Page 44 of Deacon

For a long second, he only stared. “Lila?”

My throat closed around seventeen years.

“Yeah.”

His chest rose sharply, the monitor answering with another small climb. “You’re…” He swallowed. “You’re here?”

There was no relief in his voice yet. Only disbelief, raw enough to tell me some part of him still wasn’t certain I belonged to this room rather than whatever place he had just escaped.

“I thought…” His breath hitched before he tried again. “Thought I was dreamin’ your voice.”

Whatever defenses Jackson Hayes had learned since leaving Wicker Falls hadn’t awakened with him. The words came without polish or protection, and hearing that naked confusion in the voice I had once known better than my own twisted something beneath my ribs.

“I’m here.”

His eyes stayed on me a moment longer before slowly traveling through the room. The machines came first, then the IV lines and everything else that told him this was real.

Finally, he found Priest.

“Priest,” he croaked.

“Hey, brother,” Priest said, his voice steady despite the strain I could hear beneath it. “You scared the hell outta us.”

Jackson exhaled weakly. “Figures.”

The nurse in me finally broke through the shock. My eyes flicked toward the monitor before returning to him. “You’re stable. Out of immediate danger. Doctors’ll be in soon.”

He nodded faintly, but his attention returned to me almost immediately. “Been…” His breath stayed shallow as he gathered enough strength for the rest. “Been here long?”

I hesitated for one beat. “Yeah.”

His eyes closed briefly. When they opened again, they found mine. “How…” He swallowed. “How long?”

“About two weeks. You scared everyone.”

The faintest quirk touched his mouth. “I have a way of doing that.”

A dozen answers rose in me, several of them rude enough to prove I was still myself, but none made it past my throat.

The silence between us filled instead.

Seventeen years stood inside it. So did one summer night, one daughter he knew nothing about, and every question I had carried because he hadn’t stayed long enough to answer any of them.

Jackson studied me more carefully now. Awareness had begun replacing the fog in his eyes, and whatever he saw made something shift in his expression.

“You look…” He trailed off and swallowed. “Tired.”

I almost laughed.

Of everything he could have said after seventeen years, Jackson Hayes woke from a coma and decided I looked tired.

“Hospital vigils do that.”

His gaze stayed on me. “Never imagined I’d ever get to wake up,” he murmured. “To your pretty face.”

That landed exactly where it had no business landing.

My chest tightened, old muscle memory recognizing the rough affection in his voice before common sense could intervene. Once, he could have said something like that and made eighteen-year-old me glow for hours. At thirty-five, I knew better than to build anything around a sentence spoken by a man barely awake.