Chapter 32 #2
I needed to get out. Even though I was getting taken care of by everyone in town.
Cole flew down and stayed for days, basically holding vigil at my bedside.
My brother was there—not for long because he felt uncomfortable.
Because he didn’t know how to be there for me.
And because he was fucking terrified of Beau.
I wasn’t pleased with Jack about his intervention, his part in my breakup with Beau.
Not that I confronted him about that. It wasn’t exactly the time, nor did I have the strength.
Also, it wasn’t his fault. He shouldn’t have been able to break us.
Break Beau. He had breathed life into doubts and cracks that already existed.
He left, our relationship still strained, but I wasn’t going to discount it completely. Cole left soon after, with plans to come back once I was discharged from the hospital.
Which, every day for the past two weeks, I hoped would be the next day. I tried to heal my body out of sheer force of will, for Clara.
It didn’t work. Force of will clearly didn’t matter much against a gunshot wound.
But eventually, I was cleared to leave.
Beau came back on my last night in the hospital. He mostly just read as I slept.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered after I woke from a harrowing dream that wasn’t a dream at all. It was a memory.
Beau looked up from his book, instantly taking off his reading glasses. I wanted to tell him to keep them on because he looked so handsome.
But that wasn’t appropriate, given our non-romantic status.
“What in the fresh fuck could you have to apologize for?” he rumbled.
I wanted to smile. A glimpse at the grumpy Beau I’d once known, one I still loved, was comforting.
“That you’re here.” I waved my hand at the room. “That Clara is spending more time in a hospital when she shouldn’t have to see one for a long, long time.”
Beau grabbed my hand, lifting it up to his lips for a kiss.
Definitely not appropriate, given our non-romantic status. Yet I allowed it. My arm was tired. I didn’t have the energy to pull back.
“This is not your fault,” he said softly. “I will not hear another apology from your lips. I think it was you who told me women don’t apologize for the actions of men.”
I stared at him. He was tired, the circles under his eyes, the new pallor of his skin signified that. I swore he’d lost weight. But he was still Beau. Still devastatingly handsome. “You remember that?”
His gaze was unyielding. “I remember everything you’ve ever said to me, Hannah.”
My chest throbbed.
It had nothing to do with the bullet, the stitches, or the layers of ruined flesh.
I pulled my hand away.
Beau let me.
“I’m tired,” I said, voice flat.
He nodded. “Sleep, baby. I’ll be here.”
That shouldn’t have been comforting. I should’ve told him to leave. That I didn’t need him in order to sleep.
But that was a lie.
One last night. One last night in the hospital. One last night needing Beau. Then I’d be done.
It wasn’t a conversation about where I would go home to.
It was an argument.
“No way in fucking hell,” Beau barked when I’d informed him Finn was picking me up to go back to Lori’s as the nurses prepared me for discharge. I needed a lot of help still, which made it a little complicated going back to Lori who was pregnant and didn’t need to be taking care of me.
She needed to be taken care of, most notably by the man in love with her.
But she insisted. And Cole was planning on coming back to help.
Plus, there was Calliope. Nora. Tiffany.
Even though the thought of those people playing nurse to me was embarrassing.
I was growing close with them, but not that close.
It was comforting as much as it was irritating to hear Beau barking and grumpy. During my entire hospital stay, he’d been gentle, soft-spoken and oh-so-fucking sorrowful and haunted. Which didn’t satisfy me. Not even the petty part of me that was furious at Beau wished an eternal hangnail upon him.
The anguish in his eyes reminded me every moment of what we were. What we weren’t.
I wanted desperately to erase the horrible day that preceded Waylon shooting me. Wanted to forget that Beau had let me go.
But I couldn’t forget it. It was burned into my brain.
“I don’t recall asking your opinion on where I was going,” I said as I got my toiletries from the bathroom.
The toiletries that had been in Beau’s bathroom. The toiletries that had clattered to the sink the last night we were us.
“Home.” Beau took the toiletries from me, stomping over to add them to my small suitcase. It didn’t escape me that the bag contained almost as many things as the small duffel I’d arrived with.
Much nicer things, though.
I, quite obviously, hadn’t arrived at the hospital with anything but a weak pulse and half of the blood my body required to survive.
Every day since I’d woken up, I’d received a new delivery of things. Silk pajamas I definitely didn’t own before, plush robes, slippers, underwear, sweats. All high quality. All way out of my price range.
Which meant they either came from Calliope or Cole. I wasn’t in the position to argue. The luxuries helped serve as a barrier between the reality of where I was. What had happened.
“You’re coming home,” Beau declared, zipping up the suitcase.
I pursed my lips and did my best to shuffle toward him, and my shoes, despite the pain gnawing my heart. Pain not just from the gunshot wound. I was on enough drugs to help soothe the worst of that, but the agony caused by hearing Beau still referring to his place as my home.
As I opened my mouth to fight, curse him, fall apart, a small voice interrupted me.
“You’re coming home?”
I turned quickly, wincing at the rapid movement. My painkillers weren’t that good.
I felt Beau rush to my side, softly place his hands gently on my hips as if to steady me. His touch was a balm and torment at the same time.
Clara was standing at the door, holding her grandfather’s hand.
“You’re coming home?” she repeated, hope and joy in her voice. Her eyes sparkled with that light I’d been missing since the moment that gun went off.
I stared at her. The little person I loved most in this world.
“Yes, Blueberry,” I replied quietly. “I’m coming home.”
Five Weeks Later
I slept with Clara every night.
In Beau’s bed.
With Beau.
Because Clara now had nightmares. And she needed both of us to settle.
Neither Beau nor I would deny her a single thing that would help her feel safe.
I had nightmares too.
And interestingly, I didn’t have them when I had both Clara and Beau by my side.
Once again, like at the start, Clara was our buffer.
Despite her being small in stature, she was a mighty force in those early days.
Yet now, despite all her magnificence, she couldn’t buffer us from our past. Couldn’t shield us from the knowledge we had of each other. The hurt leeching through the cracks.
It was torture.
And it was untenable.
I was healing physically, so I considered going back to school for the spring semester, if I took limited classes.
If I chose the school thirty minutes away. The one I’d already enrolled in. Paid for.
Or I could take Cole up on his offer for me to move in with him in New York. Which meant paying for a whole new school and attempting to transfer again.
Not that that was really an option.
Not with Clara only just now getting back to her old self, having less nightmares. Another change for her, me leaving, would be too much for her. Too much for me.
I couldn’t sleep in Beau’s bed indefinitely.
We’d both been avoiding the conversation.
Well, I had been avoiding that conversation as well as any conversation with Beau that threatened to go beyond surface level.
He had made it clear that he was ready to talk through things whenever I wanted. That he was willing to grovel on his knees, do anything for my forgiveness. He showed it subtly, respecting my distance. Well, as much as he could while helping me shower, helping me dress.
I hated being dependent on him, yet I needed it. He was the only person I wanted to take care of me. His fingers knew my body, were impossibly gentle. Patient. He kept his touch clinical, though, not pushing boundaries, respecting me.
But I saw the longing looks he passed in my direction when he thought I wasn’t looking. Felt the kisses on my forehead when he thought I was asleep.
He didn’t let me lift anything heavier than a book. Even then, if he deigned the book too big, he or Clara would carry it. He cooked for me. Refused to let me do dishes.
Refused to let me do anything beyond heal.
And physically, I was getting there.
Emotionally was another story.
It was time, I decided, staring at the ceiling.
Beau was not in bed. I’d felt him slip out after kissing both me and Clara, murmuring “I love you” to both of us.
It had taken everything in me to stay still, to not sob out loud, hearing the pain in his voice.
I leaned over to see Clara’s outline, visible because of the light the projector cast from the stars on the ceiling.
She was sleeping peacefully. She had been sleeping better. No nightmares in a week. Yet we still all slept together.
It couldn’t last forever.
I trusted that Clara was sleeping deeply enough for me to sneak out. Though I shouldn’t have cared where Beau was, what he was doing, I shrugged on the sweatshirt that Beau had left on the chair at the end of the bed.
The weather was warming up, but I always bundled up. Whenever I felt a hint of chill, my entire body started shaking, and I remembered lying in the snow, dying.
But being cold gave me panic attacks. Beau knew that, so the heat was constantly running in the house. He would wrap a cardigan around my shoulders the second a single goose bump erupted on my bare skin. Everything I ate was warming, and I was rarely without a cup of tea.