The hospital corridor smelled like bleach, copper, and fear. I sat on a plastic chair that stuck to the backs of my thighs, still wearing Theo's blood-soaked robe under the paper gown they'd forced over me. My hands were stained rust-brown no matter how many times I scrubbed. Between my legs I still felt him (warm, thick, leaking slow with every clench of grief), a cruel reminder that even unconscious he'd kept his promise to stay inside me.
Marcus stood guard outside the ICU doors, knuckles split, suit jacket gone, eyes hollow. He hadn't spoken since the ambulance.
I stared at the floor tiles until they blurred.
He took a bullet for me.
For us.
The words looped in my head, louder than the monitors, louder than the nurses rushing past.
A doctor finally approached (young, exhausted, blood on his scrubs that I prayed wasn't Theo's).
"Miss Hart?"
I stood too fast. The room tilted.
