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“I’m just visiting—”
She cuts me off, nudging me towards the door. “Not today, you aren’t.”
“But I don’t understand. It’s visiting hours. I checked.”
“Not for Mr. Kennedy.”
“Lick?”
“Just go, Emma.”
I let my shoulders drop in defeat as I leave, feeling tears prick the back of my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall.
“I’ve seen it before,” the nurse says, making me jump. I hadn’t even realized she was still standing there.
“I’m sorry?”
“This kind of behaviour. He seemed different, I’m guessing. Cold, angry perhaps?”
I nod, moving towards the chairs when she points at them. I watch as she takes the one next to me.
“Know this, it’s not you.”
“And yet it always is,” I whisper.
She reaches out and gives my arm a gentle pat. “That man has just had his whole life blown apart. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to walk again.”
I cover my mouth with my hand. I knew Knuckles had been keeping something from me. That asshole.
“That is not something people can just deal with overnight,” she continues, unaware of my shock. “They grieve what they’ve lost and then eventually they adjust, but adjusting is so much more difficult than anyone realizes. You’d never think of it as an able-bodied person, the kind of things that suddenly become huge issues, like using the bathroom or the height of your kitchen countertops, how wide your hallways are, and whether you have steps leading up to your front door. Trivial things suddenly become huge hurdles to get over. He’s going to need both space and grace.”
I open my mouth but close it again when I realize I don’t know what to say.
“Right now, you need to think about you,” she says, her eyes dropping to my stomach. “And he needs to figure out what his new normal looks like. After that, I’m sure things will work themselves out.”
She gets up and walks away, leaving me feeling embarrassed and emotionally bruised. Is she telling me to just walk away while he’s lying broken in a hospital bed after being shot? What kind of person does that to someone they love?
My stomach clenches as the word bounces around in my skull. Love? I don’t love him, do I? I can’t. Except, I think I do. Oh fuck.
Feeling queasy all of a sudden, I rummage in my bag for one of my pills and the half-empty bottle of water, swallowing it down with shaky hands. I try to process what just happened and what to do next. I don’t know how long I sit there in a daze before I feel someone sit beside me. I look up into Knuckles’s eyes and feel myself break.
He curses and tugs me into his arms, holding me gently as I sob into his jacket.
My eyes feel heavy by the time I’m done, but my head is a little clearer.
“Feel better?”
“Not really. He doesn’t want to see me.”
“I know. I tried to call you to warn you, but you must have left your phone on silent again. He’s scared, Em. That’s all this is.”
“I know he’s scared, so am I, but I don’t want to leave him here like this.”
“You have to, at least for now. I’ll talk to him, though. He’ll come around. It takes us Kennedy men a while to pull our heads out of our asses sometimes.”
I huff out a small laugh, surprised I even have it in me.
“Come on, I’ll give you a ride home.”
