She says we’re fine.

But she’s hiding something.

She seems okay. No bruises I can see, and she moves without pain. If she was in the accident with me, then she got off light, and that’s fucking great.

The accident…I can’t remember what happened. I hit my head.

I lift my hand to the bandage.

How…? What sort of accident was I in? Fuck, I’m sure someone told me what happened, but I can’t… can’t remember.

I rub at my forehead harder, wishing I could jab a stick into my brain and jumpstart it. Oil the engine. Do something to jog my sluggish memory.

Her small hand on my face startles me. She’s sitting on the bed, leaning so close I could kiss her. “It’s all right,” she whispers, and all I can see is her lips, soft and warm.

Hey, she’s my girl, right?

So I lean right in and kiss her, tasting her mouth, cupping the back of her head in my hand, pulling her closer to me. Fuck, I missed her taste, sweet and sexy.

Feels like years since I last kissed her.

So weird.

Even weirder though is that she breaks away with a cry, pushing me away, and jumping off my bed.

“I can’t do this,” she whispers, tears rolling down her cheeks, and runs out of the room.

If I had my suspicions before, now I know without the shade of a doubt that something’s definitely one hundred percent fucking wrong, and I need to find out what it is so that I can fix it.

And make my girl smile again.

* * *

Time passes. Nurses come in and go out. The pain in my head increases, then ebbs.

Hailey doesn’t come back.

I try sitting up but I’m so damn dizzy I throw up and then the nurses bustle in again and tuck me back into bed.

So fucking tired. “Where’s Hailey?” I ask them, but they shake their heads at me and tsk and check my IV and the darkness closes over me before I get an answer, dammit.

I float away on a flood of blackness, an oil slick that slithers under my body, writhing like a plague of rats, carrying me on their backs.

This is hell.

Where’s Hailey? I try to call out her name but my voice is gone, my throat clogged with fur, with nails, with tails. I’m choking, on words I should have spoken, promises I should have made, calls I should have put through to her.

Come back, Hailey.

Where did she go?

Why did she miss me?

Why do I miss her so fucking much? It’s as if she’s been away from me for far too long. But she was here a second ago.

An hour ago.

A week ago.

Months.

I’m sinking under, going deep, so deep I can’t breathe, I can’t see the surface, and all I want, all I need is her hand on my face, her head on my chest.

How can I get her back?

* * *

“He’s been asking for you,” a voice says from somewhere on my left, and I struggle to wake up. It’s like wading through quicksand. It keeps sucking me back down. “In his sleep.”

“I only came to say goodbye,” she replies.

Hailey.

The sound of her voice jolts me like an electric current, and I open my eyes. “Hay,” I rasp, my voice like broken glass.

I reach for her, but she seems too far away. I try to sit up but my head is too heavy to lift. Goddammit! Groaning, I try to roll on my side, push myself up so that I can swing my legs off the bed and—

“Jesus, Kaden, don’t!” Hailey hurries around the bed and puts a firm hand on my chest, keeping me still.

Damn, I have to be really bad off if Hailey can keep me pinned down like this.

“Don’t. Go.” My throat burns, raw as if I’ve been yelling in my sleep.

Maybe I have. I remember yelling for her.

She sits on the bed, her pretty mouth downturned, her eyes red. Has she been crying? “I have to go, Kade.”

“But why? Go where?” I don’t understand. My head really fucking hurts and my heart is booming so hard I might break a rib. “Hay. Talk to me, dammit.”

She flinches and turns her face away from me.

Shit, I didn’t mean it to come out like that, but hell, I’m at my wits’ end here. “Just… talk to me? Please?”

I fucking hate how miserable she looks. I put my hand on her leg and she sighs, her chestnut hair falling in her dark eyes. I itch to stroke it back, tuck it behind her ears, like I did before…

Before what?

“It’s… never mind.” She rubs a hand over her mouth and I remember its taste. “I, uh. I’ll come by again tomorrow, okay? Let you rest.”

“I don’t need to fucking—” I grind my teeth and swallow my anger. She’s not the cause of it. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing, I… Nothing you can do about it, Kade.” She glances at me, a quick look from under her long lashes, as if checking that I’m accepting what she says. “Everything will be fine.”

Not that everything is fine. But that it will be. What does she mean?

But I don’t ask again, and I don’t curse, because I don’t want that scared look in her eyes again, and I don’t want her to go.

I don’t want her to leave. I need her here, with me. My nightmare still has a chokehold on me, and I can’t breathe unless I can see her and touch her and know she’s okay.

And if that doesn’t classify me as a certifiable crazy person, then I don’t know what does.