Page 133 of The Final Cut

Deacon opens the back door.

I stop beside it. “Nash knows you’re taking me.”

It is not a question, and Deacon does not insult me by pretending otherwise. “Of course he does.”

My chest hurts in a complicated way. “He let me go.”

“He let you choose. There’s a difference.”

I climb into the SUV before I can think too long about that.

The city is wet and bright beyond the tinted glass, New Orleans sliding past in gold smears and dark storefronts, streetlamps reflecting off pavement, balconies dripping rain into quiet streets. The hotel recedes behind us, full of room service trays and armed men and my sister sleeping or pretending to. Maybe Delia knows I left. Maybe she knew before I did. She understands cages better than anyone, even pretty ones with marble bathrooms and sheets that feel like sin.

I look down at my hands. They’re steady until I think of Cal. Then they’re not so steady.

Deacon sits beside me without touching. For once, I am grateful for the space. If he puts his hands on me, I might fold into them, and I cannot afford to fold before I see Cal breathing with my own eyes.

The hospital looks different at night after almost losing someone there. Too much glass. Too many entrances. Too many places for people to pretend they belong. Deacon gets us through a service door with a badge that probably isn’t his and a look that makes the sleepy security guard decide paperwork is less important than survival. We use the staff elevator. We don’t pass the main desk. We don’t go near the lobby where cameras and strangers collect faces.

I know he’s breaking rules for me.

I also know he’s broken worse ones.

The ICU floor is quieter than my memory of it. Machines murmur behind closed doors. Nurses move through dimmed halls in soft shoes, carrying medications, adjusting lines, speaking in low voices that make fear sound polite. Nash’s man stands near the stairwell and gives Deacon a nod. Another sits near the nurses’ station with a newspaper open in front of him, though his eyes miss nothing.

Cal’s room is halfway down the hall. Deacon pauses at the nurses’ station, and I continue forward, eager to see him. Restless.

I slow before I reach it.

The door is partly closed, the blinds angled just enough that the room inside shows in pieces: monitor glow, bed rail, Cal’s pale hand on the blanket, the ventilator tube, the hard rise and fall of a chest being helped by machines.

And a woman.

She stands beside his bed with one hand wrapped around his.

I don’t recognize her.

At first, that is all she is. A stranger where I should be. Dark hair threaded with a little silver, pulled low at the nape of her neck. A beige coat damp at the hem. One shoulder curved inward like she has been holding herself upright for too long. Her fingers cover Cal’s, and the touch is too familiar to belong to a nurse, too tender to belong to a friend I have never heard of.

I should open the door, demand to know who the hell she thinks she is…but something holds me in stall. I wait, watching, moving closer to hear the soft words spoken inside the room.

The woman bends over him, bringing his hand close to her mouth. Her voice is low, and the glass catches most of it, but one broken sentence reaches me.

“You promised me you would live long enough to bring her back to me.”

The hall disappears.

Her.

Not him. Not someone. Her.

My hand closes around the edge of the doorframe. There’s only one possible her she could be referring to.

Deacon comes up behind me.

I feel him there, but I cannot look away from the woman. She touches Cal like she knows where his skin is warm, like she has memorized the bones in his hand, like his being alive is personal to her in a way I do not understand and immediately resent.

Cal never told me about a woman. Not once.