Freaked the fuck out, I look around, ready to launch myself at her if needed.
“What’s going on?” I demand. “What’s wrong with her?”
The alarms blares but Mia doesn’t look away, her beautiful blue eyes that I thought I’d never see again blinking slowly at me, watching me, seeing me, clinging on to me…
In that moment, everything becomes irrelevant. Nothing else matters as she looks at me, her eyes brimming with so many emotions flashing in their depths that tug at the thing pounding incessantly in my chest.
She looks as beaten up as I am, and I hate that.
I can face anything, I can walk through hell and be tortured there, but she shouldn’t have been in that hell in the first place!
That fucker, guilt has gutted me every which way these past two weeks which really feels like a forever, but I made it a point to hold on to the anger.
I let it consume me, letting the flames scorch me then spit me out every hour I’ve been forced to stay away from her.
They refused to give me updates on how she was doing. I was fucking losing my mind.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to be in here with her. All I knew was if Nathan wanted to say shit about me, I wanted it to be face-to-face with that jerk, but he changed the game when he made the cops bring us in here, close to Mia.
Now here she is, awake, frightened and looking at me with something close to panic and fear in her eyes, and I’m an asshole for not looking away especially with the guilt churning in me.
But the truth is, bitter anger is better than guilt, but even guilt isn’t enough to give her up.
I can’t give her up just as much as I can’t stop looking at her now, desperate to be near her, to talk to her and hear her sweet, beautiful voice that cursed me out the day we met.
As we stare at each other, there’s so much there.
I want to know that she’s fine for myself without having to hear the beeping of machines in a room full of fucking people who are hell bent on keeping us apart.
But hey, she’s alive! She’s still here and my God, that’s all that matters at the moment.
She closes her eyes and when those beautiful blue orbs open again, it’s like a wall just slammed down hard between us. I almost reel back.
“What’s happening?” Nicky demands.
Nurses rush in, and immediately go to Mia’s bed, checking the monitors.
I make to get up from this damned wheelchair and go to her. I want her in my arms with a desperation I can’t explain but a strong hand clamps down on my shoulder, forcing me back down into the chair.
“Stay down, son,” Dad murmurs above me. “Now is not the time.”
I shake his hand off, staring at Mia like there’s no tomorrow. I’m fucking anxious to know what that sound is but for a moment, there’s just a flurry of activity and no answers.
Mia doesn’t bother looking at me again.
The tension is palpable in the room, made increasingly worse by the fact that everyone seems to be standing on pins and fucking needles. I’m hardly breathing.
Just then, the doctor who’s also been tending to me walks in as well. He stops short when he sees the full room, frowns disapprovingly, then walks over to Mia.
“Doctor, what’s going on?” Nicky asks, her eyes wide as she looks at him, then down at Mia. “Is everything all right?”
“Well, let’s see, shall we?” he murmurs. He glances in my direction, then he turns to look at Mia with a small, sympathy smile on his fucking face that I want to break in for wasting fucking time! “Hello Mia. Welcome back to the land of the living.”
Frightened, Mia blinks slowly up at him, then she looks at Nicky, then back at the doctor.
“What… what’s that sound?” she croaks, her voice hoarse. I almost sigh in relief.
I hadn’t realized how fucking anxious I was, hanging by a fucking thin thread with waiting to hear her sweet voice as much as I was dying to see her.
Her voice is sweet like her lips and the way she tastes when I make her come with my tongue…
The thing in my chest beats out of control.
“That’s the EKG monitor,” the doctor says. “It seems your heart is beating really fast at the moment.”
Mia glances quickly at me so fast, if I wasn’t staring at her like a starved man, I would’ve missed it because in the same breath—as if she’s been electrocuted—she looks away.
I want to smile at that coy look, but the situation is shitty.
“My heart?” she croaks.
“Yes, Mia. I’m sure it doesn’t help waking up to a room full of people who want something from you.”
I watch her intently as she shifts in the bed almost restlessly.
The alarm is cut off, the nurses fussing over her step back and leave the room, but Mia is still looking in my direction but not at me.
I hate that.
Look at me, baby, please. Just one more time.
But she doesn’t.
Instead, she looks around the room with wide eyes, passing over each face, not saying a word.
For the first time since ever, I can’t read her.
I don’t know what’s going through her beautiful, brilliant mind that’s been through so much recently, but I want her to say something else.
I want her to say my name.
And I don’t give a damn how selfish that is.
“Mia?” Nicky says softly, tears running down her face as she steps closer to the bed. “Hey baby, hey.”
Mia blinks at her slowly, then she looks at the doctor.
“It’s okay, Mia,” the doctor says. “You’re safe.”
Still, she doesn’t utter a word. Instead, confusion floods into her eyes. “What...?”
“Mia?” Nicky whispers, alarm in her voice.
“Aunt Nicky? What’s going on?” Mia croaks, obviously confused.
Just like that, everything goes incredibly still in the room.
The thing in my chest stops.
My breath stutters to a pause and a heavy silence falls over the room.
I see the bandages wrapped around her head. Her face is not as swollen as it was before, but the nasty bruises are now a sickly yellow. It makes my rage spike all over again.
From the corner of my eye, I see Nathan’s fucking smirk fade from his fucking face.
A growl works its way from the pit of my stomach but before it can go anywhere, Dad clamps a hand on my right shoulder again in silent warning, but fuck that.
“You sonofa—” I start but dad stops me before I say something I won’t be able to take back.
“Easy,” he says under his breath for my ears only. When I glance up at him, he’s watching his asshole stepbrother too. “Now is not the time.”
Nathan looks at us, then in an act of obvious calculation, he scrunches up his ugly mug in our direction. “What are they doing in here?”
The fucking audacity of this jerk! He’s the one who thought accusing me of shit in front of a comatose Mia would work in his fucking favor but now, things might have just flipped for the fucker.
“Mr. Montague—” one of the detectives starts, but he cuts them off.
“Get them out detectives! They’re affecting my daughter.”
“Oh, shut up, Nathan! You’re the one who shouldn’t be here,” Dad says calmly, but I can hear the barely restrained rage laced in his words.