But I’m not just going to lie here and let her vanish. Not again.
I rip the IV from my arm. The machine shrieks in protest, a high-pitched alarm that echoes off the sterile walls. Blood beads at the site, but I don’t care. I swing my legs over the side of the bed, the floor cold beneath my feet as I force myself upright.
The room tilts violently. My balance is shot, and the loss of depth from my ruined eye makes everything feel like I’m swimming. I stagger, catching myself on the edge of a chair, then the wall, dragging my body toward the bathroom like a man crawling out of a grave.
Talia doesn’t try to stop me. She knows better.
I slam into the bathroom door, shoulder first, fumbling for the handle. My breath is ragged, my limbs trembling, but I make it inside. I brace myself on the sink, gripping the porcelain like it’s the only thing anchoring me to the world.
And then I look up.
The face staring back at me is barely mine.
A jagged gash cuts across my forehead, slicing through my eyebrow and trailing down into my cheek—angry, swollen, stitched. The skin around it is bruised and raw, a roadmap of failure.
But it’s my eye that stops me cold.
The left one—once dark and alive—is now ghosted over. A milky white cloud has swallowed my iris, leaving it pale and sightless. It looks dead. Like something that doesn’t belong in a living face.
I look like a ghost.
Like someone who’s already lost.
“Mr. Reed!”
The bathroom door bursts open, and a nurse stumbles in wide-eyed, breath catching in her throat. She looks equal partsflustered and horrified, like she’s just walked in on a crime scene.
“You can’t be out of bed! Where’s your IV?”
She rushes to the machines, hands fluttering uselessly as alarms wail around us. Tubes dangle, blood drips, and she’s trying to piece it all back together like she can rewind the damage.
But I’m not going back.
Not to that bed.
Not to waiting.
Not to helplessness.
“There’s only one thing I’m doing,” I growl, steadying myself against the sink. “And it’s not sitting in this fucking room.” I’m going to get my girl back.
She opens her mouth to protest, but I’m already moving—limping, bleeding, half-blind and burning with purpose.
Because I might be broken.
But I’m not done.
They can’t keep me here.
And they sure as hell won’t.
“Talia,” I rasp, already stripping off the hospital gown, my skin prickling in the cold. I gesture toward the corner of the room, where my bag sits slouched against the wall. It takes me a second to find it—my depth perception is shot, and my finger lands wide of the mark.
The brown leather duffle blurs in and out of focus. No matter how many times I blink, the milky haze in my left eye refuses to clear. It’s like trying to see through thick smoke.
Talia’s already moving, grabbing the bag and helping me into something that resembles normal clothes—jeans, shirt, jacket.
Christ, it feels like I’ve been hit by a bus. All of my muscles ache and protest as I tug on the clothes. And though her hands are steady, her eyes are tight with worry.
