He had just gotten out of his car, his eyes instantly connecting with Honey’s, and the couple stared at each other as he walked up the sidewalk.
“That’s love,” Valentine whispered when he was still several feet away.
“What is?” she asked her friend.
“The way that man looks at you.”
TWENTY-FIVE
BILLIE
THE NURSE only had the door open a crack when I saw Jared. He was standing in the hallway outside the X-ray room that I had been wheeled into a few minutes ago. Before I had been taken in there, he’d been with me in the ambulance when I was driven to the hospital and right next to me when I was examined by the doctor.
I didn’t know if I’d asked him to stay or if he’d told me he would, but he hadn’t left my side, and something about that felt right.
“Billie,” he said as he walked closer, looking down at me in the wheelchair.
Blood covered his ripped shirt. Mud was everywhere else.
I glanced at my clothes and saw the same colors.
“Can I have a minute alone with her?” he asked the nurse behind me.
“The doctor is waiting to go over her X-rays—”
“I just need a second,” he said.
“Be quick,” she replied.
I watched her disappear into the chaos, and then my eyes slowly returned to Jared.
Everything was moving, except for us.
The hospital was like Times Square. People were everywhere. I couldn’t keep up with it all—not the scents or the sounds or the colors. The bright lights that just kept getting brighter.
And the loudness that kept getting louder.
My ears were screaming.
I just wanted everyone to whisper.
I wanted them to stop going, going, going.
“Billie …” Jared said again.
My stare was already on him. I just refocused. Zoomed in.
Blinked hard.
“Hi.” The word hurt when it came out. I didn’t know why, but it felt like my tongue weighed a hundred pounds.
He knelt down in front of the wheelchair, and all I saw were his eyes.
Brown. Like fudge.
Something I couldn’t even remember the taste of at this point.
“You’re going to be all right.”
I’d been waiting so long to hear him say that.
Now, it almost didn’t seem real.
Or possible.
“Jared, this is all”—there were tears in my eyes; I didn’t know when they had started or what exact moment had triggered them or why they wouldn’t stop falling—“so much.”
“Billie, listen to me.”
Something tightened. I wasn’t sure where it had come from, but I felt the squeeze.
“You’re going to be all right.”
He repeated it as though he knew it was what I needed to hear.
And it was.
And I said it in my head over and over.
And I tried to make myself believe it.
“What about you?” I asked. “Are you going to be all right?”
I’d been looking at his face this whole time and not seen the blood. But now, red was the only thing in my vision, and it was smeared through the whiskers of his beard, fresh and dripping onto his collar.
“Have you been looked at? Do you need stitches?”
It occurred to me that I’d been the one treated in the ambulance and wheeled into the hospital and taken for X-rays. But what about Jared? Had he left my side long enough to get checked out by a doctor?
“I have to go, Billie.”
A burst moved through my chest like we’d just dropped out of the air again. “No. You can’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shook my head, not believing he would leave at a time like this.
He’d been here for all of it. I didn’t know what it would feel like without him.
“Please don’t go. I need you here.”
My gaze fell to my lap where I saw more red.
I was cut.
Bruised.
I hurt everywhere.
They were sure I had several broken ribs and a possible concussion.
That was just the start of the list.
But I was here, and so much of that had to do with Jared.
Somehow, I had to thank him. I had to lift my arms and reach forward and hug the man who had saved me.
Except I didn’t get the chance.
As he looked at me, his fingers brushed across my foot, and he pushed himself up, getting to his feet. “Take care of yourself, Billie.”