Chapter 293
The storm had turned the world into a blur of grey and charcoal, rain lashing against the reinforced glass of the VIP suite like handfuls of gravel. Inside, the only sounds were the rhythmic beep of the cardiac monitor and the soft hiss of the oxygen regulator.
Eliza sat in the stiff hospital chair, her spine pressed against the hard plastic. Her phone lay dark in her lap. She had blocked Anson’s number three minutes ago, but his voice still echoed in her ear, oily and insinuating. Project Nightingale. The name felt heavy, like a stone swallowed whole.
She watched Dallas.
Sleep had smoothed the lines of pain from his forehead, but it hadn’t erased the pallor of his skin. He looked like a fallen statue — marble-white and broken. His left leg was elevated in a complex traction sling, the metal pins catching the faint light from the hallway. His chest rose and fell in a shallow, guarded rhythm, protecting the fractured ribs beneath the bandages. But she noticed something else — an unnatural stillness to him, a frailty that seemed excessive even for a car crash. He looked diminished.
Then the rhythm broke.
Dallas’s head snapped to the side. His brow furrowed, a sheen of sweat breaking instantly across his upper lip. His fingers, resting on the sterile white sheet, curled into a claw.
“No,” he mumbled. The word was a jagged exhale. “Don’t…”
The heart monitor picked up the distress at once. The steady beeping accelerated into a frantic, staccato warning. 110. 125. 138.
Eliza stood up, her chair scraping against the linoleum. “Dallas?” She reached for his shoulder. “Dallas, wake up.”
He didn’t wake up. He went deeper.
“Stop the car!” he shouted, his voice raw and terrifyingly loud in the small room. His eyes were squeezed shut, trapped in a loop of memory. “Eliza! Don’t get in!”
He was back in the rain. Back in the moment he believed he had lost her to Anson.
“I’m here,” Eliza said, her voice trembling. She took his hand, trying to pull him back to the surface. “Dallas, it’s a dream. I’m right here.”
The moment her skin touched his, he reacted with the instinct of a cornered soldier. His hand shot up and locked around her wrist — not a lover’s grip, but a desperate, weakened vice, his knuckles white with a strain that made the muscle in his jaw jump. He tried to pull her closer, a motion immediately cut short by a sharp, agonized gasp as the movement jarred his broken ribs.
“You left,” Dallas hissed, his eyes flying open.
They were unseeing. The pupils were blown wide, swallowing the iris. He wasn’t looking at her — he was looking through her, at a ghost in a rainy parking lot.
“You chose him,” he rasped, his breath hitching. “Because I’m broken. Because I’m this.” He gestured violently with his free hand toward his suspended leg. “Because I’m failing.”