Chapter 298

Alex's POV

I did not sleep that night. Or the next day. Or the night after that.

I sat in the chair beside her bed and I watched her breathe and I waited. Sometimes I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. Sometimes I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. I got up to use the bathroom, to get water, to stand in the hallway for five minutes when the walls felt too close. But I always came back.

James came in twice a day to check on her. Each time he left without a major change in his expression, which he told me was a good sign. Luna came in the mornings and the evenings, sat with Caitlin, smoothed the blanket, sometimes spoke to her quietly in a low voice. I could never make out the words. I didn't try to.

I prayed. I was not someone who did that often. But in the long hours when the house was quiet and it was just me and the sound of Caitlin breathing in the dark, I did it anyway. I asked for her to wake up. I asked for her to be okay. I asked for whatever damage I had done to be something she could survive, and then, on the worst nights, I asked for it to be something she could eventually forgive.

I grew tired in a way that went past the body. My eyes burned. My shoulders ached from sitting so long. There was a heaviness in my chest that did not lift regardless of how many times James told me her vitals were stable. Stable was not awake. Stable was not okay.

Stable just meant she hadn't died yet.

I kept waiting.

It was the middle of the night when she moved.

I was in the chair, not asleep but not fully alert either, somewhere in between, staring at the far wall. Then I heard it. A small sound. A shift of movement from the bed. I was out of the chair before I consciously decided to stand up.

Caitlin's eyes were opening.

Slowly at first. Just a thin line of light beneath her lashes. Then she squeezed them shut again immediately, her face twisting, one hand coming up toward her face.

"The light," she rasped. Her voice was rough and dry and barely there. "It's too bright."

I crossed the room and turned the lamp off. The room dropped into the dark, only the thin light from under the door remained. I heard her let out a slow breath.

"Better?" I asked.

She didn't answer right away. She lay still for a moment, her hand pressed over her eyes even in the dark. Then she groaned, low and pained, and shifted on the mattress.

"Everything hurts," she said.

"I know. That will get better."

"My head." She pressed her fingers harder against her temple. "It's too loud. I can hear everything. The house. Outside. There are too many sounds."

"That's normal," I said. "Your hearing is adjusting. It will settle down."

She moved her hand away from her face and turned her head slightly in my direction. Her eyes opened again, slower this time, adjusting to the dark. She looked at me. I looked back at her.

I exhaled for what felt like the first time in days.

She was awake. She was looking at me. Her eyes were clear.

Something in my chest that had been locked tight for the past two days loosened by one degree. Just one. Because she was awake and she was breathing and she was talking, but she was also looking at me with an expression I couldn't read, and I had no way of knowing yet who she was going to be when she fully came back to herself. The turn changed people. Not always in ways you could see right away. But it changed them.

I sat down on the edge of the bed, a few feet from her, and folded my hands together.

"You've been out for two days," I said.

She closed her eyes again. "Two days."

"James has been checking on you. He said your body handled it well."

"My body," she repeated, like the words meant something different to her now. Maybe they did.

I didn't say anything else. I just sat there and let her come back to herself at her own pace.

My parents arrived within twenty minutes. I didn't call them. I didn't have to. My mother had always had a sense for these things, and I heard her and my father in the hallway before they knocked quietly and came in.

Luna went straight to the side of the bed and sat down and took Caitlin's hand between both of hers. Caitlin looked at her with tired, overwhelmed eyes.

"How are you feeling?" Luna asked softly.

"Like I got hit by something very large," Caitlin said.

"That is a very accurate description." Luna looked at her steadily. "You are safe. You are in our home. Nothing is going to hurt you here."

Caitlin looked at the ceiling. She swallowed. Her throat moved slowly.

Landon stepped forward from the doorway and stood at the foot of the bed. His voice was quiet when he spoke, and it carried the kind of weight that came from genuinely meaning every word.

"I am sorry," he said. "For what happened to you. For all of it. You did not deserve to be pulled into our world the way you were. That is the truth, and I want you to hear it plainly."

Caitlin looked at him. Then she looked at Luna. Then she looked at me.

"I want to go home," she said. Her voice broke slightly on the last word. Not dramatically. Just a small crack, the kind that happens when someone has been holding something together for too long.

"I want to see my parents. I need to see them."

The room went quiet.

I looked at her face. The exhaustion on it. The longing. She wasn't asking for an explanation or an apology or anything I could actually give her at that moment. She was asking for the one thing that had nothing to do with any of this. She just wanted her parents.

"Okay," I said.

She looked at me.

"I'll take you," I said. "As soon as James clears you to travel. I'll take you home myself."

Something moved across her face. It wasn't a relief exactly. It wasn't forgiveness either. It was smaller than both of those things, and more fragile. But it was there.

She closed her eyes and turned her face back toward the ceiling and didn't say anything else.

I sat in my chair and watched her breathe and let the quiet settle around the room, and for the first time in two days I felt like she might actually be okay.

Not today.