Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(62)

She nodded eagerly. “Sure. Send him in.”

“I’ll do that.” Patty flicked a glance to her patient. “His color’s good.”

“When do you think he’ll come to?”

“Hard to tell,” she said. “His body created the coma to protect itself. But his vitals are better and better. Stay hopeful.”

Laire’s eyes filled with more useless, painful tears, and she nodded, turning back to her father. When she heard the sound of a man’s heavy footsteps, she didn’t look over her shoulder.

“Hey, Harlan. You can put the flowers anywhere.”

“Laire.”

The voice wasn’t Harlan’s, but it was just as familiar—soft and worried, deep and beautiful. It was the voice of her dreams, of her torment, and every space in between. Laire’s breath caught with a sudden burst of love she didn’t want to feel, but she was in control of herself enough not to turn and face him.

“Laire? How you doing, darlin’?”

“Erik,” she murmured. “What are you doing here?”

His hand landed on her shoulder. “I was worried when you didn’t show up to work. I called King Triton.”

She whipped her head to face him. “You did what?”

“I pretended I was a café owner,” he said, his eyes registering instant concern as they carefully swept her face. “What . . .” He cringed, reaching up to gently touch the bandage covering her stitches. “What happened to your head?”

She recoiled from his touch, quickly reaching up for his hand and leaving it to hang in the air between them. “Don’t touch.”

He searched her eyes. “Okay. But what happ—”

“Doesn’t matter. You can’t be here.”

“I was worried.”

“You. Can. Not. Be. Here,” she repeated in a grave, urgent whisper, flicking worried eyes to her father, who slept peacefully, before looking back up at Erik. “Go.”

“Laire,” he said, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “I just . . .”

“You have to go,” she insisted, turning back to her father. “Now.”

“I’ll wait for you—”

“No.”

“—in the cafeteria,” he said, his voice serious and losing patience. “I’m not leavin’ till you come talk to me.”

“Don’t you understand?” she bit out in a furious rush, her eyes flashing, regret and anger rushing to the fore of her confused emotions. “My father almost died! Might still die! I can’t talk to you. Go home, Erik. Go back to Raleigh. Go back to Duke. Leave me alone!”

Her words knocked him off-balance. She saw it. She felt it. And it hurt like a sharp knife to a soft place.

“Leave you . . .?”

“Alone. I mean it,” she said, keeping her face stony even as goddamn tears trailed down her cheeks, betraying her. “Please leave.”

“Darlin’, I don’t have to go until Thursday. I can be here with you every—”

“No, you can’t! You’re not listening to me!” she cried. “I’m not your darlin’. I’m not your anything. We were just a . . . a fling. A fantasy. I’m an islander; you’re a dingbatter. It’s over.”

He flinched, his face twisting as her words sank in.

Laire looked away, concealing a whimper and ignoring the cracking and breaking of her heart. It had already been torn in half between her father and her lover. Now those halves were splintering into tiny pieces, painful shards, in this hospital room where her father lay unconscious and her lover begged for something she couldn’t give him: more time. They’d run out of time in spectacular fashion, and everything that had existed between them didn’t feel real—felt like a fantasy, like a sweet dream that had ended in a gruesome nightmare.

“Please go,” she begged him.

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s nothing to understand. The summer’s over. We’re over.”

He’d been leaning down toward her, but he straightened up, still looking down at her, his eyes fraught and confused as they searched hers. His voice low, but fierce, his face as shattered as her heart, he asked, “Why . . . why’re you doin’ this? I’m sorry about your father . . . but we love each other.”

She sucked in a painful breath, the truth of his words biting at her. He did love her, and she did love him, but Laire Maiden Cornish had gotten a bleak and sudden dose of reality when her father went into cardiac arrest because of her recklessness. She and Erik were an impossibility in the real world. There was no use pretending any differently.

“No,” she said, hating herself, hating him, hating her father, lying so still and silent between them, hating her sisters and the Pamlico House and the whole fucking world. “It wasn’t real, Erik. It wasn’t real.”

He gasped, blinking at her in disbelief as his face blanched to white. White. Like white-hot pain. She could see it. She could feel it, and it burned her inside like nothing she’d ever felt before.

“You can’t mean that, dar—”

“Laire? Everythin’ okay?” Over Erik’s shoulder, Kyrstin came into view, standing with her hands on her hips just behind Erik. “I’m back. I woke up early.”