Chapter 36
Is it me?
Bright light shines through my closed eyelids, and a soft breeze cools my skin. Where am I? Am I dead?
“Phone an ambulance!” someone roars from beside me.
No. Not dead.
I want to scream in frustration but my lungs sear with each shallow breath, and I’m too weak to utter a sound or even open my eyes. Devastated, I welcome the darkness that consumes me again.
“Tilly?”
Connor?
“Get out of the way! I need to get to her!”
Connor’s desperate voice cuts through the ringing in my ears and shoots straight to my heart. I try to move, to speak, to give him some sort of reassurance that I hear him, but my body has shut down.
“Tilly?”
He’s much closer now, his voice a low whisper meant for only me. I feel his warm fingers delicately brush away the hair from my face before cupping my cheek.
“The ambulance will be here soon, you just have to hold on.” His free hand grips mine tightly, and I wish with all my heart I could squeeze it back. “Just hold on, baby.”
A tear escapes me but gets lost in the seawater already saturating my body. To the sound of Connor’s frantic pleas, I lose consciousness once again.
I’m becoming all too familiar with the feeling of waking up in a moving ambulance.
Once again, I’m strapped down to the bed and hooked up to noisy machines that add to the pounding in my head.
Connor is close, close enough that his scent comforts me instantly.
He’s holding my hand, a little too tightly if I’m honest, and stroking my arm.
My lungs still feel as though they’re on fire, and my side throbs with each inhale, but I’m feeling more awake now, so I gather my energy and try to speak.
“Connor?” My voice is a wheezy croak, but at least I managed to get a word out.
Connor’s sigh of relief is instant. “Tilly? You’re awake! She’s awake!”
“I told you she’d wake up soon,” comes another man’s kind voice, which I assume belongs to one of the paramedics.
“Baby, how do you feel?”
Like I’ve just tried to drown myself and failed.
“Great,” I lie and give a weak thumbs up.
“Can you open your eyes, Matilda?” asks the paramedic.
I feel like all of my energy has already been used up, but I’m a people-pleaser, so I try anyway.
My eyes crack open slowly, and I’m met with Connor’s chocolate gaze.
He smiles at me, but his eyes remain full of concern, and the stress of the last however long – I realise I have no idea what time it is or how long I’ve been unconscious – is showing on his beautiful face.
“You scared the shit out of me, Til. I was worried I wouldn’t get to you in time.”
I was worried you would.
With each word causing a searing pain in my throat, the paramedic suggests I don’t try to talk for the duration of the journey. Instead, Connor fills the silence by telling me how much he loves me and how he plans on looking after me once he takes me home.
It’s then that I remember the worst part of this clusterfuck of a situation.
“Rhys,” I croak suddenly.
“What?” Connor asks, both confusion and hurt evident on his face. “No, I’m Connor.”
Shit. I shake my head as vigorously as I can, which isn’t much considering the neck brace.
“Rhys… phoned,” I manage to say.
Connor furrows his brow as he tries to follow what I’m saying.
“Rhys phoned you before you… fell?” Connor clarifies, choosing his wording carefully.
I nod.
“He wants…. me… or phoning… police.” I force out the words, desperately wanting Connor to understand.
“He wants you? He wants you to what?” I get the feeling that Connor knows what I’m getting at but is hoping he’s wrong.
“He wants… me back. Tomorrow. Or he’ll phone… police… on you.”
Connor glances down at his bruised knuckles as he puts two and two together, his jaw clenching as he processes the information. It’s silent for several minutes, apart from the beeping of machines and the rustle of the foil blanket I’m wrapped in, but eventually Connor speaks.
“Do you want to go back?” The vulnerability is clear in his voice, and the fact that he had to ask breaks my heart.
I fight against the pain in my neck and shake my head slowly, but clearly.
Relief washes over him. He doesn’t try to hide it. “Okay. I’ll fix this.”
I open my mouth to argue that it isn’t that simple, but he cuts me off with a look that begs me to trust him.
“It’s okay,” he says softly. “I promise everything will be fine. I’m going to make a couple of phone calls while you’re being checked out in hospital, then I’m going to take you home. This will all be over in a few hours.”
I don’t know if it’s the exhaustion, the pain medication or the determined look on Connor’s face, but I relax a little.
I spend the rest of the journey dozing while Connor and the paramedic chat about nothing in particular, but I notice that Connor never takes his attention away from me for more than a minute or so at a time.
While he talks, he glances back to give me a reassuring smile or squeezes my hand to let me know he’s still there.
For now.
It crosses my mind more than once that I’ll have to give Connor some sort of explanation about how I ended up in the sea, but my brain is too fuzzy to deal with that. I’ll have to cross that rickety bridge when I come to it.
It doesn’t take much longer to reach the hospital and get settled into a cubicle.
They bring me a gown, which Connor insists on helping me change into, and I climb into bed, aching and exhausted.
I look over at him sitting in the chair next to me and feel a pang of guilt, remembering how uncomfortable Rhys said hospital chairs were.
“You don’t have to stay,” I croak. “I don’t mind if you want to go back to the hotel—”
“Are you kidding?”
“It’s just that when I was in hospital after I fell…”
“Rhys left you there on your own,” Connor guesses, grinding out the words through his clenched jaw.
“It’s okay, I don’t mind. The chairs look really uncomfortable.”
Connor looks at me for a moment, choosing his words. Finally, he sighs and steps towards me.
“Move up.” He taps my hip to nudge me closer to the other side of the bed. I awkwardly shuffle over while he removes his shoes, then he climbs in next to me. When Connor puts his arm around me, I instinctively settle my head onto his chest. His lips find the top of my head.
“There. Now I’m comfortable,” he says softly into my still-damp hair.
“Baby, I’m not Rhys. He and I are very different people.
As long as you’ll let me, I want to be here for you through everything, whether that’s wiping your tears, distracting you while you have blood taken or sitting for hours on that chair.
I almost lost you today, I’m not letting you out of my sight ever again. ”
“What about when I go to the bathroom?” I joke, trying to deflect his attention.
“I’ll be there to hand you the tissue.”
We both lie in silence, listening to each other breathing, my hand resting on his chest while his glides lightly up and down my side.
Just as I feel myself start to drift off to sleep, Connor speaks.
His voice is quiet and uncertain, a voice I’ve never heard Connor use before, and it breaks my heart.
“Tilly, I really think we need to talk about what happened today if you’re feeling up to it?”
“Connor…”
His heart beats a steady rhythm under my hand, while mine jumps erratically. He knows.
“I want to believe that you fell, that this was all an accident, but it doesn’t add up. We can leave the details for when you’ve had some rest, but I have to know because it’s eating me up inside… Was this intentional?”
My chest tightens even more, and I draw in a ragged breath. I can’t lie to Connor; I don’t want to. But I also don’t want to talk about what happened. Reluctantly, I nod my head against his chest, leaving streaks of tears down his T-shirt.
Connor’s arms tighten around me, and he seems to hold his breath. “Is it me?”
I jerk up my head so quickly it spins. “Oh my God, Connor, that’s not it at all!”
Ugly tears fall from the shame of making Connor think I don’t want him. I should have left him a note explaining everything, but there hadn’t been time.
“Please believe that’s not why I did it! You have to believe that!”
Connor makes gentle shushing sounds and cradles my face in his hands, using his thumbs to wipe at my tear-stained cheeks.
“I do, baby, it’s okay,” he assures me. “I just had to check I wasn’t making you unhappy or you thought we were too much too fast. I love you so much, Tilly. Whatever’s happening, we’re going to face it together so you never feel like you have to resort to doing something like this again.”
“I love you.” I tilt my head to look him in the eyes as I say it so he can see how much I mean it. “I don’t deserve you,” I add quietly as I rest my head back onto his chest, exhaustion overwhelming me.
“You deserve to be happy, Tilly. I’m going to make you happy, I promise. Get some sleep now, baby. I’ll be right here when you wake up. We can talk some more then.”
Despite the dread of having that conversation looming over me, I fall into a deep sleep with Connor’s arms wrapped tightly around me.