Crashed(book three)(138)

Are you f*cking kidding me? I want to scream at him because I really don’t know what else to do with the fear consuming me but lash out at the person closest to me. Fear that is so very different than ever before but still all the same. So I just shake my head as I look up at the brown-eyed lady trying to figure out what to do, what to feel, what to say.

“Does she know?” I don’t even recognize my own voice. The break in it, the tone of it, the complete disbelief owning it.

“The doctor’s spoken to her, yes,” she says with a shake of her head, and I realize in that moment Rylee is dealing with this all by herself, taking this all in … alone. The baby she’d give anything for—was told she would never have—she actually had.

And lost.

Again.

How did she take it? What is this going to do to her?

What is this going to do to us?

Everything is spiraling out of f*cking control, and I just need it to be in control. Need the ground to stop f*cking moving beneath me. Know the only thing that can right my world again is her. I need the feel of her skin beneath my fingers to assuage all of this chaos rioting through me.

Rylee.

“I need to see her.”

“She’s resting right now but you can go sit with her if you’d like,” she says as she stands.

I just nod and suck in my breath as she starts to walk down the corridor. My dad’s hand is still on my shoulder, and his silent show of support remains until we walk farther down the hallway to the door of her room.

“I’ll be just outside, if you need me. I’ll wait for Becks,” my dad says, and I just nod because the lump in my throat is so f*cking huge that I can’t breathe. I walk through the doorway and stop dead in my tracks.

Rylee.

It’s the only word I can hold on to as my mind tries to process everything.

Rylee. She looks so small, so f*cking pale, so much like a little girl lost in a bed of white sheets. When I walk to her side I have to remind myself to breathe because all I want to do is touch her, but when I reach out I’m so f*cking scared that if I do, she’s going to break. Fucking shatter. And I’ll never get her back.

But I can’t help it because if I thought I felt helpless sitting in the back of the police cruiser, then I feel completely useless now. Because I can’t fix this. Can’t charge in and save the f*cking day, but this … I just don’t know what to do next, what to say, where to go from here.

And it’s f*cking ripping me to shreds.

I stand and look at her, take all of her in—from her pale bee-stung lips, to the soft-as-sin skin that I know smells like vanilla, especially in the spot beneath her ear; and I know this feisty woman full of her smart-mouthed defiance and non-negotiables, owns me.

Fucking owns me.

Every goddamn part of me. In our short time together she’s broken down f*cking walls I never even knew I’d spent a lifetime building. And now without these walls, I’m f*cking helpless without her, because when you feel nothing for so long—when you choose to be numb—and then learn to feel again, you can’t turn it off. You can’t make it stop. All I know right now, looking at her absolute f*cking beauty inside and out, is that I need her more than anything. I need her to help me navigate through this foreign f*cking territory before I drown in the knowledge that I did this to her.

I’m the reason she’s going to have to make a choice, one I’m not even sure I want her to make any more.

I sink into the seat beside her bed and give in to my one and only weakness now, the need to touch her. I gently place her limp hand between both of mine, and even though she’s asleep and doesn’t know I’m touching her, I still feel it—still feel that spark when we connect.