“Have you been home at all the past two weeks?” Becca asked.

“Not particularly,” I said.

“Don’t you think you should go and get some rest? You look like hell.”

“I don’t know why I keep you around sometimes.”

“If anything, you need to go home and get a decent cup of coffee. The cafeteria coffee tastes like diesel fuel.”

“Hospitals claim to save people’s lives, not serve gourmet food,” I said.

“But decent coffee? With all the doctors and nurses that pull thirty six hour shifts? Come on.”

“Becca, can you be serious for a second?”

“You want to be serious? Okay. You’ve lost ten pounds, Alicia. You aren’t eating. You're barely sleeping. You’ve been in that same outfit for the past four days. You need to go home and clean yourself up.”

“If Ryder wakes up, I need to be here.”

“You’ve been saying that for the past week.”

“And I’ll say it for another week if I have to!”

I sighed as I put my head in my hand. Ryder has been unconscious for two weeks and the doctors were really beginning to worry. They kept asking me questions about long term care that I had no idea how to answer. Nurses asked me if anyone in his family needed to be contacted and the only thing I could tell them was what I knew from high school. That he wasn’t close to them and hadn’t talked to them in a long time. But even if he did have a good relationship with his parents, I had no idea how to contact them.

At all.

“Alicia?”

“What?”

“I need you to hear what I’m saying without getting angry,” Becca said.

“Why isn’t he waking up?” I asked with a whisper.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think anyone knows.”

“His brain isn’t swelling anymore. They removed the port. His plate and the screws in his head are healing nicely. It’s almost time for those stitches to start falling out. He should be awake, Becca. He should’ve been awake days ago.”

“Which is why I want to talk with you about living your life,” she said.

“Don’t do this,” I said with tears in my eyes. “Don’t do this now.”

“Just… hypothetically speaking. If Ryder doesn’t wake up-”

“He will wake up,” I said with a growl.

“But if he doesn't, listen to what I’m saying. You’re a divorced woman with a good chunk of change at her disposal and the prospects are endless. You could go anywhere. Do anything. Go back to school for your Master’s without digging yourself into debt. You could invest that money, get a decent job, and retire early. You could live off it for a few years and recuperate, then start again. The world is completely at your disposal.”

“When I know Ryder’s okay, I’ll start considering those things.”

“You need to start considering something now,” she said. “That money’s been sitting in your account for five days. You need to do something with it.”

“Why? Why does everything have to happen now? Why does every single thing in my life that needs to be planned out need to happen now?”

“Because you lost thirteen years being married to an asshole,” she said. “You deserve to be able to think freely about the future.”

“And I will. When I know Ryder’s all right.”

“There are so many things you could do. Get a house of your own. Find a job. Enroll into that Master’s program you were hell-bent on getting into. You could travel the world. Study abroad. Hell, you could settle in another fucking country.”

“Like you’d let me do that,” I said breathlessly.

“Girl, I’d be coming with you. No fucking doubt.”

I giggled and shook my head as I took another sip of the coffee. And Becca was right. The shitty coffee did taste like diesel fuel.

Good thing I had it loaded up with creamer and sugar.

“Becca, I don’t expect you to understand,” I said. “But Ryder is in the position because of me. He’s lying in a hospital bed wasting away because he agreed to protect me from Langley. He wanted to make sure no harm came to me while he tracked my ex down for a friend of his and he’s in a coma now because of it. I can’t just leave. Not after what he did for me. Not after sticking by my side. Not after the price he’s paid for it.”

“All I want is for you to-”

“The conversation is over,” I said curtly. “Either accept it and move on or die mad about it.”

I watched my best friend sigh as she leaned back into her chair. We drank the rest of our coffee in silence as my mind began to swirl. I wasn't leaving Ryder’s side until he woke up. And until the doctor’s told me differently, I wasn’t contemplating any other scenario other than him waking up. He stayed by my side through this entire ordeal. Ushered me into his own damn home to make sure he could keep me safe. Took a blow to the head, used every available resource at his disposal, and gave the whole of himself to keep me out of harm’s way.

No way in hell I was leaving him.

“Then let me ask you this,” Becca said.

“What?” I asked with a groan.

“What if he doesn’t wake up?”

I felt my lip beginning to quiver as tears rose to my eyes. It was a question I didn’t even want to entertain. Because in my mind, it wasn’t a possibility. Ryder dying from this wasn’t an option. It couldn't happen. Between the stories I kept swapping with Brendan and the reliving of our high school years I kept doing in my head while sitting at his side, I came to an understanding that took me days to stomach.

I’d never fully shaken Ryder out of my system.

I heard the scraping of a chair against the floor before I felt an arm slip around my shoulder. My cheek laid down into the crook of Becca’s neck as I began to cry. I felt my entire body slipping into an inconsolable rage as I began to shake.

It couldn't happen.

Ryder had to wake up.

“It’s okay,” Becca said. “I’m right here.”

“He has to wake up,” I said between my sobs. “He has to.”

“And I’m sure he will. He seems tough,” she said.

“He has to. Please. Please, Becca. Make him wake up.”

“I swear to you, Alicia. If I could make him, I would. I’d smack him right across his handsome fucking face and yell at him to open his eyes for you.”

“I can’t lose him,” I said breathlessly. “Don’t make me do that.”

I felt my best friend pressing kisses into the top of my head as the tears flowed freely. My arms wrapped around her and I practically pulled her into my lap. We sat there in the corner booth of the hospital cafeteria with empty styrofoam cups of coffee with nothing but the looming reality of the situation to occupy us.

What if Ryder didn’t wake up?

What if this was the end for him?

What if I never got the chance to tell him how much he still meant to me?

“It’s going to be okay, Alicia. I swear,” Becca said.

But until Ryder woke up, that wasn’t true. If Ryder didn’t wake up, it would never be true. Because I would never get to experience his lips upon mine again, or feel his warming grasp around my back. I’d never get to experience hearing him laugh or watching him read or lying next to him with the heat of the fireplace beating against our bodies.

I’d never get the chance to thank him for what he did for me.

And worse, I’d never get to tell him how I felt.

I would never get to tell him I still loved him.