Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
LIANA
Ican hear the steady beep of machines. I don’t open my eyes yet. I’m not sure I can.
My body feels like it belongs to someone else, borrowed and left out in the rain, heavy in ways that don’t match up with where I think my arms and legs should be.
Something is resting in my palm. Warm. Slightly rough at the knuckles. I know this hand. I knew it before I knew anything else about where I am or how long I have been gone.
I try to move my fingers.
It takes more effort than it should, more effort than lifting a bucket of ranunculus off a high shelf, more effort than anything I have ever asked my body to do, but I curl my fingers slowly around his, and I feel him there, solid and real, not a voice drifting through a fog but a hand I can hold onto.
“Lia?” August’s voice cracks clean down the middle of my name. “Did you just…?”
Slowly I open my eyes. It takes so much effort, oh my god.
August sobs, loud and sudden, both hands flying to his mouth, his glasses knocked crooked against his nose, and then he’s twisting around in the chair and shouting toward the door.
“She’s awake! Guys… GUYS, she’s awake, get in here, get in here now!”
I hear running before I see anything.
Feet pounding down a hallway, fast, several sets of them, and then the door bangs open hard enough that it hits the wall, and Cole is the first one through, already moving toward the bed.
Ezra is a half step behind him, and Julian crowds in right after, and all three of them stop dead the second they see my eyes are open.
Nobody breathes for a second.
The nurse is next through the door, drawn by the shouting, and she takes one look at the monitor, one look at my open eyes, and her whole face transforms.
“Oh,” she says, soft, almost reverent. “Oh, sweetheart. There you are.”
She moves fast after that, checking the monitor, checking my pupils with a small light that makes me flinch, murmuring numbers to herself that I don’t understand and don’t try to. “We’re going to get this tube out of you right now, okay? I need you to cough for me when I say so. Small breath in.”
I’m afraid, my whole chest seizing at the thought of it, until her hand finds my shoulder.
“You’re doing great,” she says. “One, two, cough.”
It comes out of me in a single ugly, scraping pull, my throat lit up with fire, my eyes flooding without my permission, and then it’s gone, the tube gone, and I am breathing on my own for the first time in longer than I can count, air moving in and out of my own lungs.
“There,” the nurse says, smoothing the blanket at my collarbone. “That’s it. You’re breathing on your own. That’s the biggest hurdle, and you cleared it beautifully. I’ll give you all a minute, but I’ll be right outside.”
My voice, when I try it again, comes out low and cracked.
“I heard you,” I whisper. “All of you. I heard everything.”
The room goes so still I can hear the monitor’s beep as its own separate sound again, distinct from all four of their heartbeats, which I swear I can feel from here.
“Lia,” says Julian softly as he approaches me first. I turn my head slowly toward Julian. He’s gone pale under his tan, his hazel eyes locked on my face like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he blinks.
“Julian,” I rasp. “You told me about Pepper. Chewing the yellow chrysanthemums. We have to build him his own garden. A whole bed of yellow flowers. It’s time.”
Julian’s mouth opens. Nothing comes out of it for a second. His eyes go glassy fast, tears standing right at the rim, threatening, not falling yet.
“You heard that,” he says, wonder cracking his voice wide open. “I didn’t- I thought…Lia, I didn’t know if any of it was getting through.”
“It got through,” I whisper, my heart swelling with love for him. I heard everything these brothers said to me during my coma.
He fights tears as he looks at me.
“We’ll build it as soon as you’re out of here,” he says. “The whole bed. Marigolds, sunflowers, whatever you want.”
I turn my head toward August next. He’s still holding my hand, both of his wrapped around mine now, his glasses fogged at the edges.
“The poems,” I whisper. “And the book from my nightstand. It was so sweet, August.” I swallow, my throat aching with the effort of every word. “I’ve been dying to know what happens next in that story. Bored out of my mind in there. But you made it so much easier to wait.”
His whole face crumples. He brings my hand up and presses his lips to my knuckles, holding them there, his shoulders shaking with the effort of not sobbing outright, and when he finally speaks, his voice comes out in pieces.
“I’ll read you the rest,” he says against my skin. “Every night. However long it takes.”
I look at Cole. “Your voice kept the nightmares away.”
Something moves behind his eyes, and his jaw works once, twice, the muscle there flexing hard.
“Good,” he says, low and rough. “That’s exactly what I wanted.”
Then I look at Ezra.
He is standing very still at the foot of the bed, his charcoal jacket wrinkled in a way I know he would never allow on any ordinary day, his pale gray eyes fixed on my face like he still doesn’t quite trust that I’m looking back at him.
“Ezra,” I whisper. “I miss my ring.”
Something breaks open across his face.
His hand goes to the inside pocket of his jacket. His hand is shaking. I have never once seen Ezra Frostwood’s hands shake, not during a heat, not during a proposal, not even at gunpoint in a cabin, but they are shaking now as he comes around to the side of the bed and takes my hand in both of his.
Nobody in the room breathes.
He slides the ring back onto my finger, slow, careful, like he’s afraid of hurting me even though it can’t possibly hurt, like the weight of the metal alone might be too much for what’s left of me. It settles into place exactly where it belongs.
All four of them go quiet. This is a different silence. Reverent. Terrified. Grateful. They stand around my bed and simply look at me like I am something they are only now allowing themselves to believe is real.
Ezra cups my face in both hands, so gently it’s barely pressure at all, his thumbs brushing the line of my jaw.
“We missed you,” he says, and his voice, always so measured, so controlled, breaks clean in half on the last word. “We thought we lost you.”
The tears come before I can stop them, sliding hot down into my hair, into the pillow, and my chest aches with a feeling too large for what’s left of my body to hold.
“Every day,” I whisper, “I wished I could tell you I was okay. I could hear how sad you all were. That was the hardest part. Harder than any of it. Hearing you cry and not being able to reach you.”
“You’re here now,” he says.
“I love you,” I tell him, my voice breaking apart on the words the same way his did. “I love you so much, Ezra. I love all of you.”
He leans down slowly, careful of the line still taped to the back of my hand, careful of everything, and kisses me.
The kiss is soft and searching and impossibly gentle, his mouth moving against mine like he’s relearning the shape of it, like he needs to be sure I’m really here.
I kiss him back with everything I have left, which isn’t much.
When he finally pulls back, he brushes his thumbs beneath my eyes, wiping the tears away one at a time, unhurried, like he has all the time left in the world to do it.