Page 146 of Secrets on Ice

And then it's just Ember and me.

She looks so small and fragile lying there. There's a drip in the back of her hand and a monitor beeping somewhere. She's pale, and her eyes are barely open, and the second I see her like that, everything I've been holding in since the club comes up at once, and I don't even try to stop it. I sit down beside the bed, and I'm crying, properly crying, and I take her hand.

“Hey,” she slurs. Her eyes drift to me and she tries to focus. “Why're you ... crying.”

“I'm okay.” I wipe my face with my free hand. “I'm okay, I promise. You just scared me.”

“I don't believe you.” Her eyes are already closing again. “You saved me.”

“Em.” My voice breaks on it, and I don't care. I press her hand to my mouth. “I can't lose you. Do you understand me? I can't. I have never been that scared in my entire life, and I need you to know, I love you. I'm in love with you. I have loved you like I've never loved anyone, and tonight I nearly ...” I can't finish it.

She's looking at me, or trying to, her eyes glassy and unfocused, and I don't even know how much of it is landing, if any, and it doesn't matter, because I needed to say it, once, out loud.

“Sully,” she murmurs. “I'm tired.”

“I know, baby, sleep.” I press one more kiss to the back of her hand, and I sit with her until her breathing goes slow and even, and I know she's under. She won't remember a word of this tomorrow.

Maybe that's for the best.

I walk out of Ember's hospital room, and Cass is waiting there for me, looking like shit. Neither of us says anything until we're through the doors and out into the warm Vegas night. The Strip is still lit up and roaring like nothing happened tonight, like the whole world isn't different now.

Then she stops on the pavement and turns to me. “Sully.”

“Yeah.”

“I heard you in there,” she confesses quietly.

Oh shit. “Yeah.”

“How long?” she says.

“Cass ...”

“How long, Connor?” she demands.

I look at my sister, standing on a Vegas footpath at whatever ungodly hour it is, and I'm too tired and too wrung out to hold any of it anymore.

“Always,” I say. “I've loved her always, since we were kids. It's always been her.”

Cassidy stares at me in surprise. “Always?” she repeats.

I nod. “Always.”

She's quiet for a long moment, then steps in and wraps her arms around me, hard, her face against my chest, and I hold onto my sister as she breaks down.

41

EMBER

Iwake up slowly, and everything hurts. My mouth is dry as sandpaper, my head is pounding, and there’s a needle taped to the back of my hand attached to a bag of something clear. The light is too bright, and it takes me a long moment to work out where I am, and even longer to work out why.

A hospital. I’m in a hospital.

“Hey, you’re awake.” Emmett’s voice, and then his face, leaning over me. He looks terrible, gray and unshaven with dark circles under his eyes like he hasn’t slept. “Don’t try to sit up too fast.”

“Em?” My voice comes out like a croak. “What … what happened?”

He gets me some water, holds the cup while I drink because my hands are shaking too much to hold it myself, and then he sits back down heavily in the plastic chair beside the bed.