Page 131 of Falling Into Forever
“What about us?” I have no idea why I say it, but when I do, he graces me with a dimple I can’t look away from.
“What about us, Sayls? We’re just getting started.”
Trouble.
I am in trouble.
“This is no exaggeration,” Alice says to Grady and Ainsley somewhere behind me. “She’s been talking for two days straight. She hasn’t slept, or if she has, she’s kept on talking, and she hasn’t eaten. I did get her to drink some ginger ale, but that was only because she lost her voice. And do you know what that girl did?”
“She kept talking because she believes he heard the words anyway,” my sister says.
“Yes!” Alice is totally distraught, but she doesn’t need to be. I’ll stop talking when Dante wakes up. Because he will wake up—he will. “I’m worried it’s my fault,” she whispers. “I’m the one who told her to tell him a story.”
“No, Alice,” Grady says gently. “She’s the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met.”
This makes me crack a smile. “Do you hear them talking about me like that?” I say into Dante’s ear. “The nerve of them.”
He smiles. Dante freaking smiles. I scream so loudly, poor Alice almost has a heart attack.
“He smiled. Dante smiled. I told him a secret, and he smiled.”
Alice and Ainsley wear matching expressions I don’t like at all.
“What?” I demand. “I know what I saw.”
“I’m sure you did,” my sister consoles while Alice rounds the bed and checks Dante for signs of change.
“I did,” I say with less conviction.
“Sometimes the body has reflexes, Sass.”
“No. Stop it. I saw it. I did.”
“We’re going on thirty hours with no change…”
“Shut up. Shut the hell up and get out. All of you. Out. Now. I saw what I saw, and I will sit here telling him our story until we get the happily ever after we deserve.”
“Sass,” Grady says softly.
“Out.” I’m close to hysterical, so I pull myself together with every ounce of self-control I possess. “Just go, please.” I turn my back on my family and climb in bed next to Dante.
Screw what the doctors say—what anyone says. I know what I know, and I know that he promised to come back. I’m holding him to it.
I lie on my side so I don’t touch his wound or wires and return to our story.
“Part Two,” I say. “College. When Saylor showed up to her dorm room freshman year, she was surprised to find it already full of a hundred different kinds of poppy flowers. Okay,” I say, willing him to do it again—to do anything again. “This part I made up, but if you’d like to chime in and correct me at any time, you’re welcome to.” I stare and pray, then pray some more, but nothing changes.
So, I talk.
* * *
Lena cries softlyin the corner. “It’s been four days.”
Don’t cry, Lena, for fuck’s sake. Not in here. I’m trying to wake him up. You have to be more patient.
I raise my voice to drown them out. “Saylor held her book in her hands. Fear and hope were two sides of the same coin, but she’d been dying a little more each day. And she knew if she released this book into the world, it could change everything. She didn’t know if Dante would still want her, and that was the most painful truth she’d ever had to face.”
CHAPTER36
