Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Candace
The room was cold, even with Sebastian's hand cradled in mine, my thumb brushing over knuckles that didn't move. I held on anyway—stealing what warmth I could.
Emma had left the night before—off to a well-deserved date night with Damien. I'd stayed. Read three chapters of Twilight out loud to a man who couldn't hear me, then curled up in the chair beside his bed and slept in fitful bursts between nurse check-ins.
Now morning light filtered through the blinds, pale and thin.
Somewhere down the hall, a phone rang. A cart rattled past the door.
Rosie was home recovering from a cold that had knocked her flat.
Damien and Emma were both at work—meetings they couldn't cancel, lives that kept moving even when his didn't. None of us could stomach the idea of Sebastian waking up alone.
So here I was. Rumpled and exhausted. Running on vending machine coffee and the stubborn hope that maybe today would be different.
Fear and grief clung to the walls like humidity, settling into my pores. Machines beeped and hummed in uneven rhythms—a symphony of suffering.
Eventually, I pulled my hand from his and reached for my phone.
Thousands of notifications flooded the lock screen. Fans praising a version of me that barely existed.
The truth of me was exhausting.
Dieting. Pilates. Yoga. All the things I claimed I loved but really only tolerated—rituals meant to keep the illusion alive. The pretty, bendable, effortless girl they all thought I was.
Emma was the only person who ever saw the real version. The messy parts. The grit instead of glitter.
And Garrett.
He'd seen too much of me too.
His name sat at the very top—still marked as a "priority," even though I kept trying to delete that label from my heart.
Garrett: Thank you for the other night. You looked beautiful.
Garrett: I'd love to see you again.
Garrett: Please respond to me. I'm sorry.
Garrett: You're really going to ignore me after everything I've done for you?
And on. And on. And on.
I cleared them one by one.
Without thinking, I opened Pinterest—muscle memory guiding me straight to my wedding board.
Created: five years ago. Just a few months after we'd started dating. Last updated: two years ago.
That was when I finally gave up. When I tried convincing myself that what we had—dedication without commitment—was enough.
But it wasn't. Not for him.
There were always others.
Parties. Girls. "Friends" I never met.
I should have listened to Emma a long time ago.
She warned me. Told me I deserved better. Told me Garrett would break me if I kept handing him pieces he never asked for.
Maybe if I'd listened I wouldn't be sitting here in a dark hospital room, hurting over a man who never once chose me the way I chose him.
I closed Pinterest and opened Netflix.
The loading screen spun. One minute. Two. Three.
Nothing.
A bitter laugh slipped out. Of course even this wouldn't work today.
With a tired sigh, I closed the app and tossed my phone onto the bed beside Sebastian's unmoving body.
"Why am I like this?"
Only the monitors answered.
"How'd we both end up here? Your body broken. My heart... apparently not much better."
A soft, humorless laugh escaped me.
"I guess pain calls to pain, huh?"
I reached for his hand again, tracing the ridge of his knuckles with my thumb.
"I don't know what I'm doing," I admitted, voice barely above a breath. "Everyone thinks I'm this... put-together person. Pretty. Bubbly. Unbreakable."
A sad smile tugged at my lips.
"But I'm not. I'm tired. I'm lonely. And I keep loving people who don't pick me back."
The monitor beeped. Steady. Unchanged. "I thought Garrett would choose me. I thought if I was good enough—pretty enough, fun enough—he'd finally stop looking at everyone else."
I swallowed past the tightness in my throat.
"You're the only person in my life who can't lie to me right now," I murmured, folding my hands over his. "Or pretend. Or expect anything from me."
The thought both comforted and gutted me.
"I'm such a mess," I confessed. "And I pretend I'm not. For Emma. For my followers. For... him."
A beat.
"I spent years waiting for Garrett to want me the way I wanted him. Years pretending I didn't see the other girls—pretending it didn't matter."
My voice went quiet.
"But it did. It does."
I let out a small, watery laugh. "Isn't that pathetic? Sitting here falling apart over a guy while you're fighting to stay alive."
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and reached for my phone—
A finger twitched.
Right there. Next to the phone. His index finger, barely a millimeter of movement.
I froze.
No. You imagined it. You're exhausted. You're seeing things.
I stared at his hand, breath held.
Nothing.
Just the same stillness. The same unmoving knuckles I'd been tracing for hours.
See? Nothing. You're losing it, Candace.
I let out a shaky exhale and reached for the phone again—
Another twitch. Stronger this time. His whole hand shifting against the sheets.
My heart slammed into my ribs.
"Sebastian?"
His eyelids fluttered. Just a sliver—a crack of white beneath dark lashes.
My phone clattered to the floor.
"Sebastian. Can you hear me?"
Another flutter. His brow furrowed. Then his eyes opened.
Not all the way—just enough. Glazed. Unfocused. Darting around the room like he was trying to piece together where he was, what had happened, why everything hurt.
They landed on me.
His mouth moved. Lips parting around the tube, trying to form words that wouldn't come. Just a horrible, muffled sound—wet and strangled and wrong.
His eyes widened. Confusion turning to panic.
He tried again. Harder this time. His jaw working, throat straining, nothing but that awful gurgling noise escaping around the plastic.
"It's okay—" I reached for him. "It's helping you breathe, you're in the hospital, you're—"
But he wasn't listening. Couldn't hear me over his own terror.
His hand flew to his throat.
To the tube.
Oh god.
His fingers clawed at the intubation, eyes going wide with animal panic. His chest heaved as he fought against the machine breathing for him, gagging, choking, every instinct screaming at him to rip out the thing blocking his airway.
"No—no, no, no—" I lunged forward, grabbing his wrist. "Stop! Sebastian, stop!"
He didn't hear me. Didn't see me anymore. Just kept pulling, his body convulsing against the restraints of wires and tubes.
"NURSE!" The scream ripped free. "SOMEBODY HELP!"
I tried to hold his arm down, but he was stronger than he looked—stronger than a man who'd been in a coma had any right to be. His other hand joined the first, both of them tearing at the tube like he was drowning and it was the thing killing him.
"HELP! PLEASE!"
Footsteps thundered down the hall.
The door burst open—Toni first, then another nurse I didn't recognize, then a doctor in blue scrubs already barking orders.
"He's trying to extubate—hold him down—"
Hands everywhere. Voices overlapping. Someone shoved me aside and I stumbled back, back hitting the wall as I watched them swarm the bed.
"Sebastian, you're in the hospital. You need to calm down—"
He wasn't calming down. His eyes were wild, rolling, tears streaming down his temples as he choked around the tube.
"Get me 2 of Ativan, now—"
"He's fighting—I can't hold—"
"Sebastian!" The doctor's voice cut through, firm and loud. "You're safe. You're in the ICU. We're going to take the tube out, but you need to stop fighting. Do you understand? Blink if you understand."
A horrible, suspended moment.
Then—one blink. Slow. Deliberate.
His hands dropped to the bed, trembling. His breaths still came hard, but he wasn't clawing anymore.
"Good. That's good." The doctor nodded to Toni. "Let's get him extubated. He's breathing over the vent."
I pressed myself into the corner, heart slamming against my ribs, watching as they worked. As they eased the tube from his throat with practiced hands. As Sebastian coughed—wet, wretched, gasping—and then sucked in his first real breath since before the fall.
The sound broke something in me.
I slid down the wall, knees buckling, and sat on the cold hospital floor with my hand pressed to my mouth.
He was awake.
He was alive.
The nurses moved around him, checking vitals, adjusting monitors. But his gaze—bloodshot, wet, barely open—searched the room until it found mine.
His cracked lips parted. A rasp of sound, wrecked and raw, shredded from the tube.
The room held a stillness that was louder than sound—all of us afraid to break it.
"Are you an angel?"