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Mari would absolutely ruin Nurse Deborah if she found her or any other staff hitting on us, and the fact that she thought it was okay to leer at a patient’s partner? Gross.
Seeing it too, Grey’s tone turned frosty. “That’s correct. All three of us are her husbands. So, I’d appreciate it if you kept your tongue in your mouth and your eyes focused on our wife.”
Nurse Deborah gave one slow, desperate blink, then it was gone, and she held up a stack of printed name tags. “Right. Room 344. End of the hallway, take a right. You can have two people in the room overnight.”
“We’ll all be staying until further notice.” Before she could argue anymore, Grey snatched the visitors’ passes from her, and as one, we moved down the hall, leaving a gaping nurse behind us.
Nate snickered the second we were out of earshot. “She’s going to be a pain in the ass.”
“She’s inconsequential. I’m removing her from Mari’s team the second I find the charge nurse.” Grey waved the concern away.
“What if she is the charge nurse?” Nate asked.
“Then I’ll go over her head until I get what I want.”
There was a long pause before Nate muttered, “Rich people solutions.”
“Damn right,” Grey and I confirmed.
It took no time to find Mari’s room. The door yawned open, and another nurse exited, one with a bright-blue tag on her lanyard. Charge Nurse Erin.
“You must be the husbands.”
Again, Grey talked to her, but my mind was elsewhere.
The hallway looked so plain. White tile, white walls, blue trim. It was all so perfunctory. So why did it set my heart racing? Why did I feel like I was breaking apart just standing near it?
What if she’s dead? What if they lied, and we go in and she’s stopped breathing? What if she doesn’t want to see me? I don’t want to be here. I should leave. What if…
On and on, the thoughts whirled until I thought I’d puke, but I couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything but stare and wait. Eventually, the charge nurse left, and Grey turned to me and sighed. “It’s normal to be anxious, but we’ve got to get in there.”
That was Greyson. He saw the core of people, even when they didn’t want them to. “I can’t.”
“You can, and you will,” he promised. A look at Nate had them bookending me like we’d done for Grey, except they each had a firm grip on my arms this time.
“I’m not a flight risk,” I snapped.
“No?” Grey’s laugh was pointed, so I shut my mouth. I had considered leaving, but I wasn’t going to. At least, I didn’t think I was.
“I’ve replaced Deborah. From now on, Mari will have competent nurses who can do their jobs without their libidos causing a problem,” he sneered as we crossed the threshold and paused. All that separated us from Mari was a blue-and-green curtain so thin I could practically see the shape of her already. “Christ, they need to upgrade this place.”
Nate rolled his eyes. “The little people can’t afford cashmere curtains, Your Highness.”
“They could if a rich person donated them,” Grey snarked as he yanked back the curtain and bared the bed to the world.
They were still talking, but all I could focus on was her.
Since I’d come home, I’d spent hours just watching Mari. I wanted to see that girl I knew, the one who came to me to fix her problems and sought shelter in my arms. But I hadn’t found her. Even when grief stole the spark in her, she was still strong. Still a force all on her own.
Staring at her in that hospital bed, hair damp and limp around her pale, bruised face, I saw the girl I’d known. She was there in the stillness of Mari’s body and the soft rise and fall of her chest underneath the world’s thinnest blanket. She was there in the way her brutalized hands lay gently on her stomach, even as Grey moved to her side and picked one up. That stillness was the soft, delicate version of Mari, and suddenly, I wanted it gone.
I was a fool to think that girl would’ve survived. Mari was right; there was no room for softness in our world. Not where everyone else could see. I’d been wishing for an impossibility and hoping for a pipe dream. People grew and evolved. They changed. Mari had to even more than most in order to stay alive. I didn’t understand it before, but I got it now.
She was soft where it counted. With us and her friends, her trusted people. She was soft with Jerron, even when she didn’t have to be. She could’ve killed him the second she made him, but she didn’t. She recognized the trappings of her life winding around him, and she got him out. Even her father wouldn’t have saved the kid. He was a liability and a threat, and he would’ve been put down as one, but not Mari.
Despite knowing it could make her look weak, Mari led with her head and her heart. She led with compassion. It was why Moore and Tennessee were devoted to her, why Rey took a bullet to protect her. She was good. So fucking good, and I’d been so blind to it.
How could I have thought she was anything other than who she was meant to be? I’d seen for myself how easy it was to fall into darkness when the people you loved were in danger or hurt. Could I really blame her for doing exactly that?
