I held my hands up, surrendering. “Never.”
Cos she wasn’t. But fuck me, she was brave.
Mateo reappeared with coffee. He caught my eye and dropped the full cup directly into the bin. “Save you the trouble.”
He came closer and claimed the seat on Orla’s other side. “Sorry I’m not better at this. Em’s taking over in the morning.”
“You’re fine, Mats.” Orla nudged his boot. “Don’t be a shit to yourself. I don’t have it in me to beat you up right now.”
“I’d let you if you needed it.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
Orla turned her gaze to the window, done with the conversation. Mateo let her go, relieved, perhaps. Or regretful that he couldn’t offer her more.
It was my cue to reassure him. Me and this brother... Mateo, we’d grown closer over the past year. Since Hope had been born and his beautiful baby girl had decided she liked me. Despite his rough ways and harsh tongue, he was sweet andyoungto bear the hand life had dealt him.
But he did bear with it, like a fuckin’ legend, every damn day, and sometimes he needed reminding of that.
I just couldn’t find the words. I couldn’t find anything except another wave of dismantling terror. Of fragility laced with the irrational, bitter hate I carried for this fuckin’ hospital. I felt cut up by it, from the inside out. My skin began to burn, my eyes like sandpaper. I became less a man and more a house of cards. As if a puff of wind would blow me down and I’d never get up.
Not without Nash.
Orla’s thigh was pressed to mine, her warmth and love seeping into me.
I rose like a robot and moved to lean on the wall instead.
She didn’t follow and I mourned the loss, all the while welcoming it. Cos I didn’t get to love her without him, right?
Wrong.I loved Orla. She was my fuckin’ queen.I need her.I wanted her. I couldn’t live this life without her. I couldn’tloveNash without her, cos she was Nash, and he was her. But I felt weak right now. Fractured. Fissured. I thought loving Logan—my brother, my twin—had prepared me for moments like this. That surviving nearly losing him meant I could survive anything.
But I was wrong about that too, and my naïvety was a slow fuckin’ death.
“Locke?”
I swung my head, eyes cloudy, unseeing. It took a brutal second for my vision to clear enough to see the auburn hair and green eyes of an old friend. “Gale? What the fuck are you doing here?”
Galen McCarthy stepped forward in full firefighter gear, minus his jacket, grime on his cheeks,concernbleeding from his handsome chiselled face. “What do you think I’m doing here? You’re on our patch. We attended the scene.”
The scene. My brain whirred, fighting to catch up. Galen was my brother’s best friend. His wingman on the job. If he’d attended the accident scene, that meant Logan had too.
“You were there?” Orla was suddenly beside me. “Did you see him? Did you see Nash?”
Galen read the room, absorbed our collective desperation. “I saw Nash—I was with him for a little while.”
“How was he? They won’t tell us anything until Rubi gets here.”
“Whoa. Fuck, I’m sorry.” Galen held up his hands. “I can’t tell you how he is now, just that he was awake and talking when I left him.”
“He was awake?”
“He was trapped?—
“Under what?”
Galen glanced my way, horrible empathy swimming in his bright green eyes. “The HGV. His leg was pretty snarled up, and there’s some injuries from the helmet doing its job. But his spine and his neck were good as far as I could see, and like I said, he was conscious—he knew what was going on.”
Orla sagged.