“The same time you got so handsome,” she says, a line we’ve exchanged a hundred times over the years that brings a small slice of normalcy to me right now when nothing seems normal.
“Ha. So that means forever.”
She laughs, but I can tell she’s trying to do me a favor in doing so, to lighten the mood some so that we hang up on a good note. “Tan?”
“Yeah?”
“I believe that you didn’t know,” she says softly, understanding how important that is to me. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Once we hang up, I wander the grounds, unable to sit any longer in a waiting room and unwilling to walk away without some answers. Although I’m not sure how I’m going to get any since I’ve been banned from the third floor. I’ll find a way. Somehow.
Next I buy some coffee from a cart on the grounds but don’t even taste it as I sip it, my mind lost in turbulent thoughts and my chest aching from so much more than the blast. Rylee’s words come back to me occasionally, drag me back to reality when I’d much rather be lost elsewhere. I ignore Rafe’s texts and his apologies that he can’t give me more, and his questions about why I’m so invested when I hated her from the get-go.
I can’t speak with him right now or he’ll see right through my transparent emotions.
At some point night falls and forces me to realize that my nomadic wandering has pushed me to the point of mental and physical exhaustion, my body still recovering and needing to rest. As I trudge toward the main building, I realize for the first time that my doubt is winning out over hope. The whoosh of the entrance doors greets me as I head on autopilot to the elevators to take back my chair in the second-floor waiting room.
A part of me wants to waltz onto the third floor like I don’t give a fuck who’s there and see her again. The idea finds purchase in my mind as more and more people pile on the elevator around me.
“Floor?” an elderly lady asks me since I’ve been pushed on the opposite side of the car from the controls.
“Three, please,” I respond without hesitation, because sometimes you just have to fight for the girl. I was blindsided before, didn’t tell John to go to hell, and right now I’m primed to do just that, because until I hear from Beaux’s lips that she doesn’t want me, I’m not going anywhere.
I exit the elevator car with several other people and walk with them right past the nurses’ station where the same nurse is still on duty. I keep my head down when I approach Beaux’s room, yet I notice a flurry of activity that makes my heart fall because I immediately fear that she has taken a turn for the worse. Not caring about anything but her, I rush to the doorway, only to be met with the sound of her voice.
“Beaux?” Her name falls from my lips, relief mixed with anger, and I must say it loud enough because I catch a very fleeting glimpse of her before John and two other men are in my face with hands on my arms pushing me out of the doorway. “Beaux!” I struggle against them.
“She doesn’t want to see you,” one of the guys says harshly in my ear as they start to pull me away.
“Not until I hear her say it!” I shout, my muscles burning and head pounding, but my resolve is stronger than ever. We’re causing such a scene that staff are starting to come out of other rooms, and a nurse at the station picks up the phone to dial for more security, but I just can’t let this go. “Not until she tells me herself!” I shout, hoping she’ll hear me and call out to me.