if it would be okay for me to wait with her.
She hadn’t hesitated to tell me no. She told me to go home, that I’d done enough tonight, but it was Melody who convinced me that staying was a lost cause. Only seconds after her mom left the room to get the night nurse to escort me out, Melody moaned in her sleep and called out one name—Brian.
Brian. Brian, like it was the answer to every question. Brian, like he was the lost thing she’d been looking for.
I turned and walked out without another word. I stalked down the hall, out into the parking lot, and kept on walking along the shoulder of the dark road leading away from the hospital at the far southern edge of town.
It had taken two hours to reach the police station on foot, but I didn’t care. I wanted to walk, to be lulled into a thoughtless state by the repetitive rhythm of my footsteps and put the thoughts of losing Melody away until after I finished giving my statement about Seth’s attack to the police.
And now I’m finished and on my way home, and Melody is calling.
Why? To tell me it’s over and she’s back with Brian? To tell me she’s realized that tattoos and sudden love and guys like me aren’t for her? If so, I don’t think I can handle it, not now, after the exhausting, emotion-filled, sleepless night I just had.
I send her second call to voicemail and turn off my phone.
Too bad I can’t turn off my thoughts that easily…
Brooding all the way home, I curse myself for not refusing to tattoo her in the first place. Deep down, I’d known better, hadn’t I? Known that Melody was just going through a wild phase and would come to her senses sooner or later? Known that she would regret the tattoo and dating me and every other out-of-character thing she did during the however many months we would have lasted before our relationship imploded?
No. I hadn’t known better. Not even deep down.
That’s the worst part of all this. I had really believed Melody and I were made for each other and would go all the way—rings, marriage, kids, growing old together, the whole nine yards.
Now I can’t trust anything anymore—not Melody, not my heart, not even my gut, the one thing I used to assume would never let me down.
I reach the downtown area just as the coffee shops and diners are opening and duck into Donut Time, claiming a booth at the back. I order a bear claw and a bottomless cup of coffee and watch the people come and go for over an hour, dreading heading home, where John will be waking up soon, no doubt wanting an update on what happened at the hospital.
I called him last night while I was waiting to be seen by the ER doc to let him know what was going on. Now I wish I’d kept my mouth shut.
I don’t want to tell John that I wasn’t allowed to stay with Melody, or that her ex-boyfriend showed up at the hospital, or that I heard her call out Brian’s name in her sleep. I don’t want to lie down in my bed and know that the other side is going to be empty for the foreseeable future.
There’s no way Melody’s moving in with me now.
Finally, four cups of coffee later, I drag myself out of the booth and through the front door of the diner. I shuffle down the street toward home, feeling bruised all over and deciding that whoever named this sensation heartache was way off base.
This isn’t just in my heart. This is my entire body down to my bone marrow; an ache that gnaws away at my core.
I never imagined losing someone I love could be this physically painful, but it is, so bad that I decide to duck into the bodega and buy some extra strength painkiller before I head up the stairs to the apartment.
I’m so weary and sore and miserable that I’m past the bowling alley, nearly to the bodega’s entrance, before I see the blonde sitting on the curb in front of my building.
It’s her. She’s here.
Chapter 25
Nick
Hopeful wings flutter behind my ribs.
“Mel?” I ask, my voice cracking.
She looks up from her phone where she seems to have been stabbing in a text to someone. Our eyes meet, and hers narrow in a glare so intense that I flinch in response.
“What are you doing