A bitter laugh sounded in my throat as Aurora’s panic that afternoon finally made sense.
Dad let out a slow, disappointed sigh and dropped his head to stare at the floor.
“I heard what you said yesterday about Declan and Madeline, Mom, and I let it go then because she begged me to and because I didn’t know it was this bad. But this?” Exhaustion and disappointment dripped from every word when I said, “I’ve watched her destroy herself in the small time I’ve been home because of you, and I’m done. I’m so fucking done.” I turned to leave, but just before I walked out of the room, I warned Mom, “Don’t go near her again.”
20
Present Day
Aurora
The look on Jentry’s face when he walked back into Declan’s hospital room a few minutes later made me wish that this night could have gone a dozen other ways, just so long as he would have never had to see that side of Linda.
He shut the door roughly behind him, and groaned as he ran his hands over his head and down his face. I watched as frustration and tension poured from him from where I sat next to Declan, but didn’t say anything, just tried to give him his space in the small room.
He stood facing away from me with his fingers laced together on top of his head. His body vibrated subtly despite the way he was methodically breathing, trying to calm himself.
After a couple of minutes, he spoke low, but didn’t turn around. “You said everyone eats in here during family dinners?”
“Yes,” I said warily.
“Then I should go. I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to be in a room with my mom right now.”
I sighed dejectedly. “Jentry, I don’t want this for you. It’s something that Linda and I will have to talk out one day, but I don’t want it to affect your relationship.”
His head shook as he turned to look at me. “Just trust me when I say it wouldn’t be good for us to be in the same room right now. Not after what I just said to her.”
I opened my mouth, ready to tell him that she would probably get over what he had said, but then a sinking feeling hit me. My face fell and I inhaled audibly.
There was no fresh wave of that intoxicating scent I loved but had come to hate.
“Jentry, no . . .” I trailed off, my voice barely above a breath.
My eyes lingered on the angry set of his face, and the way his body twitched with his aggravation, worse now than when he’d walked in. I had thought when he’d left that he was going to smoke and had only just remembered that he’d thrown away his cigarettes that morning.
“Jentry, what’d you do?” I asked, my voice just as soft.
His head tilted to the side, as if he was preparing for me—or maybe daring me—to get upset by what he was about to say. “She had to know that what she was doing wasn’t okay.”
“No . . . Jentry, no. I told you that it was between her and me!”
“Aurora, I can’t know about this and not say anything!” He swung his arm out toward the door as he said, sneering, “I walked into that room and she acted like nothing had just happened. To me, she acted like that to me. Which tells me that she had no intention of stopping any of that bullshit because she didn’t feel bad for it. I don’t know if what I said will even make a difference, but she needed to know that people are aware of what she is doing.”
“But they were never supposed to be!” I said, my voice louder than I intended for it to be.
“I get it, Aurora, I swear to God I do. This needs to end with the two of you—and I’ll gladly let it,” he said, closing the distance between us as he spoke. “But whether or not you wanted other people to be pulled in, Mom’s been pulling people in by letting them be around when she’s said things to you, and for whatever reason, they’ve let it go on, too.”
I knew he was right. I knew I needed to be thankful that he had stood up to Linda for me when no one else had. But I never would have wanted this. I never would have wanted Jentry to stand up to his mom, of all people.
His voice dropped and his dark eyes stared into mine. “Aurora, I love you. You can’t expect me to see you hurt and not do something about it. You hurt, I hurt.”
A warm shiver danced up my spine at his words, and without thinking, I reached out for him.
At the last second before my hand could touch Jentry’s, his eyes flickered behind me and widened, his body stilled. When he spoke, his tone was a mixture of disbelief and shock. “Dec?”
I whirled around in my chair to find bloodshot green eyes staring at us in confusion. “Declan?” My tone matched Jentry’s, and then melted into a whispered cry. “Dec!” I reached for his hand as tears began falling down my face, and I choked out a cry when his fingers slowly curled around mine. “Dec, you’re in the hospital, but everything’s fine. You’re going to be fine.” My words were muffled by my sobs, but my words couldn’t have been truer. For the first time, I knew he was going to be fine.
“No, no! Don’t!” I pled when he reached for his breathing tube, his confusion bleeding into panic. “Just leave it.”
Jentry was already rushing out of the room, and I vaguely heard him yelling something before his voice trailed away. Seconds later, two nurses came hurrying in and talking quickly, and I was being pulled away from Declan and pushed out of the room by one of them.
“Wait, I need to be in there!”
“We’ll inform you when you can come back in, sweetie,” the woman said sternly. “You know how this goes; please wait in the waiting area.”
I stood there in shock for an unknown amount of time as I tried to figure out what to do. In that time, a doctor walked calmly into Declan’s room, and I heard the three people talking loudly. To Declan or each other, I wasn’t sure. All I could focus on was the fact that Declan had woken up.
I finally turned and began walking down the hall in the direction of the waiting area, and halfway there, heard a bunch of people talking frantically, and numerous hard, quick steps. I turned another corner and saw Jentry and the Veils nearly running toward me.
Their voices rose when they saw me, and Jentry broke away from them to get to me first.
“What happened? Why are you out here?” he asked quickly, and reached for me.
The way his long hands wrapped tenderly around my arms seemed to ground me enough to remember how to speak or discern time, but the excitement that hung in the hallway made it so that neither Jentry nor I realized that we shouldn’t be standing so close. That he shouldn’t be holding me.
“I don’t know. Nurses came in and told me I had to leave. A doctor went in. They said we had to stay in the waiting room until they came and got us.”
“Did something go wrong?” someone asked urgently in the Veil group.
My head shook quickly. “No, no. They just came in.”
“I told them his eyes were open,” Jentry added just as fast.
“His eyes followed you,” I said, and looked back up at Jentry. “His eyes followed you. And then they were watching me. He curled his hand around mine. He’s really awake. He’s awake.”
Jentry crushed me in an embrace that felt as though it should have lasted for the rest of time.
But eventually it ended, as all things do. As more things would. Because Declan being awake meant more than just finally having him back. It meant we would have to relive that night. It meant that whenever Declan decided to announce it, the rest of the family would know about my past with Jentry. Would know that I had turned down Declan’s proposal and had planned to leave him. Would know that I was in love with someone else entirely, but someone just as close to the rest of them.
And as we all waited anxiously for the chance to see Declan again, I knew Jentry had realized the same thing. His eyes kept flashing over to mine, worry set deep there, and anxiety radiating from his body.
When we were finally allowed back to see Declan, Jentry kept himself close enough to me that if he reached out, he’d be able to touch me, but far enough away that when Declan saw us aga
in, it wouldn’t look like we were together.
The doctor was explaining things to the family, but I wasn’t hearing him. I was watching Declan watch me with a blank expression. For a while, I wondered if he didn’t know who I was at all, but after a few minutes of staring at me, he turned his hand over, palm up.
I stepped closer and slid my hand into his, and marveled again when his fingers immediately curled around mine.
“Hey, Dec,” I said softly. “Glad you found your way back.”
He didn’t speak—I wasn’t sure if he even could—just continued to watch me blankly.
His family spoke to him around us, but he never looked away from me or acknowledged in any way that there was anyone else there.
I looked uneasily up at Jentry, and his dark eyes glanced over to me for a second before darting back to Declan.
I followed his line of sight when Dec tapped on my finger, and smiled down at him. “What is it, Dec?”
His face pinched in pain as he worked his throat a few times, and I heard his mom and sisters gasp in surprise when he spoke. “Ring.”
My eyes widened and mouth fell open in amazement at hearing his voice. “What?”
“Where’s your ring?” he croaked.
I glanced down to look at the finger he’d been tapping on, and his question finally made sense. Sort of. I stared at the third finger of my left hand for long seconds, and looked at Jentry again to see him watching us in confusion and horror as he caught on to what Declan was asking, and what he thought.
“We’re engaged,” Declan said roughly, slowly. “Aren’t we?”
21
Present Day
Aurora
My stomach fell and the air in my lungs forced out with a rush, the rest of the family went silent and still. I stared at Declan’s green eyes, knowing my expression must have matched Jentry’s in that moment. I had to have looked horrified.
What was I supposed to say to him when he had just woken up from being in a coma for more than three weeks? How was I supposed to tell him that we weren’t engaged when he obviously, clearly remembered asking me, and he had just woken up?
I don’t know how much time passed after his question, but I was thankfully saved from answering at that moment when a nurse came in.
“I know this is a very exciting time, but there are some things we need to do. I can allow one or two of you to stay for a while, but not all of you.”
Even if Linda hadn’t spoken up in that moment, I knew she and Kurt would have been the ones to stay. This was their son.
“I’ll be back,” I promised Declan, and slowly slid my hand from his. Running my hand over his forehead, I whispered, “I’m so happy you came back.”
I kept my eyes on the floor and managed to keep the horrified cry from escaping my chest until I was out of his room and around the corner.
Jentry was there, as he always was. He wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me close against him when my knees weakened and it got too hard to stay standing.
“Don’t,” I protested weakly when he turned me around and his free hand slid up to cradle my face. Someone could walk around the corner at any second, and then—of all times—wasn’t the time to have to explain about us. But any objection I might have had fled my mind when I looked up.
His face was etched with pain and the confusion I felt, but he still pulled me against his hard body. His hands were holding me like I was breakable, but he was clenching his jaw like it was taking all his strength to refrain from making me his again.
Hard and soft, I thought, then let myself get lost in his eyes. Those dark eyes seemed to look straight into my soul.
“What was I supposed to say?” The words tumbled from my lips before I could stop them, but from the slight shift in Jentry’s expression, I knew he’d been expecting them, and didn’t have an answer for me, either.
“We’re going to get through this,” he said so softly that I wasn’t sure if I just thought I could hear his voice. “Let’s just focus on the fact that he’s awake; we’ll figure out everything later.”
I wanted to. I wanted to go back to how it had been during the hours we’d waited to see Declan again after he’d first woken. The excitement that had been thrumming through the waiting room had been palpable, making the nervousness coming from Jentry and me get lost as it wove its way between the two of us.
I wanted that excitement back. I wanted to fall to the floor and thank God for helping Declan find his way home.
But the only thing running through my head now was that we had so much more to worry about than Declan publicizing my past with Jentry. Telling Declan about Jentry had been hard enough the first time; I couldn’t imagine doing it again. And this time, it would be done while Declan thought we were engaged.
“He thinks we’re engaged,” I mumbled needlessly.
Jentry’s face pinched slightly, but smoothed out as he brushed his thumb over my cheek. “Yeah. That’s something we’ll have to figure out.” He exhaled through his nose slowly, then asked, “After everything that’s happened in the past few weeks, have you changed your mind?”
My face fell and chest constricted. “What? I don’t . . . what?”
“Losing someone—or almost losing them—can make you realize what they mean to you.”
“Jentry . . .”
“If that’s how you’ve felt with Declan, if you’ve regretted not saying yes to him, then this might be good for you.”
Seconds slipped by while I stared at him in shock. “Are you honestly asking me this right now? Are you really standing here trying to figure out if I want to be with him?” I gently pushed away from Jentry and backed up a couple of steps until I was pressed against the hallway wall.
His brow furrowed in frustration as he watched me, but I knew it was frustration with himself. He rubbed at his jaw in the way he did when he was wasting a few seconds in order to calm down, then said gruffly, “You can’t fault me for asking. I know you loved him—I know you still do. I can see it, and it wasn’t like I expected you to stop. You were the one who was here for him the most, and I know it wasn’t out of guilt or obligation.”
“And so in your mind that all translates to me thinking I made a mistake?” I asked.
“No, but I have to give you that chance. You struggled to choose between us once because you were with him, and now things have changed. The last thing I want is for you to feel stuck between Declan and me again because of me.”
“You are so stupid, Jentry Michaels,” I whispered slowly. “Do you have any idea how much—” I abruptly stopped when Lara rounded the corner.
“There you two are,” she said. “The nurse said that they weren’t going to allow visitors for the rest of the night so Declan could try to rest once Mom and Dad leave the room. We already packed up all of the food and we’ll drop it off at Mom’s on our way home unless you want to take it back to your apartment.”
I glanced at Jentry for guidance, and watched as he shook his head.
“We’re fine without it. Do you know what they’re doing in there?” he asked, and nodded in the direction of Declan’s room.
Lara shrugged, but smiled with relief. “No. They said there would be someone here working with him starting tomorrow to make sure he remembers everything, even how to eat. It’ll be a process, but at least he’s awake now.”
We both murmured our agreements as she hugged us goodbye. Once she rounded the corner, I spoke before Jentry could. “We should go home.”
The hospital wasn’t the place to continue talking, and now that the majority of the stress and worries from the past weeks was gone, I was exhausted and wanted to try to relax before my first day of school the next day.
Jentry didn’t respond other than turning to leave when I did, and remained quiet all the way through the parking lot.
We came up on my car where I had parked it early that morning, and I wondered at how everything that had happened that day had been forced into just one day. It fe
lt like it had been days since I’d sat on the trunk reading, not hours.
Jentry held my door open as I slid into my car, and studied me with the same expression he’d worn when watching Declan after he’d woken.
I reached out to press my hand to his chest and whispered, “Whatever you’re thinking, stop.”
His mouth twitched up into a brief smile as his eyes searched mine. “Be safe. I’ll see you soon.”
I watched him walk toward his car before I pulled out of the parking space and heading to the apartment, but Jentry wasn’t there when I arrived.
I changed into sleep shorts and a tank top and fixed my hair back into another mess of blond waves on top of my head, but there was no way for me to relax. I’d expected Jentry to be there, and after our short and confusing conversation in the hallway of the hospital, I was worried about why he wasn’t. A half an hour after I had gotten home he still wasn’t back.
I paced nervously through the living room as I tried to hold off calling him, and had almost given in when I heard a key in the lock.
I rushed to open the door before Jentry could, and was already reprimanding him before it was fully opened. “Just this morning you nearly lost your mind because I wasn’t where you—” I cut off quickly when I found Jentry weighed down with bags. When I spoke again, I was calmer. “After what we went through this morning, you didn’t think to let me know that you weren’t coming home?”
Another twitch of his lips for a brief, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, but I brought dinner since we didn’t eat.”
I grabbed the bags of food from his left hand when he shifted his body to hide what was in his right, and turned to go sort out everything in the kitchen.
My body tingled when he entered the kitchen behind me, but unlike so many times before, I allowed myself a quick glance over my shoulder to look at him. “Thank you for the food.”