Deception. Betrayal. Mistrust.
It seems the closer Rayne gets to the truth, the more she finds herself wanting to run away from it. It's complex and terrifying-more than she ever fathomed.
New family members, good and bad, pop out at her like a br...
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ONE WEEK LATER: 𝗠averick hesitated a second, hovering his knuckles above the white rim of the hospital room threshold as he gazed into it. Antiseptics and medical sterilization filled the brims of his nostrils but that wasn't what currently captured his attention.
Staring out the window with a shield of blonde hair, strands that effortlessly blew from the open window to her left, was Eden. Magnificent at best, looking as strong as she had the day he found her rummaging on the streets, no one would've guessed she'd been knocking on death's door a minor three weeks ago with injuries she shouldn't have survived.
When he'd received the call that she was going to die within the hour, he had sprinted to the hospital without a care for his then-current transgressions. Everyone present at the fight had to get their ass in the van or he was leaving them—and it didn't help that the cops had been on their trail not long after.
Yet by some miracle, Eden pulled through.
"I can feel you watching me," she spoke, her voice barely a whisper.
Parts of debris and chunks of cement that came with the explosion had landed on her throat during the battle, crushing her windpipe almost entirely and knocking out her smooth ability to communicate through speech. She had undergone a few surgeries since then to repair the damage, and while she wasn't at one hundred percent anymore, she was at a place that allowed her to feel somewhat normal—to remind her that she wasn't a broken vase.
"Are those for me?"
Maverick's lips curved into a broad smile, one that touched his eyes, as he lowered his hand and grasped onto the flowers he'd bought her with both. A few red roses, a couple pink, and a handful of yellow; three things that brought happy memories of her to his head, and also allowed him to breathe—to remember that his only family was still walking this Earth by his side.
"They are," he finally answered.
Eden tucked her fingers underneath the thin hospital blanket and pushed it down, pulling her legs out to sit nicely on the edge of the mattress. He tried not to let his eyes linger for too long on the brown bag now surgically attached to her abdomen as he entered the room further and placed the flowers in her fingers, swallowing his thoughts as she beamed at them.
She had sustained more than five stab wounds to the stomach, all of which hadn't been inherently fatal on their lonesome, but caused enough damage to ruin her large intestine. In order to save her life, the doctors begged him for his permission to remove it; he almost decided against it.
But he was a selfish boy—he always had been.
He'd rather her here with him in pieces than up above and put together.
"How are you managing?"
Eden looked up, "With the pain or the colostomy b-bag?"
