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Callum was mere steps into the building when he regretted the decision to come to the hospital alone. Not that he would have brought Scott with him. And there was no way he was going to put Cecily through this.
No, the hospital had called him. So he was here. Alone.
He probably should have brought Rhia, but that had sounded like more trouble than it was worth at the time, when he’d been beating feet out of the house.
God, he hated hospitals.
With a breath, he shored up his resolve, put on blinders against the various intangible people who were around him, and walked up to the Emergency Room check-in desk. A woman with a badge that read “Triage Nurse” was sitting behind the desk, going over paperwork with a look of professional determination on her face.
She looked up when he drew near.
“I’m Callum Ambrose.” He was surprised by how much effort it took to get the words up this throat. “I got a call that my girlfriend was brought in earlier today, Zander—” he caught himself, “Lysander Greyson.”
The nurse’s professional-kind expression didn’t change, but something in the way she carried herself did, the hurry dissipating by a fraction so it was with deliberateness that she motioned to a set of double doors behind her. “I’ll buzz you in. Go to the nurses’ station down the hall—they’ll take you to her room.”
Callum thanked the nurse and made his way over to the doors she’d nodded at. A moment later, a buzz issued from them, followed by a heavy click. It was a familiar sound—the same as the doors at the hospital where Miriam lived—but this wasn’t a familiar place.
The doors opened onto a short, narrow hallway. The hall was dim, but the nurses’ station at the end was brightly lit. As he made his way down the milk-white hall, a young man stepped from one of the rooms. Callum kept his focus on the pale blue nurses’ station counters, but watched from his peripheral vision as the man walked alongside him.
“Don’t go that way,” the man said. “It’s dark—”
Then he disappeared.
Callum’s general hospital-anxiety recast into something more pointed and specific.
The nurse who’d called hadn’t told him why Zander was here, and he hadn’t thought to ask at the time. But now he had no idea what he was about to walk in to. Maybe she’d been hit by a car. Or mugged. Or...
A nurse looked up as soon as he made it to the counter.
“Can I help you?” Her brown hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, revealing a stripe of blue along the temple.
“Yeah, my girlfriend—” but he was cut off.
“No, I have to go.” It was Zander speaking.
“I think I found her,” he said.
“Bay nine,” the nurse replied. “Right behind you.”
“You don’t understand,” he heard her say as he turned to find the curtain pulled but the sliding door cracked open. “I need to leave.”
“We called your boyfriend, like you asked. He’s on his way—”
“He’ll pick me up out front.”
“We really need to speak with him—”
“No, he can’t come here,” Callum heard her spit. “I won’t make him come here—”
“Zander, calm down—”
“NO, you calm down!”
“This will help you feel better,” the nurse was saying as Callum pushed the curtain aside.
Zander’s hazel eyes locked on his as he stepped into the room. They were laced with wild anger and a thread of panic that cut him in two.
“No, you can’t be here,” she said to him, frantic.
His feet carried him to her, propped up in the hospital bed.
“I’m fine,” he said, reaching for her hand, but she pulled away. “All I’m worried about is you.”
Zander rubbed her hands over her short, dark hair with a heavy, shaking exhale, revealing white, gauze bandages wrapped around her forearms.
Callum’s breath caught in his chest. His focus suddenly broadened to see more than her alone, to include the small, windowless room around them—the white walls, lined with equipment, the IV running into her arm, the blue blanket twisted around her legs and the hospital gown draped over her chest, untied.
And the bandages again. One around each wrist.
Terror narrowed his vision to tunnels as the calculation came together.
She’d slit her wrists.
“You must be Callum.”
Numb, Callum’s gaze landed on a nurse. A few feet away, she looked at him over her shoulder with a pleasant expression that didn’t match the moment as she worked the computer in the corner just behind Zander’s bed.
“Yeah, I’m Callum.” At least that’s what he meant to say. His body felt weightless, his heartbeat so loud in his head he wasn’t sure if he’d really gotten the words out at all.
Zander had cut her wrists.
She’d tried to kill herself.
He looked back at Zander. The circles under her eyes were so dark she looked like she hadn’t slept in days as her lids began to flutter.
“Damn sedatives,” she whispered bitterly.
“Why? What did you do?” he heard himself ask as though he was far away from his body.
Her eyes fluttered open, even while her head lulled back onto the pillows. “I don’t want to hurt you anymore.” Her voice was no louder than a whisper.
“We’ll figure it out.” Thrown back into his body, he pushed the terror down and locked his hand behind her neck as he pressed his forehead against hers. She didn’t need to hurt herself. He could take it. He would endure anything she said to him, anything she did to him until they figured out how to help her.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said through a clenched jaw, eyes burning.
“But I can’t stop...” she trailed off, her eyes falling closed.
⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸
The bedroom was dark, but Callum had been awake in the darkness long enough that he could watch Zander while she slept, making out the steady rise and fall of her shoulders as she lay curled onto her side.
It was late. He ought to get some sleep, but his mind was spinning and it wouldn’t stop.
Plus, they had told him she shouldn’t be left alone. So... if he slept, wouldn’t that be the same as leaving the room?
God, the memory of those bandages, one on each arm, like some sort of cliché from a bad movie, sliced through his chest. Cutting his bones to the marrow every time he thought of them.
She hadn’t been trying to kill herself. She swore to it, and he believed her. And he was grateful for that. Still, the hospital wasn’t so sure about that story, and it had taken hours to get her discharged as a result. Callum had had to sign so much paperwork he thought he probably should have owned the damn hospital by the end of it. First was the trip to the hospital pharmacy to pick up a bottle of sedatives, packages of gauze, and antibiotic ointment. Next had been the visit from the on-call psychiatrist, and the social worker, who had asked Callum as many questions as they’d asked Zander. They’d even spoken to them both separately and Callum had realized, about ten minutes in, that they were trying to make sure he wasn’t the reason she’d cut her wrists. Which had riled him at first, but when he’d stopped and thought about it, he was glad they were making sure she was safe. They’d seemed to realize fairly quickly that this wasn’t a domestic violence situation.
Nope, just your run-of-the-mill mental illness. At least as far as the doctors were concerned. Not like they were going to diagnose her with anything related to the supernatural.
Hell, he wasn’t even sure this was anything supernatural.
Finally, with Zander lucid and dressed, they’d left the hospital and it had taken more effort than Callum wished to examine to clamp down on the emotion roiling in his gut while they did it. Fear that he wouldn’t be able to handle this; anxiety over telling Cecily and Scott; uncertainty about what to do next, if he should call Zander’s mom; overwhelming sadness that he couldn’t simply ask Zander and know that he could trust her answer.
Cecily had seen the bandages almost the moment they walked into the house and while she hadn’t said a damn thing, the look on her face was glued to the backs of Callum’s eyelids—another scar of the day.
All of that sucked. But it wasn’t the reason he couldn’t sleep, wasn’t the reason staying up through the night to watch Zander sleep was no BFD.
No, he couldn’t have slept if he’d wanted to.
Because it was him, wasn’t it?
Nobody was this unlucky, to have first a mother and then a girlfriend end up with psychotic breaks.
Zander hadn’t had a psychotic break, he reminded himself, hearing the psychiatrist at the hospital in his memory.
Still, it was close enough. Maybe this was just the precursor.
He could remember his mom acting strangely, especially as he got older, right before they’d been separated and he’d gone into foster care. He could remember her mood swings, the comments she would make sometimes that were out of the blue and brutal: that she would kill herself if she didn’t have him to take care of. That there was nobody in the world he should trust—not even her. He could remember listening to her cry in the front seat of the car while she thought he was sleeping in the back. He could remember conversations she had with herself—and ones she had with the people he, at that time, was just beginning to understand other people couldn’t see.
It had all been so normal to him. It had taken years to figure out that his early childhood hadn’t been right. And as he’d done so, he’d always assumed some outside force had been the catalyst behind his mother’s oddity. That she had been intruded upon too often, or perhaps that her mental illness wasn’t the result of the supernatural at all. That maybe her life before him had been very hard. It must have been, he’d always told himself. After all, he didn’t know who his father was, and she’d never spoken about him. So either she didn’t know, or she knew he wasn’t worth mentioning. In either case, it was easy to draw the conclusion that life up until his arrival had not been about roses and romance.
Sitting up in bed, propped against his pillows with his arms crossed, he looked to Zander, still sleeping beside him.
What had made him think, when they’d met, that he had any business launching into a long term, committed relationship?
He didn’t even know what that was supposed to look like...
But he did, didn’t he? At least he thought he did.
Because as much as he could remember the time that his mother hadn’t been okay, he could remember a time when she had been. When she had been happy and had loved him. And he could model, not the romantic part of his relationship with Zander, but the loving, supporting side on that foundation his mom had built, couldn’t he? The rest he could fill in with what he’d always wished he had. He could be what she needed because, if nothing else, his early life had taught him how to be what other people wanted him to be. For better and for worse.
But with Zander, it was better. He knew what she needed, and he could provide it. And in return, she did the same.
And they were so fucking happy.
What if this was the beginning of the end?
Callum had pushed the thought away, earlier. But now, with the house quiet and nothing to distract him, it was too loud to dismiss.
What if that happiness he and Zander had shared was as fleeting as the happy time he’d had with Miriam? What if something about him was what took that happiness and warped it?
What if the reason Zander thought she couldn’t stop hurting him was really because of him all along?
⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸
“You okay?”
Cecily looked up from where she was sitting on the edge of the sofa, staring into space, to see Scott standing in front of her. His short, dark hair was messy like he’d been running his hands through it, but his eyes were bright and full of concern.
“Yeah,” she said automatically before revising herself. “No. I don’t know.”
Scott’s soft sigh of a chuckle was gentle and laced with understanding. “Yeah, I’m with you.”
He sat down beside her, so close she could feel the warmth of his arm against hers. Without thought, she leaned her weight into him and let her head fall to the side to rest against his shoulder. A breath later, she smiled when she felt the weight of his cheek against her hair, but even that didn’t stop her mind from spinning on everything that had happened today.
Zander had always been the strong one—the one above the fray. Even when their parents’ relationship had been dissolving, and everything had been up in the air, and nothing felt like it would ever be normal again, Zander had been solid. She’d been unwavering in her calm-collected exterior, almost aloof in her detachment.
The only thing she’d done in response to the whole thing was cut off all her hair. And it looked kick-ass, so even that had been a well-thought-out reaction.
So what the hell was going on in Zander’s head now to make her act the way she had? To make her hurt herself?
Cecily had to say something about it or she’d keep living it all over and over in her mind, a fast-forward slideshow of horror: “I don’t think I’ll ever get the image of those bandages on Zander’s wrists out of my head.”
He nodded without lifting his head. “I don’t think I’ll ever get the look on your face when you saw them out of mine.”
“That bad, huh?”
“That bad.”
She hadn’t been aware of making a face—only of the sinking sensation in the middle of her chest, and a rising terror in her stomach.
She and Scott had spent the hours Callum had been gone working on the house, not saying a whole lot of anything. They’d listened to music too loudly while they packed, exchanging comments back and forth about a song, or to solicit or provide suggestions for the next. It had been light, a good distraction. Nice. And productive. They’d gotten a lot done—though there was still a lot to do. She was just too exhausted to keep going tonight.
“Can I sleep with you again?”
She was relieved to feel Scott’s nod. Smooth and unhurried, he laced his fingers through hers and a warm, meandering kind of electricity ran under her skin, lighting a slow-burn fire as it went.
“Absolutely.” Something in the way the side of his face moved against the top of her head made her think he was smiling.
“Do you think they’re asleep yet?” Cecily asked, her voice low and private.
“Asleep enough.”
Cecily smiled to herself despite everything. “Good. I’m not interested in explaining...whatever this is to anybody tonight.”
“Amen to that.”
Ten minutes later, teeth brushed and face scrubbed clean, Cecily sat in Scott’s bed while it was his turn at the nighttime routine. She listened to the water in the pipes and focused on that instead of letting her mind wander into darker territory. A few minutes later, Scott’s door opened and the sight of him, his bare chest, and low-slung sweats sent Cecily’s blood ringing in her veins. For all the stress over everything to do with Zander, she still wanted him. In fact, she wanted him more now—wanted the escape his skin would provide.
“I thought you might be asleep by now,” he said, his voice low, after he closed the door behind him.
She shook her head. “Not yet.” Not before you got here.
His smile was crooked and questioning. “What?”
It was then she realized she was staring. She shook her head again and forced her eyes away from him. “Nothing.”
Was it wrong of her to want to use his touch as an escape? Especially after everything he’d heard her say to Trey? But then, it wasn’t only the escape she was after. It was him. She wanted comfort—and she wanted him to be the one to give it to her. It wasn’t just the escape—it was an escape through him she craved.
Next thing she knew, he was sliding between the covers beside her and putting his hand on her arm. “Come here,” he said when she didn’t look at him right away, in a low, private tone she loved .
Without a second thought, she slid deeper beneath the sheets until they were face to face, where he stroked her hair back from her temple and she watched his eyes roam from her mouth, to her neck, to her ear, her jaw, her hair, before landing on her mouth again.
Without his horn-rimmed glasses, she could see the mahogany color of his eyes in the dim lamp that was on across the room.
He was being so amazing through all of this. So supportive of her, so there and present for Callum and Zander alike. Ready to help, even when he was still angry with the things Zander had said—before they’d realized there might be something supernatural happening and his anger had turned into pure concern.
She thought she’d trusted him before—and she had—but compared to the way she trusted him now, that had been nothing.
There were things they still needed to talk about—a continuation of the conversation they’d begun on their way home today. But not now. Not when they were here, in his bed, and she needed his skin against hers like a tether to the earth.
“If you kiss me, I won’t stop you this time,” she breathed.
“You didn’t stop me from kissing you last time.”
“I won’t stop you at all.”
His eyes glazed and in the dim light she thought she saw his jaw flex. “Not at all, huh?”
The movement when she shook her head was tiny, but then—he was so close, and his hand was on the side of her neck, his thumb stroking the skin in front of her ear—the movement didn’t need to be any bigger than that.
“Except,” she breathed the moment the desire came to her lips, “I want it real—I don’t want it sweet.” She didn’t want first-time slow and gentle. She wanted to exorcise all the worry spinning in her head with his body.
The way his lips parted and the breath was pushed from his lungs left no room for misinterpretation; he was so ready and willing to follow that request.
And she loved him for it.
