POV: Jasmine
The door closed behind me.
The room was dim and full of the small mechanical sounds of a body being kept.
A low hum from the machine on the far wall. A slow electronic beat that came from somewhere near his head and was, I understood, his heart. A second softer rhythm that was the ventilator.
The light above the bed was a single tilted lamp angled away from his face, so that the part of him I could see was lit only at the edges.
He was Liam.
That was the thing. They had told me what to expect — the tubes, the bandage that ran from above his ear down past the line of his jaw, the bruising under both eyes. None of it prepared me for the version that was true.
He was Liam, and he was somewhere in there, and that was worse.
I took the chair by the bed and pulled it toward him until my knees were touching the mattress. I sat down. The dress made its quiet ridiculous sound under me.
I took his hand.
It was warm. The fingers had the specific weight of his hand, the small thicker pad at the base of his thumb where he had broken it twice as a boy. The long careful hands that had touched my face in the dark for years now.
I pressed my forehead against the back of his knuckles for one second.
Then I sat up. I made myself sit up.
I did not know if he could hear me. I was not going to spend the time I had on that question.
"Hi," I said, and my voice cracked on the single syllable like something had come loose inside the word. "It is me. I am here." I drew a breath.
"Aurora is in the corridor, asleep on Finn. She still has the rabbit — she has had it for two days now. I had to peel her fingers off it this morning to get her into the dress."
I cleared my throat and kept going, because stopping was not something my body knew how to do in this room.
"The dress, Liam. You have not seen the dress. I should have shown it to you. I know the rule. I broke it a hundred times this week in my head and not once out loud, because I wanted you to see it for the first time when I came down the path." I ran my thumb across his knuckles.
"I am going to tell you about it now. I am going to assume you are listening." His chest rose and fell on the rhythm the machine was making.
"It is white," I said. "It is silk. Narrow at the waist. It falls straight to the floor without a train, because I told them not to give me one. Small buttons up the back — Nora did them this morning. No sleeves. My mother's earrings. The hem is full of pins. I can feel them on the floor." I drew a breath.
"It is not the right dress, Liam," I told him, and the telling felt like pulling a splinter out of the centre of my chest.
"The first dress tore. The second was wrong. The third was the wrong colour. The fourth was the wrong shape. I was tired and scared of something I could not name and I took the fifth one because it was fine."
I lifted his hand and pressed it gently against my cheek.
"It mattered. I should have taken more time. I should have called you. I did not, and now I am sitting here in the fine dress, and you have not seen it, and that is a thing I am going to carry."
I held his palm against my face. Then I lowered it back to the sheet.
"Liam," I said, and my voice found something underneath the steadiness I had been performing, something raw and open and closer to the floor than to the ceiling. "I have something to tell you. I am going to say it once." I tightened my hands around his.
"I am not ready. I have never been ready for anything." I swallowed.
"I was not ready when I walked into Cadence on my first day. I was not ready when I walked into a room of three men who had bought me. I was not ready when Leo called me from the floor of his apartment." I leaned closer.
"I was not ready when I held our daughter for the first time and she was small enough to fit on my chest and she was looking at me. I was not ready for any of it, Liam, and I did all of it."
I leaned forward until my mouth was near his ear.
"But I am not as strong as I pretend to be," I whispered. "You know that. You have always known that." I closed my eyes.
"I can do this alone if I have to. I can raise her. I can run the company. I can sit in rooms and read faces and close folders and walk out. I can do all of it." My voice broke.
"But Liam — I do not want to. I do not want to do any of it without you." I pressed my forehead against his shoulder.
"I want you beside me when she loses her first tooth and when she starts school and when she is sixteen and furious and will not speak to either of us. I want your hand on my back when I walk into rooms I am afraid of. I want Tuesday mornings. I want years and years of the ordinary ones." I sat back. I held his hand with both of mine.
"So you need to come back. Not because I cannot do it. Because I can, and I will, and it will cost me everything, and I would rather do it with you." I stopped.
I did not tell him he was going to be fine. I did not tell him he was strong, or that he was a fighter. I did not lie to him. I had not lied to him in years.
I told him about Aurora's day instead. The bird that had been a leaf. The two kinds of yellow cheese. The rabbit she had named Mister, when she had decided rabbits were boys until proven otherwise.
I told him about Leo's ring. About Nora's braid. About the fireworks he had ordered.
I told him I had cried in the car on the way down the hill and I had not let anyone see. I talked until I had nothing left to say. Then I stopped.
The machines kept going. His hand was still in mine. The lamp flickered once and steadied.
I watched his face. I looked for the small movements he made in his sleep — the twitch of an eyelid, the way the corner of his mouth softened when he was almost dreaming.
I did not see them. I sat with the absence of them.
The ventilator pushed a slow breath into him. His chest rose. His chest fell.
"Liam," I said, very quietly, after a long time. I lifted his hand and held it there with both of mine.
"You would have said I looked beautiful," I whispered.
I did not let go of his hand.