?”
Silence. It stretched long enough for dread to settle deep in my chest. Aster and Gwen looked at each other over my bed, the kind of look that said everything words couldn’t. Guilt, maybe. Or something closer to awe.
Aster’s grip on my hand tightened. “Professor Stone.”
The name hit harder than the cold had.
“He carried you down the mountain,” Gwen added, her voice reverent. “No one else went up there. Not in that weather. We tried, but he didn’t stop. He just…went.”
Aster gave a shaky laugh, the kind that wavered between awe and something sly.
“Yeah, he went all right. Straight into a fucking blizzard for you.” Her thumb traced over my knuckles again, a teasing glint slipping through the exhaustion clouding her eyes.
“You should’ve seen him, Edie, half-frozen, wild-eyed, refusing to come down without you.
It was…honestly, kind of movie-level shit. ”
Gwen rolled her eyes, but a small smile tugged at her mouth. “You’re saying it was romantic.”
Aster grinned, soft and wicked. “I’m saying if a man storms through a goddamn mountain to find you, there’s no way he’s doing it out of professional concern.”
Heat crept up my neck before I could stop it, a slow bloom beneath skin still cold to the touch.
I tried to speak, to deny it, to tell them they were both ridiculous, but my throat refused me.
Aster caught the flicker of color in my cheeks and leaned closer, whispering, “Guess hypothermia’s not the only thing making your heart race, huh? ”
Gwen let out a quiet laugh, propping her chin on her hand. “She’s right. You better rest now, Edie,” she said, her grin widening. “Because once you’re stronger, we’re going to have a very long conversation about whatever the hell is going on between you and Professor Stone.”
Aster smirked, squeezing my hand. “Yeah, don’t think you’re getting out of that one, sweetheart. Sleep while you can. The interrogation starts soon.”
I turned my head, eyes fixed on the ceiling, but the warmth spreading through me wasn’t from embarrassment, it was the memory of him, of his voice in the storm, of his hands hauling me back from the edge as though he’d never let me fall again.
My chest constricted, my heart stuttering under the weight of something that wasn’t fear but didn’t feel safe either.
I looked down at my hand, the IV taped in place, the faint bruising underneath it blooming across my skin.
I should’ve been grateful. I should’ve been terrified.
But all I could think about was him—Professor Hayden Stone—the man who shouldn’t have followed, the man who always did anyway.
The warmth of Gwen’s hand lingered on my shoulder after she stood.
She and Aster whispered something to each other before slipping out, their voices dissolving into the hum of machines and the mechanical pulse keeping time beside me.
My eyes grew heavy, the exhaustion pulling at me from somewhere deep, dragging me downward.
Then the darkness came, not the comforting sort but the one that crawled beneath the skin, alive, merciless, refusing to let go. His voice cut through it first, rough and strained, carrying a wreckage that made the silence itself ache.
“I can’t lose you…”
A pause. The sound of breath catching. Then, sharper, words that felt torn from somewhere too raw to heal:
“I can’t lose you like her.”
The sound ripped straight through me, colder than the storm that nearly killed me, and left one question pounding in my skull long after his voice faded into the dark.
Who the hell was she?
The air around me twisted and blurred, flashes of snow, the roar of the storm, the memory of arms dragging me from the dark. Then his voice again, that hoarse rasp tearing through the wind.
I gasped awake, lungs heaving, heart clawing against my ribs. My fingers clutched the blanket near my throat as the hospital room swam into focus. Pale afternoon light pooled across the sheets, soft and unreal, too calm for the chaos still ringing in my head.
And then I saw him.
Hayden stood by the window, his shoulders rigid, one hand buried in his pocket, the other hanging uselessly at his side.
The snow outside threw ghost-light across his face, outlining exhaustion carved too deep for sleep to touch.
He didn’t look merely exhausted; he looked gutted, hollowed from the inside, held together only by the fragile force of his own will.
“…You stayed,” I whispered.
He turned slowly, and when his eyes met mine, something inside me trembled. The quiet between us stretched until it felt like a heartbeat—his heartbeat—the same one I’d felt against my cheek in the storm.
“I wasn’t going to leave you,” he said, voice breaking on the last word, gravel scraping against grief.
My chest tightened. “You should’ve,” I breathed. “You didn’t have to—”
His answer came before control could catch it, quick and cutting, stripped bare of restraint.
“I did.” He took a step closer, his eyes burning with something that wasn’t anger, it was terror, stripped bare.
“You don’t understand, Edwina. I thought I’d lost you.
I fucking thought I’d lost you out there.
” His jaw flexed hard enough to hurt, his hands curling as though holding still was the only way to keep from breaking.
“I was too goddamn slow. I kept thinking—if I’d been a minute later… ”
He trailed off, his breath shuddering.
“You weren’t,” I whispered, but it sounded weak even to me. “You found me.”
“I almost didn’t.” His voice cracked open then, quiet and furious in the same breath.
“Do you get that? You were freezing in my arms, and I—fuck—I couldn’t feel your pulse, I couldn’t hear you breathing, and for a second I thought…
” He dragged a hand through his hair, his composure fracturing. “I thought I was too late again.”
The last word hit with a tremor that made the air shift between us. I swallowed hard. “Again?”
His gaze fell to the floor, his shoulders sinking under an invisible weight. “You couldn’t have known,” I said softly, trying to fill the silence, but he only shook his head, the motion heavy, resignation sinking through every inch of him.
“No, I should’ve known. I should’ve stopped you before you walked out that door. I should’ve never let you go.”
He turned away, one hand braced against the windowpane as if it was the only thing keeping him upright.
The light caught on the tremor in his fingers.
“You don’t understand what it does to me, seeing you like that, thinking you were gone.
I can’t—” His breath faltered. “I can’t fucking survive that twice. ”
The room held its breath with him, and in the silence, I realized his terror wasn’t about failure or guilt, it was about me.
I watched him move, the air around us tightening until even my heartbeat felt too loud in the quiet.
Each step he took toward the bed carried a tension that pressed against my chest until it was hard to breathe.
He stopped beside me, his body close enough to feel but still holding that impossible inch of restraint.
His hand rose, paused in the air as if he was fighting himself, then the back of his knuckles brushed against my cheek, a slow, deliberate motion that sent every thought in my head scattering.
My breath slipped out, shaky and uneven, and I closed my eyes for a moment before opening them again to find him watching me.
His gaze was unwavering and full of something that burned, an ache buried deep, a need he could no longer silence.
His fingers moved from my cheek to my jaw, his touch grounding me when everything inside felt as though it was about to collapse.
“I don’t care,” he said, his voice rough, heavy with something he wasn’t trying to hide anymore.
“I don’t care that it’s wrong. I don’t care that I’m your professor.
I fucking don’t care.” The words cracked between us, not out of anger, but from the weight of everything he had been holding in.
He bent forward and kissed me, the motion unhurried, his lips pressing against mine with a depth that made the world blur out.
There was no greed in it, no claim made through force, it was a surrender, a breaking point, the kind of contact that stripped away the distance we had been pretending existed.
I responded before I thought to question it, my lips moving against his, slow and certain, answering the confession buried in his breath.
His hands slipped into my hair, his palms steady against my neck, pulling me closer until my fingers caught on his coat, clutching the fabric to keep from shaking apart.
The kiss deepened slowly, driven less by hunger and more by recognition, a quiet surrender to something neither of us could fight.
When he drew back, it was only far enough to rest his forehead against mine. His breath trembled between us, his voice breaking as he spoke. “I thought I’d lost you,” he said, the words spilling out as if a wound had been reopened.
“You didn’t,” I answered, my whisper catching on the air. “You still haven’t.”
He stayed close, his voice quiet but carved through with everything he hadn’t said. “You’re mine, Edwina,” he said. “You always were.”
The words carried no hesitation. They were a confession pulled from the edge of breaking. And when he kissed me again, the restraint was gone. It was not careful anymore. It was the moment that had been waiting to happen, the point where want became truth.