“Your family is already trying to get tickets back here. Hayley and her family are coming, too. They’ll call me when they have something.”

And that time, it looked like she hadn’t even heard me. Instead of pushing it, I just sat back and waited.

When another thirty minutes went by without her saying anything or looking in my direction, I slowly stood from my chair. My chest ached, but I didn’t know what to do.

I stared at the back wall and swallowed a few times before I trusted myself to speak. “I guess I’ll, uh, I’ll let you rest.”

Harlow didn’t respond, but when I turned to leave, I saw the tears falling down her cheeks.

“What’s wrong?” I asked softly, and tried to rein in my frustration when she still didn’t answer. I sat on the edge of her bed, gripped her chin gently in my fingers, and turned her head so she was looking at me. “Come back to me,” I begged, and the ache in my chest grew when her chin began quivering and a sob forced its way up her throat.

“I killed him,” she said between muted sobs. “I killed him, Knox.”

I gripped her hand in mine, and exhaled in relief when I felt her squeeze back. “He was going to kill you,” I reminded her. “He tried to kill you.”

“But I don’t want to have this on me,” she cried out, and lifted her hands up, as if Collin’s blood would be there. “I don’t want to know that I took someone’s life—no matter what the reason! And I—” She broke off, and sobbed as she shook her head.

“You what?”

Long moments passed as she continued to cry and shake her head while murmuring, “I was ready to die.” Harlow eventually looked up at me and shrugged, like she didn’t know how to explain it. “I knew it was happening, and I knew it was how it was supposed to happen. I was okay with it. I knew you were going to be okay, and I was okay. I hate that I was okay! What does that mean for me?”

“Nothing,” I assured her, and pulled her close.

“You don’t understand,” she whispered, like she was ashamed. “I smiled. I smiled because I knew it was all as it should’ve been. What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing,” I repeated, and held her as she cried everything away. During that time she started relaxing into me and clinging to me, now that she’d finally let her worries out.

It felt like hours had passed when she said, “I don’t know how to feel about it all. I feel wrong . . . broken.”

I smiled and corrected her. “Cracked.” Pulling back enough so I could tilt her head up, I searched her eyes and promised, “But I’m going to fix it. I love you, Harlow.”

She smiled shakily, and one hand lifted to frame my mouth as she leaned in to kiss me. But just before her mouth met mine, she vowed, “To the stars.”

Chapter 23

Harlow

Present Day—Richland

“WHO SAID WE were leaving?”

“Family only? Don’t we look like family? We’re her brothers, we’re practically triplets,” Deacon said, and imitated Graham’s intimidating stance.

“This is no longer about family; visiting hours are about to be over,” the older nurse said sternly.

She was met with twin looks of indifference. “And?” Graham finally said.

The nurse’s eyes bounced back and forth between the two, then over to Knox, and then to me.

I had to fight back a smile. “I’m sorry, but the other nurse said she was getting my discharge papers?”

“Right, because we’re leaving and taking our sister with us,” Deacon said arrogantly.

“Deac,” Knox murmured, then shook his head once when he had Deacon’s attention.

When she left with an exaggerated huff, Deacon turned and asked, “Where’s the nurse from earlier? The hot one,” he clarified. “She needs to come back; she didn’t question us being in here.” He snorted, then mumbled to himself, “Like we’re just gonna leave without you.”

I shook my head as Graham studied the monitors even though I was no longer hooked up to them, and Deacon started on his definition of “family.” I looked at Knox and we both mouthed, “Mother hens.”

There was a quick knock on the door a couple of minutes later, and Knox cursed. “If you got security called on us, I will never forgive you,” he said as Deacon went to answer the door.

“We’re not leaving,” Deacon said as he swung the door open. “Have a nice night!”

The door was halfway shut on my parents’ confused faces before I could yell, “Wait!”

“Harlow!” my mom cried out, and pushed past the door. My dad and Hadley followed, and a sharp cry burst from my chest seeing my sister so much better than she’d been just the day before.

Knox mumbled something, and he and my mother hens all stepped closer to my bed in unison—as if to protect me from my family—but I just looked at the doorway expectantly.

“Where’s Hayley?”

“She and the family are getting a hotel for all of us so we don’t have to worry about it when you can get out,” Mom explained as she hurried to my side. She grabbed my hand and sat on the side of the bed as her eyes roamed all over my body. “Oh, sweetie, how could you not tell us?”

Graham scoffed, and Knox sneered, “How could you not notice?”

“Knox,” I whispered, hoping he would get the hint.

“I knew within seconds of—”

“Knox,” I said harder, and held his stare for a moment. “I had a role I had to play in front of them. I couldn’t let them see what he was doing to me.”

My mom held my hand up, and gently ran the fingers from her other hand over my arm and across my knuckles. She sobbed freely as she studied me. “You’re so thin, Harlow. So thin,” she whispered. “You look so sick,” she continued, but it sounded like the words were meant for her. Her eyes fell over my face, and her next words were so soft they were nearly inaudible. “Your cheeks . . . your collarbones. Your eyes looks so—oh, honey!”

The need to defend my family was suddenly gone. I knew that other than the bandages on my forehead and the fact that I was lying in a hospital bed, I couldn’t look much different from when I’d seen them yesterday, or even a few months ago. But she wasn’t mentioning the bandages. My mom was mentioning things that had been noticeable for years. Physical parts of me I’d worried endlessly over every time I’d been near any member of my family, because I’d known they could give something away. Physical parts of me that I’d made myself sick over with the worry that they would see something they weren’t supposed to.