His eyes flickered open the next instant, falling on where our hands were woven together. Following his gaze, I couldn’t determine which fingers were his and which were mine. Another piece of evidence for the Alice in Wonderland theory since his were rough, long man fingers and mine were skinny and soft, all girl fingers. Our hands had merged into one, creating its own Jude and Lucy. A Jucy or a Lude. The idea made me grin.

I felt his eyes move up, waiting for me to meet them. When I did, I wanted to set the world on fire and watch it burn for refusing to let me have this man.

His eyes grimaced with confusion as they scanned the room.

“You were hit, Jude. Hard,” I explained, gripping his hand like centrifugal forces were trying to tear us apart. I didn’t ease up because this time, his hand was gripping mine right back. “You blacked out, sustained a concussion, so the doctors put you into a coma so your brain could take its time recovering.” So much for the managed coma. But it shouldn’t have surprised me‌—‌Jude didn’t conform to social standards, a forced upon him coma no expectation.

“The hit I remember,” he said, reaching for his head. “The rest not so much.”

“God, Jude. I’m sorry,” I said, needing to say so much more.

“Sorry for what?” he said, inspecting the IV running into his arm. “That I was dumb enough to look in the opposite direction of a three hundred pound mamma-jamma who wanted to grind me into the astroturf? That was all my bad, Luce.”

“Yeah, but our fight,” I said, scooting closer to him when I should be moving in the opposite direction. “You wouldn’t have been so distracted if we hadn’t just gotten into it.”

“Luce. We fight. I’m used to that. Sure, that fight was the scariest ass one we’ve ever had, but you’re here now. That’s all that matters. No matter how many fights we have, or how much they tip the Richter scale, none of it matters as long as at the end of the day, you’re still with me.”

He shifted in bed, propping up onto his elbows. “And I wasn’t all that distracted from the fight. I was distracted by that D bag I was planning to torture as soon as the game was done.”

Smirking at me, the color began to bleed back into his face. “That was one hell of a phone spiral you launched onto the field. I’m going to start calling you Laser Rocket Arm. If coach saw that, he’s going to dump my sorry ass and drop you into the starting QB spot.”

I smiled at his forearm, tracing patterns over the lines of muscle and vein. “If you keep taking hits like that, you’ll be riding the bench for sure, Ryder.”

He snorted, like he didn’t only believe he was invincible, but he knew it. Lifting his hand to his neck, he searched for something below his gown. His expression dropped. “Where the hell is my necklace?” he said, sitting up in bed and searching the room.

“I don’t think you’ll find it glued to the ceiling,” I said when he investigated the white ceiling tiles.

“Where is it?” he asked, his voice tight.

“Jude,” I said, worried he’d been hit as hard as I’d been worried he had, “calm down. I’m sure it’s around. They probably took it off when you were in the ER and have it tucked into a drawer or something. We’ll find it.”

“Okay,” he said, exhaling, “you’re right. We’ll find it.” Collapsing back onto the bed, he looked exhausted.

“Since when did you start wearing a necklace?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t some huge gold chain with some hubcap sized eagle hanging from it.

“Since I started trying to get my act together,” he said.

“And that happened when?” I teased, narrowing my eyes at him.

He chuckled, that deep, throaty one of his that went right through me, vibrating everything in its journey. As it tapered off, his face twisted.

“What?” I asked, ready to push that red button resting on the table beside the bed.

“I was dreaming,” he said, his eyes going into that far-away place. “I remember it. That’s what woke me up.” One side of his face twisted up higher. “It was the same dream over and over again. I must have had it a thousand times and all I remember is wanting to break past that dream and wake up. But I couldn’t. Something was holding me down. Something was keeping me from waking up.”

That probably had something to do with a team of doctors forcing him into a coma. A coma that had lasted all of an hour.

“What was it about?” I asked, wanting to reach inside him and extract all the poison I could see eating him away.

His dark eyes flickered to mine. “You.”

I swallowed. “Me?” I tried to sound brave, but I’d never sounded so scared. “What was I doing?”

I already knew before he flinched out his answer.

“You were leaving,” he breathed, his arm covering his chest. “You left me. And you never came back, no matter how hard I ran after you or how loud I begged you to stop.” And it could have been the drugs, or the horrible lighting in a hospital room, but for the first time, Jude’s eyes looked like they could have spilled tears. “You left me.”

And now it was my face and my everything else that was twisting as words failed me. It wasn’t my consciousness that reacted next; it was my heart. The heart I’d been depriving for so long and had just busted free.

In one seamless movement, I was straddling his lap, covering his mouth with mine. I kissed him, God, like I’d never kissed him before. I couldn’t kiss him hard enough. I wanted his mouth to make me forget everything. I needed to forget reality for a while and pretend life was going to work out just the way I wanted it to.