Chapter 29 David
Chapter Twenty-Nine
David
I wake up like I’ve been thrown through concrete.
Pain.
Blinding white pain.
A sound in my ears that doesn’t belong to music or engines.
Beeping.
Steady.
Clinical.
My throat feels like it’s full of glass.
I blink.
Ceiling tiles.
Fluorescent lights.
The air smells like antiseptic and something metallic.
Hospital. I’m in a hospital.
The memory hits in fragments at first.
Storm.
Warning lights.
The drop.
Impact.
Then my memory rushes in like a tidal wave.
My chest heaves.
There’s something in my mouth. In my throat.
I panic.
I grab at it.
Hands.
Tube. Breathing tube?
I yank.
Someone shouts.
Alarms explode around me.
“Sir! Sir don’t—!”
Too late.
I rip the tube out.
Pain rips down my throat and I choke, coughing violently, gagging on the burn.
I taste blood.
I don’t care.
I try to sit up, and the room spins hard enough to make me see black at the edges.
Hands grab my shoulders.
“Nurse! He’s awake!”
“Sir, stay still!”
Fuck that.
I claw at the wires on my chest.
At the IV in my arm.
I need—my phone.
My Sunshine.
My voice comes out shredded.
“Hil—” I cough, spit. “Hilary—”
A nurse shoves a straw toward my mouth.
“Sip slowly,” she orders, firm but not unkind.
I take a drag of water.
It burns going down.
My throat feels flayed.
I swallow again anyway.
Then I growl through it.
“Get me Hilary! Get my phone.”
The room goes still for half a beat.
A nurse glances at the chart.
“Hilary Sinclair?” she asks.
My heart slams.
I nod.
“Yes.”
My voice sounds so fucking raspy.
“She’s in chairs,” a nurse says to the man I’m assuming is the doctor.
In chairs?
She’s here.
She’s here.
Thank fuck.
Everything inside me surges at once.
She came.
Of course, she came.
“Sorry, sir,” a doctor starts, stepping into view. “You can’t have visitors yet. You have a concussion, two cracked ribs, and we need to evaluate—”
I’m already pushing myself upright.
Pain explodes across my side.
Sharp.
Hot.
Doesn’t matter.
“Sir—”
“I don’t give a shit.”
“It’s relatives only,” the doctor insists.
“She’s my fiancée. If you won’t get her, I will,” I rasp, forcing myself to swing my legs over the side of the bed.
The floor tilts.
The world sways.
Someone grabs my arm.
“Lay back down, please. You lost consciousness. We need imaging. Your oxygen levels were unstable.”
“Get,” I snarl, voice raw and wrecked, “her here. Now.”
There’s something in my tone.
Something that makes even the doctor pause.
One of the nurses hesitates.
“I will. Lay down and I will. She’s been here for hours, you know,” she says quietly.
Hours.
Jesus.
What did she think?
What did they tell her?
Did she think—the thought punches the air from my lungs harder than the crash did.
“I need her,” I grind out.
The doctor sighs sharply.
“Fine. Get her, nurse. And you lie back down or I will sedate you myself.”
I don’t answer.
I’m still trying to stand.
My legs buckle.
Pain lances through my ribs.
Hands catch me again.
“Easy,” someone mutters.
Easy.
Right.
The door opens.
Soft.
And I hear it before I see her.
Her breath.
Shaky.
Uneven.
Then, she speaks—and it is the best kind of music to my ears.
“David?”
Her voice is small.
Rough from disuse.
I turn my head.
Slow.
And there she is.
Pale.
Eyes red.
Hair messy like she’s been running her hands through it for hours.
My Sunshine.
Standing five feet away like she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she steps closer.
Everything in me settles and detonates at the same time.
“Hey,” I try to say.
It comes out wrecked.
Rough. She crosses the room in two seconds flat.
Careful of the wires.
Careful of my side.
But her hands find my face like she has to confirm I’m real.
“You scared me,” she whispers.
She’s so pretty—my linda. So sweet and honest.
I grip her wrist.
Tight.
Like if I let go she’ll vanish.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I rasp.
Her lips tremble.
“You almost did.”
The room fades.
The machines.
The doctors.
Everything.
It’s just her.
And the reality slams into me fully now.
I could have died.
Without telling her.
Without making it permanent.
Without giving her something solid to hold onto.
My thumb drags weakly along her jaw.
“I was flying home,” I say quietly. “To you.”
She shakes her head.
“You idiot. You could’ve waited till the weather passed.”
A tear slips down her cheek.
I catch it with my thumb.
“I never told you,” I force out.
She stills.
The air shifts.
“Never told me what?”
My heart pounds harder than the crash ever made it.
I don’t care about the doctor.
Don’t care about the machines.
Don’t care about the pain in my ribs.
All I care about—is her.
“I love you,” I say, voice cracked and brutal and real.
No music.
No stage.
No audience.
Just truth.
Her breath catches like I hit her.
Like she wasn’t expecting it.
Like she’s been waiting for it.
The monitor next to me starts beeping faster.
Someone mutters something about heart rate.
I don’t care.
“You hear me, Sunshine? I love you. I’m so fucking in love with you.”
Her hands slide into my hair carefully, mindful of the bandage wrapped around my head.
“You better be,” she whispers, tears falling harder now. “Because I love you too.”
And fuck.
That’s it.
That’s the moment.
The storm.
The crash.
The fear.
It all condenses into this single, unbearable clarity—I’m not invincible. I’m not untouchable.
And I almost lost the only thing that actually matters.
I pull her closer. Ignoring the sharp protest in my ribs.
Bury my face in her neck.
Inhale her.
Books and sunshine and her.
Mine.
Not in possession.
In permanence.
The doctor clears his throat.
“Okay. That’s enough.”
I don’t let go.
“It’ll never be enough,” I growl weakly.
Hilary laughs through tears.
And the sound?
Better than any hit single I’ve ever made.