Matt’s girl – Olivia? Octavia? I’m pretty sure it’s Octavia –gets up and smiles. It’s a sweet smile, and I can see why Matt fell in love with it. “She’s right outside. Shall I tell her to come in?”
Does it snow at Christmas? “Hell yeah.”
Since when does she need permission? Alarm bells are going off in the back of my skull and I close my eyes, fighting dizziness.
Ow, dammit.
Low voices penetrate the haze of my thoughts, and I realize I’ve squeezed my eyes shut. I open them slowly, cautiously, making a mental note to ask the nurse what she has flowing into my veins – and maybe up the dosage.
Then it hits me that one of the voices belongs to Hailey and I blink, sitting upright, reaching for her.
“You came.”
And she’s standing right there, in front of me, more beautiful than ever, and yet… different.
Since when is her hair so long it touches her shoulders? She looks… thinner, somehow. And sad.
Still the most gorgeous girl in the world.
“Hi Kaden,” she says, waving with a wiggle of her fingers and shooting me a tiny, unsure smile. “How are you?”
Oh fuck yeah, something’s definitely wrong.
But what?
Chapter Eight
Hailey
I can’t believe I’m standing here, in front of Kaden.
Can’t believe I’m seeing his face again. Even banged up as he is, he makes my heart race and my palms sweat.
He makes my blood sing and my mouth smile.
How does he do it? All he has to do is look at me with that light in his eyes. For a while, he made me feel like the most important person in the world. More than my parents ever did. More than anyone ever has.
And when I lost him, I thought I was going to die from sorrow.
He’s looking at me like that now. Like I’m the only light in the room. Like he’s drinking me in and can’t stop, like he can’t see anyone and anything else but me.
Oh yeah, this is much harder than I thought it would be. And I have only just arrived.
“Hay,” he says, his rough voice caressing my pet name. “Come here.”
I approach the bed as if in a dream, my purse slipping off my shoulder and falling to the floor with a soft thud. His head is wrapped with white gauze, a big pad pressed to one side, over his ear. His blond hair is falling in greasy strands around his face, and his beard has grown longer, but it’s him, and I can’t even…
When he opens his arms, I just fall in them, forgetting for a second that he’s hurt in my need to wrap myself around him.
God, I missed this. Missed him. His skin is cold from the hospital air-conditioning, but his heart beats steadily under my ear, and under the stench of drugs, he smells of Kaden: the scent of warm, sexy man with a hint of leather and engine oil.
“Kade,” I mumble against his chest, and his strong arms are wrapped so hard around me my bones are creaking. “God.”
I can’t find the words. It hits me how close he came to dying, and I want to bawl like a baby.
Apparently I’m not over him.
Yeah, not that much of a newsflash, I know. This guy has a habit of tearing down all my self-imposed subterfuges and illusions, laying me naked.