“Should I wake her?” The nurse inclined her head toward my mother. “She’s been here all day. She refused to leave you. I brought her a nicotine patch and a mild sedative to settle her nerves. She finally fell asleep about an hour ago.”
I looked at my mother more closely. She wore secondhand sweatpants, her hair in a sloppy ponytail, and my favorite hoodie draped across her like a blanket. Her naked lids were outlined in dark circles and painted with worry. She could have been anyone’s mom—a normal, tired, worried-sick mom—but she was mine.
As if she could feel me watching, she stirred and her eyes blinked open.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” said the nurse, and she quietly padded back out.
My mother sat up and looked at me with an anguished expression. She inched forward in her seat, hesitant and awkward, as if she wanted to touch me, but she wasn’t sure how. “When the police came to the house and told me what happened, I thought I’d lost you.” She swallowed and took a shaky breath. “It was my fault. I should have told you everything from the beginning. I was just so afraid you’d go looking for him. That you’d leave.” She was crying now. Big, heaving sobs that left streaks down her face. “Losing David was terrible, but I managed. But losing you? I could never imagine surviving a loss like that. I told myself I’d never be able to let you go. But it was wrong. I was wrong. You’re so smart and so grown-up. I should have trusted you to make your own choices.” Her hands shook as she pressed them to her lips, fighting back tears.
I reached for her, held my hand out in the space between us. She looked at it, and then to me. And then she placed her hand in mine. I shut my eyes and felt all the love that had always been there, that I had never let myself feel before. All those things I’d thought my father had taken with him when he left. Everything I needed was here, inside her. “I’m sorry,” I said, letting my own tears fall, “if I made you feel like you weren’t enough.”
She leaned in and placed a delicate kiss on my forehead and a hand over my heart. Her pride—her adoration—was a burst of sweet citrus inside me. “You are, and will always be, your very own person, Nearly. Everything you’ll ever need is right in here.” She straightened and wiped her eyes. They were red and wet, but creased with smile lines. “I’m going to the cafeteria to find us some junk food. The fat to calorie ratios in this place are seriously disappointing.”
We laughed the same laugh. And it felt good.
The door swished shut behind my mom, and then swished open again. The baby powder nurse poked her head in and smiled.
“There’s a rather handsome dark-haired gentleman waiting to see you. I told him he couldn’t come in until you were feeling up for it. If you want me to ask him to wait . . .”
“No!” I said, louder than I’d intended. “It’s fine. He can come in.” The nurse helped me elevate the bed and then padded out the door to find my visitor. I wished I had a toothbrush, and I struggled with the IV tubes while I worked my weak fingers through the snarls in my hair, exhausted by the small effort.
The door finally cracked open, and light spilled in from the hall. Every nerve in my body crackled, until Oleksa peeked his head in and surveyed the room. I sunk back into my pillows. He lifted a swollen and bruised brow, as if asking permission to come in. Gena followed, her fingers laced through his, wearing matching badges on lanyards around their necks.
The lanyard rose and fell with Oleksa’s chest and my eyes flew open wide, remembering the bullet that ripped through it. How was he still breathing? TJ had shot him in the back right in front of me. I couldn’t have imagined it.
“You’re alive?”
“Kevlar.” He tapped a fist over his chest and winked. “I’m bulletproof.” The warmth was completely foreign on the cold face I’d been terrified of for weeks. As was the mysterious disappearance of his heavy Ukrainian accent. Hints of it lingered in his clipped consonants, but his dialect was as relaxed as his smile.
“Leigh Boswell,” Gena said, “I’d like you to meet Detective Oleksander Petrenko.”
“Call me Alex,” Oleksa said casually, as if we were meeting for the first time.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “We’ve met. I think it was the night Detective Petrenko beat up my boyfriend.”
An uncomfortable silence shrouded the room as we all interpreted the part I hadn’t said aloud. The part I hadn’t even admitted to myself until now. I was in love with Reece. Even though it terrified me. I needed him in painful, complicated ways that felt completely illogical and yet one hundred percent right. He was the reason I didn’t get on that train— the one person I couldn’t leave behind.
Oleksa cleared his throat and lowered his eyes, giving the blood in my cheeks time to settle. “Whelan had that one coming,” he said a little defensively.
“As far as I’m concerned, that assault charge is on you, sweetheart.” Gena smirked at him. “You threw the first punch. What did you expect him to do?”