Page 108 of The Florist and Her Alphas

But I felt it. I know I felt it.

Cole

It’s day four at the hospital.

My brothers are all here today, scattered around the room like they can’t decide whether standing or sitting makes the waiting hurt less. Ezra’s by the window with his arms crossed, jaw tight. Julian’s slumped in the corner chair, elbows on his knees. August sits cross-legged on the floor near the foot of the bed. I’ve got the chair closest to her, and I’ve got her hand in mine, thumb moving slowly over her knuckles, the way I’ve done every day this week.

She hasn’t moved since August felt that flicker yesterday. The doctor says it could mean nothing, or it could mean something. Nobody in scrubs wants to commit to either.

Her eyes move sometimes, under the lids, quick and small, and I wonder what she’s seeing back there. I wonder if it’s flowers, or if she’s having nightmares of her past.

I’d take the nightmares from her if I could.

“You still in there?” I ask her, quietly, just for the two of us, though I know my brothers can hear every word in a room this small. “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

I wait.

Nothing happens. Her fingers stay slack in mine, cool, still. The monitor keeps its same patient rhythm. The ventilator keeps its same mechanical hiss.

“Lia,” I say softly. “All I want you to know is that I love you.” My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to. “I want more time with you. That’s it. That’s the whole ask. More time. So don’t you dare give up on me now.”

I press her hand between both of mine, careful of the line, and I keep going because stopping feels like I’m losing my connection with her at this moment.

“I never took you anywhere,” I say. I shake my head, a short, hard motion. “I want to take you somewhere with tablecloths and a wine list you make fun of because you think it’s pretentious. I want to sit next to you in a dark theater and watch you fall asleep halfway through some movie you didn’t even want to see. I want to walk you through the park in the fall when the leaves are down, just the two of us, nothing else going on.”

I stop. My jaw works.

“You’re going to make it,” I tell her, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel, because that’s the only kind of voice I know how to give her. “You’ve survived worse than this. You survived three years in that cabin. You survived running. You survived building something of your own out of nothing, one flower at a time, in a city that didn’t know you yet.”

I lean forward slowly, carefully, my hand cupping the uninjured side of her face, my thumb brushing just under her eye where a fresh yellow bruise fades into her cheekbone.

I press my lips to her forehead.

“I love you,” I say again, against her skin. “Come back to us.”

I sit back down. I don’t let go of her hand.

Behind me, nobody speaks for a long time. Ezra’s still at the window, jaw locked tight; Julian’s got his face in his hands; August has gone back to staring at the book in his lap without reading a single word of it.

Twenty-Nine

LIANA

Ican hear the steady beep of machines. I don’t open my eyes yet. I’m not sure I can.

My body feels like it belongs to someone else, borrowed and left out in the rain, heavy in ways that don’t match up with where I think my arms and legs should be.

Something is resting in my palm. Warm. Slightly rough at the knuckles. I know this hand. I knew it before I knew anything else about where I am or how long I have been gone.

I try to move my fingers.

It takes more effort than it should, more effort than lifting a bucket of ranunculus off a high shelf, more effort than anything I have ever asked my body to do, but I curl my fingers slowly around his, and I feel him there, solid and real, not a voice drifting through a fog but a hand I can hold onto.

“Lia?” August’s voice cracks clean down the middle of my name. “Did you just…?”

Slowly I open my eyes. It takes so much effort, oh my god.

August sobs, loud and sudden, both hands flying to his mouth, his glasses knocked crooked against his nose, and then he’s twisting around in the chair and shouting toward the door.