Hey, she’s my girl, right?
So I lean right in and kiss her, tasting her mouth, cupping the back of her head in my hand, pulling her closer to me. Fuck, I missed her taste, sweet and sexy.
Feels like years since I last kissed her.
So weird.
Even weirder though is that she breaks away with a cry, pushing me away, and jumping off my bed.
“I can’t do this,” she whispers, tears rolling down her cheeks, and runs out of the room.
If I had my suspicions before, now I know without the shade of a doubt that something’s definitely one hundred percent fucking wrong, and I need to find out what it is so that I can fix it.
And make my girl smile again.
Time passes. Nurses come in and go out. The pain in my head increases, then ebbs.
Hailey doesn’t come back.
I try sitting up but I’m so damn dizzy I throw up and then the nurses bustle in again and tuck me back into bed.
So fucking tired. “Where’s Hailey?” I ask them, but they shake their heads at me and tsk and check my IV and the darkness closes over me before I get an answer, dammit.
I float away on a flood of blackness, an oil slick that slithers under my body, writhing like a plague of rats, carrying me on their backs.
This is hell.
Where’s Hailey? I try to call out her name but my voice is gone, my throat clogged with fur, with nails, with tails. I’m choking, on words I should have spoken, promises I should have made, calls I should have put through to her.
Come back, Hailey.
Where did she go?
Why did she miss me?
Why do I miss her so fucking much? It’s as if she’s been away from me for far too long. But she was here a second ago.
An hour ago.
A week ago.
Months.
I’m sinking under, going deep, so deep I can’t breathe, I can’t see the surface, and all I want, all I need is her hand on my face, her head on my chest.
How can I get her back?
“He’s been asking for you,” a voice says from somewhere on my left, and I struggle to wake up. It’s like wading through quicksand. It keeps sucking me back down. “In his sleep.”
“I only came to say goodbye,” she replies.
Hailey.
The sound of her voice jolts me like an electric current, and I open my eyes. “Hay,” I rasp, my voice like broken glass.
I reach for her, but she seems too far away. I try to sit up but my head is too heavy to lift. Goddammit! Groaning, I try to roll on my side, push myself up so that I can swing my legs off the bed and—
“Jesus, Kaden, don’t!” Hailey hurries around the bed and puts a firm hand on my chest, keeping me still.