“I had to.” I managed to choke out the words.

“He left her this.” Andrew handed Darren the note, and I cringed.

Darren gasped as he read it. My eyes flickered over to him, and I could tell he was furious.

He looked back at me, anger and pain in his expression. “You just undid six years of therapy in four sentences. Four fucking sentences!”

He stormed off down the hall to her room, leaving me to drown in my growing self-hatred.

It was not what I wanted.

We stayed for a few hours, but Lila never woke up.

Darren and her other doctors came out, looking for her family. None of us were, but Caroline lied and said she was her sister. Darren knew better, but he didn’t correct her. They were sisters in spirit.

Self-induced psychological coma, they told Caroline. Lila had retreated into her own mind, unable to take the pain and harsh new reality I’d created.

CHAPTER 28

Days passed, and Lila was still unresponsive, trapped in the recesses of her mind. For the second day in a row, I found myself leaving the office at five and rushing over to the hospital.

Work was utter hell. I hated being away from her.

Nothing changed in the ten hours since I’d last been there. I walked into the room with quiet steps up to the bed. She looked so peaceful, like an angel. The constant beeping of the machines, along with the low rise and fall of her chest, put to rest the creeping fear that she was gone. I clung to each breath and beat.

She was still there, alive, and she would return.

I hoped.

My hand reached out to move a stray strand of hair from her face, but I stopped myself. It was one thing to see her, to smell her, and to feel her presence. It was another thing entirely to touch her.

This is for the best, I reminded myself.

I turned and walked back out to the hall. Once there, I leaned on the wall and stared at the room across the hall. A shiver ran down my spine, and my body shuddered as memories flooded back to my mind.

I pushed them away and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. My mind turned over to the beeping of the machines that let me know my Lila was still with me. After a few minutes, my heart began to beat in time with hers.

I sat there listening, thinking, feeling, until after midnight when a nurse came by and told me I couldn’t stay any longer.

When I returned the next night, her door was closed, and through the small glass window I could see Darren and a few other doctors looking at the monitors and talking.

Taking my position again, I slid down the wall, coming to rest on the cold, hard floor. I closed my eyes, my head tilted back, and I listened to the steady beep of the machines.

I heard the door to her room swish open then click closed. I didn’t know if he saw me or not, but he knew I was there.

He sighed. “Why are you sitting out here? If you came this far, why don’t you go in and see her? She knows you’re here, after all.”

My head snapped up. “She’s awake?”

I watched Darren turn to look at me, a sad smile on his lips. “No, not yet.”

“Then how do you know she knows?”

“Her heart rate’s been steady all day. It picked up about fifteen minutes ago,” he said, then quirked his brow. “How long have you been sitting out here?”

I stared up at him in wide-eyed shock. “About fifteen minutes.”

“That’s what I thought.” Darren slid down to sit next to me. “What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Here. Why are you here? You broke her, yet you come by every day and sit outside her room.”

I sighed. “I don’t know. I just… I feel such a pull to be near her. I hate that I did this to her…but it’s better this way.”

“Better than what? You may be saving her from the possibility of being harmed by Marconi, but what do you call that in there? Three fucking days she’s been unresponsive.” He hitched his thumb toward her room. “In that room, they’re talking about moving her to a facility I don’t want her to go to. She has no next of kin… Well, none that would come. She just has you and a small handful of friends. Friends who have lives. What do you have, Nathan?”

I sat there, staring at the room on the other side of the hallway.

He answered for me. “Nothing. You have nothing. You had her. A beautiful, broken woman who would have done anything for you. A woman who loves you, and you were selfish.”

“Selfish?” My voice rose in indignation, my head snapping to look at him.

“Selfish. You did this for your protection more than hers. The thought of losing her the same way you lost your wife crushes you, doesn’t it?”

“I… How do you know she loves me?”

“Way to deflect there, Nathan. Don’t worry, I won’t forget. And I know, because if she didn’t love you, she wouldn’t be in her current state. And if you didn’t love her, you wouldn’t be sitting out here in your expensive suit, on the floor, outside her door in a hospital.”

I cringed at the word, just as he probably knew I would.

After spending months in a hospital after the accident, I hated them. The smell alone made me sick. Especially there, in that wing, sitting across the hall from the room that had once been my home.

There was a sudden shrieking plea that rang out from her room. Lila was screaming, begging. Darren jumped to his feet and threw the door open, rushing into the room.

I turned, my fists slamming on the wall while her screams echoed around the hall. My eyes were screwed tight, but the tears leaked through as I listened to my Lila cry out.

Her screams and pleas cut through me, tearing me. I wanted to run in and take her in my arms and never let her go. I wanted to chase away her fears and self-doubts. Declare my undying love, want, need, and support.

“No one wants me!” she wailed.

My heart splintered. “I want you,” I whispered into the wall. I held my body tight and tense to keep me from running to her, to keep my heart from ruling.

I felt a warm hand on my fist, and I looked up through bleary, tear-filled-eyes to find my mother staring down at me with a sad expression on her face.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Nathan.”

“Yes, it does. She’s safe this way…without me in her life.”

I continued to listen to her pleas and sobs as Darren worked on calming her. It was my punishment. I had done that to her. I needed to hear it. Every cry and sob I created. I broke her.