Chapter 28 Grayson
GRAYSON
The chair in the hospital corridor is designed to discourage sleep, which is fine because I haven't closed my eyes in four hours.
Every time I try, I see Abbie crumpling against the stage edge, Wren's scream cutting through the ballroom chaos, and my own body moving too slow, always too slow, to catch her before she hit the floor.
I keep replaying the fall. The distance between us. The horrified gasp from the crowd. Delaney's face, twisted with something I don't have the energy to name, before security tackled her.
My wife. My pregnant wife. On the ground because I didn't see it coming. The fluorescent lights buzz. I stare at a crack in the linoleum. She came around in the ambulance, confused and frightened. They’re checking the head injury as well as monitoring the baby.
I keep replaying those few seconds before she opened her eyes.
"Gray."
I look up. Wren is standing in front of me, two cups of vending machine coffee in her hands and a bruise blooming purple across her left forearm. I know exactly where that bruise came from, trying to grab Delaney in the ballroom, trying to stop what was already in motion.
She holds out one of the cups, and I reach for it automatically. That's when I notice the matching mark on my own forearm. Four finger-shaped bruises, fading from red to purple. Wren's handprint, from the elevator. The elevator.
I rode an elevator. After they admitted Abbie, after they told me she was stable, Wren grabbed my arm and pulled me into a metal box that moved between floors, and I didn't notice. I didn't freeze. I didn't count the cables or calculate the weight capacity or feel the walls closing in.
"You were naming things," Wren says quietly, watching my face. "In the elevator. Five things you could see, four you could touch. I walked you through it. You answered every question."
I don't remember that. I remember white hallways and the smell of antiseptic and Abbie's face, pale against the pillow. I remember thinking if I just kept moving toward her, nothing else mattered.
"You got me through it," I say.
"You got yourself through it. I just gave you something to focus on besides the metal death box." She shifts the cups, wincing slightly as she adjusts her arm. "The bruise is from me holding on too tight. Sorry about that."
"Your arm," I say, my voice rougher than I intended. The words scrape against my throat like I've been swallowing glass. "From the ballroom. You should get that looked at."
"It's fine. Drink this." She pushes the coffee into my hands and drops into the chair next to me. "Any word?"
"Doctor said ten more minutes, an hour ago."
Wren exhales through her teeth. "Helpful."
"They're monitoring her. The baby's heartbeat has been strong and steady since they hooked her up. It's Abbie they're—" I stop, because finishing that sentence means acknowledging possibilities I can't let myself consider.
The coffee burns my tongue when I drink it anyway. Good. I need something to feel besides this.
"She's tough," Wren says quietly. "You know that better than anyone."
"I know she's thirty weeks pregnant and my sister-in-law lunged at her beside the stage steps." The words come out flat, factual. Like if I strip away all the emotion, maybe they'll stop being true. "I know I watched it happen and I couldn't stop it."
"Gray—"
"I was fifteen feet away. Fifteen feet, and I just... I stood there." My hands are shaking around the coffee cup. I set it down before I spill it everywhere. "I saw Delaney coming. I saw the look on her face. And I froze."
Wren studies me.
"You were behind those guests," she finally says. "Trying to get past them. And Delaney moved fast, faster than anyone expected. You didn't freeze. You ran."
"Not fast enough."
"None of us were fast enough." She holds up her bruised arm as evidence. "I tried to grab her and still couldn't stop it. Sometimes terrible things happen and there's nothing you can do except show up for the aftermath."
I want to control everything. Dr. Okafor has taught me to notice that impulse. Not to trust it.
Right now, it's telling me I should have been able to prevent this. That a better husband, a better man, would have seen it coming and stopped it. That I'm still, fundamentally, the person who couldn't protect his wife when she needed him most.
The fear isn't permanently cured. It probably never will be. But I can manage it now, can recognize the spiral before it drags me under, can choose differently even when every instinct screams at me to control and fix and save.
"Mr. Valentine?"
I'm on my feet before the doctor finishes saying my name.
"Your wife has finished her assessment and is asking for you. The baby is doing beautifully, strong heartbeat, good movement. We've completed our monitoring and everything looks exactly as it should for thirty weeks."
The relief hits me so hard my knees almost buckle. "And Abbie?"
"Bruising on her hip and shoulder, and a mild concussion. The head-injury assessment is reassuring. We’ll give you written instructions about rest, supervision, and symptoms that mean you should come back.
She’ll be sore for a few days. We'd like to keep her for a couple more hours just to be safe, but there's no reason she can't go home tonight.
" The doctor smiles, and it's the first genuine warmth I've felt in hours.
"She's asking for you quite insistently, actually.
Said to tell you—" she checks her notes, "'Stop catastrophizing and get in here. '"
That sounds like my wife. That sounds so much like my wife that I almost laugh.
"Go," Wren says, shoving my shoulder. "I'll be here when you get back."
When I reach her room, Abbie’s hair is tangled against the pillow. A bruise is forming on her left shoulder.
"You came," she says softly.
I drop into the chair and take her hand, her pulse steady against my fingers.
"I've been in the hallway wearing a groove in the linoleum," I manage, even though my throat is closing up.
"You look terrible."
"You fell off a stage."
"Technically I fell trying to get away from Delaney. Important distinction." I can see the fear she's still carrying in the tightness around her eyes. "The baby's okay, Gray. They showed me the heartbeat. Strong and fast, just like always."
"I know." I lift her hand to my lips and press a kiss against her knuckles. "I was so scared."
"I know you were. I could hear you in the ambulance, asking the EMTs the same question over and over." Her free hand comes up to cup my jaw, her thumb tracing the stubble I haven't had time to shave. "I'm okay. We're both okay."
"I love you." The words come out raw and desperate, nothing like the smooth charm I usually hide behind.
"I love you, and I'm so sorry I showed it late.
I'm sorry I wasn't... I'm sorry for all of it.
Every time I didn't tell you what I was thinking, every time I tried to protect you by shutting you out, every time I chose the agency or my own fear over being honest with you.
I'm sorry it took me so long to become the husband you deserved. "
Abbie is quiet for a moment, and I watch her green eyes fill with tears she doesn't bother to blink away. Her fingers tighten around mine.
"Say it again," she whispers.
"Which part?"
"The first part."
"I love you." I press my forehead to her knuckles. "I love you. I love you. I'll say it every day for the rest of our lives if you want me to."
"That's a lot of I-love-yous. You might get tired of saying it."
"Never." I lift my head to look at her, and I know my eyes are wet but I don't care anymore. "Not for a single second."
She pulls me toward her, and I lean in carefully, mindful of her bruises and the monitors and the fragile precious cargo she's carrying. Our foreheads touch, and we breathe together in the quiet antiseptic air of the hospital room.
"Delaney," she finally says. "What happened after I—"
"She was arrested. Security held her until the police arrived. Assault, caught on video by dozens of phones." I pause, weighing how much to tell her right now. "There's also the defamation, the lies she told about me tonight. But that's a civil matter. Different process."
"Is she still here? At the hospital?"
"No. She's at the station." I stroke her hair back from her face, watching her carefully. "The police want a statement from me about what happened. I told them I'm not leaving you until I know you're okay."
"I'm okay. You heard the doctor."
"I'm not leaving until I'm sure you're okay."
Abbie almost smiles at that. "Wren's here?"
"In the waiting room with a bruised arm and a very bad attitude about vending machine coffee."
"Tell her to come in. I want to see her." She squeezes my hand when I hesitate. "I need to see someone who isn't looking at me like I might shatter, Gray. Just for five minutes."
She's not asking me to leave. She's asking for her friend.
"I’ll be back as soon as I’ve given my statement," I say.
"Deal."
I find Wren still in the plastic chair, her bad coffee gone cold beside her. When I tell her Abbie wants to see her, her face crumples with relief.
"Thank God. I was starting to think I'd have to sit here making awkward small talk with you all night."
"I'm a delight and you know it."
"You're a disaster in an expensive suit. Go handle your business with the police." She stands, smoothing down her ruined dress. "I've got her."
"Wren." I catch her arm before she can walk away. "Thank you. For trying to stop Delaney. For being here."
"She's my best friend, Gray. There's nowhere else I'd be."
I pull out my phone. Messages from Theo, voicemails from Richard, news alerts about the attack.
All of that can wait. But the police can't, not if I want to make sure Delaney faces actual consequences.
In a beige room at the station, I tell the detective exactly what I saw: the lunge, Abbie stepping back, the fall.
"Your wife will need to give a statement as well," the detective says. "When she's feeling up to it."