Blowing out a relieved breath, Griff turns to Sal, who’s now standing. A smile lights up her face.
“Hell, you were right,” he says.
Before she can say a word, Griff pulls Sal into a bone-crushing hug and lifts her up off her feet. “Shit,” he laughs when he breaks their hug and eases her down. “I’m gonna name our babies after you.”
She laughs in response, the color on her cheeks darkening.
Next, Griff extends a grateful hand to Luke. “I owe you, man. Many bottles of whiskey.”
Luke shakes his hand. “Look me up when you get back to Nashville.” He gives Griff a knowing look. “And if you wanna stay sane, don’t read the papers tomorrow.”
Sal squeezes Griff’s arm. “Give Alabama our best.” After a long last look at him, she takes Luke’s hand. “We’re here if you need anything.”
Griff watches them disappear down the hall before he turns and makes his way to Alabama’s hospital room. For a long second, he stands there, steeling himself to go in, and then finally, he opens the door.
He nearly goes down to his knees.
Alabama—his strong, independent Alabama—looks more fragile than he’s ever seen her. Hooked up to a myriad of beeping machines, an IV drips into her arm. She’s asleep, her long red hair fanned across the pillow. Her dark, delicate lashes resting against her pale cheeks. Her chest, the slow rise and fall of it, is better than any sight Griff’s ever seen. Every breath she takes means he takes one as well.
But her arm.
As Griff creeps closer, he winces at the painful sight. Alabama’s left shoulder is wrapped in layers and layers of tight, white bandages. It rests in a sling and lies limp and immobilized and across her chest.
The image slices through his brain like a scalpel, churning his gut and turning the blood in his veins to antifreeze.
It’s too close. Too close to Clover. Too close to that girl lying in that hospital bed, battered and bruised, Griff going to see her, to tell her he loved her, that he was sorry for the accident, and knowing in a few short months, he’d be leaving.
He’d leave her like a fucking coward, and he wouldn’t look back.
She could’ve died. She could’ve died and it would have been his fault. Again.
The words echo into his heart and twist his soul in two.
And then Griff collapses to his knees. Soft, silent tears obscure his vision. But he lets them fall. He won’t wipe them away and he won’t stop himself.
He deserves this.
He hasn’t cried since he left Clover—not even when his own mother died—hasn’t cried since that night on the Ridge where he and Alabama hung upside down in that battered Jeep and he knew beyond any doubt that she was hurt.
That he had hurt her.
And now he’s here again. Alabama unconscious in a hospital bed, and all he can think is that he did this to her. He got her hurt, again, because of the shitty person he is, because of his goddamn selfish past.
Kneeling beside the bed, Griff gathers Alabama’s slack hand in his. He leans forward, pressing his lips to her fingers, to the pulse in her wrist. He’s never felt anything more precious. He’s got to tell her. He can’t waste another moment.
He almost lost his second chance before he had it.
The painful truth has a shuddering sob rocketing out of him, but he makes himself say the words, what he’s felt for damn near his entire life.
“I love you,” he says in a barely audible whisper. He closes his eyes and buries his face against her knuckles. “I love you so goddamn much, Alabama.”
Alabama’s eyes open. She squints in the dim sunlight, scouring her surroundings. There are cords curled around her hand, the beep and whir of machines, vases of colorful flowers, and at the end of the bed, the strangest sight she’s ever encountered.
Griff Greyson.
He’s slumped facedown on her lap, the lower half of his body in a metal chair beside her bed. One arm tucked beneath his chest, the other outstretched above his head, clasping her hand in his.
A faint smile tugs at her mouth. If the Star could see their tough outlaw now ...