Page 107 of The Florist and Her Alphas

“I miss you,” I tell her. “The penthouse is too quiet without you. Ezra hasn’t said more than ten words since we got here. Your best friend Mira cries every day. It’s not the same. None of it is the same without you, Lia.”

I stop. I look at her face. The bruise had gone a deeper yellow-purple overnight, the tube still taped at the corner of her mouth, her lashes still and dark against her cheekbones.

“Pepper’s been a mess too,” I say quietly. “He’s been chewing on the yellow chrysanthemums August keeps in the library. All morning. Just sitting there, methodically destroying every single yellow flower in that room, and when I tried to stop him, he bit me.” I press my mouth to the back of her hand. “He misses you. We all miss you. It’s only been two days, and it feels like a year.”

Liana’s still. Too still.

My chest caves in around a breath I can’t finish, and my shoulders start shaking, and I bow my head down over her hand and just let the tears happen.

“I’m sorry,” I choke out. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve any of this. Not one second of it.”

When the tears finally stop, I wipe my face with the back of my wrist, and I lean in and slide one arm loosely around her shoulders, barely any weight at all, just enough to feel her against my chest, and I press my lips to the curve of her ear.

“I love you,” I whisper. “I know you probably think I say that too easily. But I mean this. I have never in my life felt this broken. Not once. Come back to us, Lia. Come back to me.”

She doesn’t move. Her soft breaths are warm against my neck.

I ease back down into the chair without letting go of her hand. I sit there and watch her chest rise and fall with the machine’s help.

I don’t say anything else for a long time. I just hold her hand and watch her breathe, and somewhere down the hall I can hear Cole’s low voice still on the phone, and somewhere beyond that, the ordinary sounds of a hospital continuing on around us like the whole world hasn’t stopped.

August

It’s been three days now.

Liana’s face hasn’t changed. The bruise at her temple has gone a duller yellow-green, less alarming than it was, but she hasn’t moved. Not a flutter of her eyelids. Not a twitch of her fingers. The doctor says that’s normal, that the coma is doing exactly what it’s meant to do, that we should expect this stillness and not read anything into it.

I pull my chair as close to the bed as it will go and take her hand, and I press my lips against her knuckles, soft, careful, the way we’ve all learned to touch her now, like she’s made of something that might come apart if we’re not gentle enough.

“I brought a book,” I tell her, and I hold it up even though she can’t see it- the worn spine, the pages gone soft at the corners from handling. It’s not one of mine. It’s from the little stack on her own nightstand at the shop apartment.

I brought it here thinking she might want it.

“You do not have to be good,” I read, my voice low, pitched just for her, just for this room. “You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

My throat closes around the next line. I have to stop and breathe before I can keep going.

“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.”

I close the book.

I can’t finish it. I set it on the little rolling table beside her bed, next to the plastic pitcher of water nobody’s touched, and I put my face against the back of her hand instead.

“I wish you were home,” I whisper. “I keep thinking about that afternoon on the rug, the light coming through the shelves, how you laughed at something I said even though it wasn’t that funny.” My voice is already breaking, and I’ve barely started. “We didn’t have enough time together, Lia. Just the two of us. And I want more than that. I want so much more than that.”

I press my forehead against her hand and let myself cry.

“I’m going to take you on real dates,” I tell her when I can talk again, my voice thick and raw. “Not just flowers and libraries. I’m going to take you to terrible movies and hold your popcorn and let you make fun of my taste. I’m going to walk with you in the park until you’re sick of walking and sick of me. I want to know what you’re like when you’re tired and cranky and don’t want to talk to anybody. I’ve only ever seen you sweet. I want the whole person. Please come back so I can have the whole person.”

I lean down, pressing my lips to hers, softly, so softly, careful of the tube still taped at the corner of her mouth, careful of everything, my hand cupping her jaw with no more pressure than a breath.

And her hand moves.

It’s small. It might be nothing. It might be some reflex the doctor warned us about, some involuntary twitch that means absolutely nothing about what’s happening behind her closed eyes. But her fingers curl, just slightly, against my palm where I’m still holding her hand, a small pressure, there and then gone.

My heart leaps with shock.

“Lia?” I say, too loud, too fast, pulling back to stare at her face. Nothing changes there. Her eyes stay closed. Her chest keeps rising and falling with the machine’s help, steady, unbothered.