Chapter 246: Reid
Two days later. Two weeks since we hauled her out of the Atlantic and begged a heart to keep going.
Late afternoon pours itself across her room, syrupy and gold. Everything is honey-lit—the rails, the IV pole, the curve of her cheekbone. The team left yesterday with red eyes and too-loud goodbyes; they played cards on the tray table like it could keep the universe occupied, then stacked paperbacks on her nightstand for “when you wake up.” A tottering little tower of promises. Her parents went back to the hotel to sleep. Jake’s down the hall on a call with the institute, smoothing timelines, protecting deliverables, guarding the door of her future with his voice so no one steals it while she’s not looking.
A few days ago I thought “goodbye.” That’s why we brought everyone. Now… now I think “when.” I don’t know who she’ll be on the other side of all this, but I know she’s coming back.
I cue up “Flightless Bird” on my phone and set it low on the mattress so the guitar hums into the sheets. I scoot my chair so my knees touch the side of the bed and lean in.
“Hi, trouble.”
Her lashes don’t flutter. The monitor tosses me its steady numbers. I talk anyway.
“First day I saw you,” I say, “you were drowning in a blue sweater and a sherpa jacket with a stupidly cute tuque. I pictured you out on the boat—wet, cold, the wrong wave at the wrong time—and everything in me locked up. Didn’t want the ocean anywhere near you.”
My mouth twists. It’s almost funny now.
“Then you walked past the Seafoam at golden hour in a blue bikini and I forgot my own name.” I can see it if I close my eyes: copper hair lit up like a match, the whole street turning to look because the sun had decided to pick a favorite. “I sat there like an idiot and pretended beer could fix me.”
I huff out a breath.
“And the first time I kissed you, you were in that soft, short mint-green dress, still mad at me—God, you were so mad at me—and I lifted you and you let me, and I thought, fine, I’ll spend the rest of my life earning that sound you make when you stop being furious.”
I glance at her mouth. It’s pink again. It’s still.
“I would give anything to hear you yell at me. To hear anything.” My thumb grazes the line of her jaw, careful of fading bruises. “I counted your freckles the other night, because I’m a lunatic. Seventy-nine on your face. Did you know that?” My voice goes lower. “When you wake up, I’m counting shoulders. Back. All of them. I want a map.”
I look her over the way a man looks at landfall after a storm: reverent, greedy, grateful. My knuckles trail the lightest touch over the blanket where her forearm lies, over the slope of bruised ribs the doctors say are knitting, over the edge of the ridiculous hospital gown.
“The next time I see you in one of these,” I tell her, “I hope it’s because you’re delivering my cute little babies.” The words make my chest tight and stupid. I drop my forehead to her stomach like I can press the ache flat, breathe her in through cotton and antiseptic and the ghost of vanilla.
For a second there’s only the soft scrape of the song and the hiss of the oxygen. Then—
A sound. Not machine. Her.
I lift my head so fast the room blurs. “Madeline?” My hands are on her face before I realize I’ve moved, thumbs bracketing her cheekbones. “Baby, did you say something?”
Her lips part. The first words are raw and papery, a thread pulled from deep in her chest. Italian—soft, slanted, familiar from a restaurant doorway and a laughing nonna and the way it sounded when she tried it on her tongue.
I’ve heard those sounds before. I don’t understand them now. My brows knot; I shake my head, breath tripping. “I don’t—say it again. I don’t understand.”
A small smile ghosts over her mouth, like a secret arriving. She keeps her eyes closed, and in English, barely there, she murmurs, “Big, giant babies… remember?”
It hits me like sunlight through storm cloud. I huff out a laugh that breaks on the edges. “Yeah,” I manage. “I remember.”
Her eyelids lift.
Green. Greener than a thousand seas, greener than any forest I’ve ever walked. Greener than every time I tried to remember them right and failed.
My knees go out from under me. I’m on the floor before I know I’ve fallen, hands still cradling her face, tears burning hot and shameless down my cheeks.
“Hi, Reid,” she whispers.
And I forget how to breathe for a second, because she just remembered how.
I look straight into her, and there it is—the green, swirling and bright, flecks catching the light like sea-glass in the shallows. She’s exhausted, the kind of tired that lives in the bones, but it’s her. Not a shadow, not a haunt. Madeline. My girl.
She tries to lift her hand—instinct, reaching for me—and pain bites; she winces and lets it fall. “Easy,” I whisper, catching it gently above the splint, guiding it back to the sheet. The room is honey and hush, the monitor steady, the last note of the song on my phone fading under the sound of her breath.
I lean in and ghost the softest kiss across her mouth—just a brush, a promise—like I’m afraid too much will pull her away again. “I love you,” I tell her, voice breaking on it. “I love you. Thank you for coming back to me.”
Her lips curve, small and sure. “It’s the only place I’ve ever wanted to be.”