CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Morning finds us still in those same vinyl chairs, my neck stiff from sleeping at an angle no chiropractor would recommend, Thane's hand still loosely wrapped around mine like neither of us fully let go even in sleep.
A nurse wakes us gently around seven with the news that my father had a peaceful night, vitals steady, and will likely be moved back to a standard room by afternoon.
The relief hits me harder than I expect, a full body exhale that leaves me briefly lightheaded, and Thane's hand tightens around mine like he feels the same wave move through himself.
"Go home," the nurse suggests, kind but firm, the universal tone of someone who's delivered this exact advice to a hundred exhausted families. "Shower, eat something, sleep in an actual bed for a few hours. He's not going anywhere, and you'll be more use to him rested."
I don't argue. I'm too tired to argue, and some part of me, worn thin by the last twelve hours, is grateful for permission to step away for a few hours without it feeling like abandonment.
Thane drives me back to the clubhouse in a silence that feels different from every other silence we've shared this week, easier somehow, worn soft at the edges by exhaustion and the shared vigil of the night before.
Neither of us mentions the moment in my father's room, the confession that's still sitting unresolved between us, and I'm grateful, for now, for the reprieve.
I sleep for four hours in the small borrowed room, deep and dreamless, and wake disoriented in the late afternoon light to find a text from the hospital confirming my father's been moved back to his regular room, stable, resting comfortably, no further incidents overnight.
I shower, change, and find Thane in the garage bay when I emerge, freshly showered himself, going through paperwork at the workbench with the particular restlessness of someone who slept even less than I did.
"Ride back to the hospital?" he asks, not looking up from whatever he's reviewing. "I need to check in with your dad myself. He's technically still my responsibility to look after, given everything with the charter."
I don't point out that this justification is thinner than either of us needs it to be. I just nod, grateful for the excuse to have him beside me again.
The drive to the hospital happens in a comfortable quiet, radio playing low, the kind of silence that no longer feels like something either of us has to manage carefully.
I catch him glancing at me at a stoplight, quick and unguarded, and when I catch him at it he doesn't look away or make excuses the way he might have three days ago, just holds my gaze a beat longer before the light changes and the moment passes, easy, unforced.
My father is sitting up properly when we arrive, color fully returned, already complaining about the hospital food with an energy that tells me more about his recovery than any chart could.
He needles Thane about a supply run he clearly still wants details on, and Thane, indulgent, gives him a carefully edited version that leaves out anything the doctors would object to him hearing right now.
Watching the two of them fall into their old rhythm, easy and familiar, does something warm and complicated to my chest that I don't examine too closely while I'm still in the room.
The rain starts on the drive over, thin at first, thickening steadily by the time we reach the hospital, and by the time we've finished our visit, my father alert and irritable in the specific way that signals genuine recovery, teasing Thane about club business he clearly still wants updates on despite the doctors' orders to rest, the sky outside has opened into a full, steady downpour that shows no sign of easing.
We stand under the hospital's front awning together, watching the rain fall in silver sheets across the parking lot, both of us reluctant, for reasons neither of us states out loud, to make the dash to the car and end whatever this quiet, suspended moment has become.
"He seems better," I say, mostly to fill the silence, watching my own breath fog faintly in the cold, damp air.
"He seems like himself again. That's usually a good sign, with your dad.
He gets meaner right before he gets better.
" A faint smile, and then it fades, something more serious settling over his expression as he turns to face me fully.
"Niamh. Last night, in the waiting room.
I need to say something, and I've been trying to find the right moment for it since we got here, and there isn't one, so I'm just going to say it badly instead of waiting for a version that doesn't exist."
My chest goes tight, some old instinct bracing for impact even as another part of me, exhausted past the point of easy defense, simply waits.
"I never stopped." His voice is low, rough at the edges, none of the careful control he's maintained all week left in it.
"Loving you, I mean. I want to say it plainly, because I think I owe you plain after three years of both of us dancing around it.
I told myself the engagement was about duty, about what the club needed, and some of that's even true.
But underneath all of it, the real reason I never gave that chair away, the real reason I've spent three years unable to actually commit to Ravinia the way she deserves, is that some part of me has been waiting for you the entire time.
I don't know how to be a better man than that. I've tried."
The rain fills the silence after he stops speaking, steady and relentless against the awning above us, and I stand there for a long moment just looking at him, three years of careful distance collapsing into something I don't have the strength left to hold back anymore.
"I've been telling myself I came back for my father," I say finally, my own voice unsteady in a way I don't try to hide.
"That's true. It's also not the whole truth.
Some part of me has been waiting too, Thane.
I just didn't let myself say it, because saying it felt like admitting I never actually left the way I told myself I did. "
Something breaks open across his face, relief and disbelief and something rawer than either, and before either of us can find another careful, measured sentence to put between us, I close the distance myself, rising up on my toes, and kiss him.
He responds instantly, one hand coming up to cradle the side of my face, the other settling at my waist and pulling me closer, and for a moment there's nothing else at all, not the rain, not the hospital, not the engagement or the charter or three years of silence, just the specific, overwhelming relief of finally, finally letting something true happen instead of managing it into submission.
When we finally break apart, both of us breathing unsteadily, foreheads still close together, I can see the rain has soaked through the shoulder of his jacket where the awning didn't quite cover him, and something in the small, ordinary detail of it makes this feel real in a way the kiss itself almost didn't.
"That's been a long time coming," he says, voice rough, a small, disbelieving laugh threaded through it.
"Three years," I agree, and something in the admission feels lighter than it should, given everything still unresolved, given the engagement he hasn't ended, the charter he still has to answer to, the secret his own father apparently already knows and hasn't yet explained how.
"I need to talk to Ravinia." His voice sobers, the joy of the moment tempering into something more serious, more responsible. "Properly. In person. Before this becomes something either of us has to hide, because I'm done doing that, and she deserves better than finding out secondhand."
"I know." I do know, and the knowing doesn't dim the moment as much as I expect it to, some new, fragile hope settling into my chest alongside the fear. "I don't want to be the reason anyone gets hurt in this, Thane. I need you to know that too."
"You're not the reason." He tucks a strand of wet hair behind my ear, gentle, deliberate. "The reason is three years of both of us being too afraid to say something true. That's on both of us, not on you alone."
We stand there a moment longer under the awning, rain still falling steady beyond its edge, both of us reluctant to let this particular moment end, before he finally takes my hand and we make the dash together to the car, laughing despite everything, soaked through by the time we reach it, and I understand, sliding into the passenger seat beside him, that whatever comes next, we're no longer pretending this isn't real.