Chapter 244: Jake
She’s still doing it—breathing on her own. The numbers on the monitor sit steady like they finally remember how. Her lips are pink again, full and soft, not that awful gray. The parts we can point to are healing. The parts we can’t—I keep them at the edge of thought, where fear can’t gnaw.
Her parents even let themselves be people this morning—hotel, showers, breakfast that wasn’t grief from a vending machine. It’s good they left, because when the elevator doors slid open, chaos walked out: Finn, Liam, Charlie—three bodies, one demand.
“Family only,” the nurse says, gentle but granite. Well. Family and the two men everyone in this building has learned better than to keep at arm’s length.
A quick call to her mother turns the sign on the door. Please let her friends in. The note goes in the chart. Reid goes with Liam to the cafeteria (dragged, not led; you can tell by the set of his shoulders), and I bring Finn into Madeline’s room.
He goes straight to her hand. Holds it like it’s a bird he’s terrified to scare off. His shoulders shake. He’s quiet—Finn, quiet—and it makes the whole room feel like a church.
“I can leave,” I say, taking the chair on the other side, giving him space I hate to give. “Come back later.”
“It’s fine.” He doesn’t look up. “Stay.”
We listen to her breathe. The monitor glows 98 like it’s proud of itself. A tear slides off his jaw onto his sleeve, then another. I’ve never seen him like this. Loud is his natural habitat; today he’s a man whispering at an altar.
“What’s wrong?” I ask finally, knowing and asking anyway.
He shakes his head hard, like he’s trying to dislodge something. His mouth works. “It’s my fault.”
“What?” The word comes out sharper than I mean.
“Sloane did this because of me.” Flat, practiced. Like he’s been reciting that sentence at the ceiling for a week.
I choose my words like I’m setting a broken bone. “No,” I tell him. “Sloane did something unforgivable, and to be honest—Reid and I should’ve fired her before it got this far. But the reason Mads looks like this—the bruises, the bandages, the nightmares waiting in the corners—that’s Nick. Every single mark on her body is Nick.”
Finn flinches. More tears, harder now. “If I’d just—”
“Finn.” I lean in until he meets my eyes. “Listen to me. When she wakes up—and she will—every fear that shakes her, every piece of recovery that hurts, traces back to him, not you. Your job is to be one of the reasons she remembers the world can be good. You don’t get to bleed for what you didn’t do. You get to show up.”
He swallows like it cuts. Nods. “Okay.”
We sit with the small, miraculous sound of her breath. A curl of copper has dried in a little arc on her forehead; I tuck it back behind her ear like touch can convince time to behave.
He clears his throat. “Is it true?” His voice is hoarse. “You and Reid.”
“Yes.” No flinch, though I didn't know he knew.
He scrubs his face with the heel of his hand, cheeks red. “You’re lucky,” he says, and then—quiet, honest—“I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you.” I let it sit. Then tip my head at their joined hands. “You really like her, huh.”
A small smile ghosts at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah.”
“She likes you, too,” I say, because it’s true and he needs to hear it. “You know that.”
He shrugs, embarrassed. “I just want her okay,” he says. “I don’t care about—” He shakes his head. “I just want her okay.”
“That’s the right answer.”
He looks down at her fingers in his, as if he can memorize the warmth. “You think she can hear us?”
“I hope so.” I nod at her. “So talk to her.”
He turns his head toward her pillow. “Hey, angel,” he whispers, and half laughs at himself. “It’s me. I brought terrible jokes and a promise not to cry on your arm if you wake up and tell me to knock it off.”
I sit back, let him have the room, and text Reid: you alive or did Liam bury you in pancakes? He fires back: coffee is a hate crime. Up in 5.
Finn keeps going, voice trembling, sweet and ridiculous—how Charlie threatened to ban him from hot sauce, how Liam burned cookies and blamed the oven, how the house feels wrong without her laugh ricocheting off the rafters. I listen. I lay my hand next to hers without stealing it, close enough to feel her heat through the sheets.
“Mads,” he murmurs into the small hush that belongs to her, “your crew’s here. Breathing is your job; we’ve got the rest.”
The monitor keeps its steady love song. Finn nods, squeezes carefully. Down the hall, a cart squeaks and someone laughs too loud, and for the first time in a week it doesn’t grate. It sounds like practice—like the world warming up for when she opens those green eyes.
About half an hour goes by. The room is soft with machine hush and Finn’s whispering when the scream hits—high, sharp, Charlie—and then another, lower, Liam, and the brittle clatter of something smacking tile in the hallway. Finn and I lock eyes for a heartbeat. We’re up and moving the next.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell her, palm on the rail like that counts as a promise, and then we’re in the corridor—the fluorescent buzz, the antiseptic bite, a tray of cups spinning lazy circles on the floor where it’s been knocked over. A nurse yells, “Hey!” from the desk. Another voice—Reid?—somewhere farther down, swallowed by the echo.
Finn’s already ahead of me, shoulders set, and I match him stride for stride, past the linen cart, past the family room with the TV murmuring a weather report no one’s watching. Something slams. Someone curses. The air is different out here—charged, metallic, wrong.
We round the corner at a run.
I see it.
And the world goes red.