I was the only one still here. Her parents had paid for a guest room. The rest had gone to a hotel. But I wasn’t leaving. Not while she was here fighting for her life.

“She broke it up with Steel a couple of days after you left.”

“I figured it was something like that.” She paused, then added, “Charlotte said her heart stopped.”

The screaming, the sirens, the helicopter. I could still her them in my head. I’d never forget them. I knew I’d keep re-living the horror of those moments in my nightmares.

“She’s going to wake up, isn’t she?” Her words were both a question and a statement, a plea stemming out of her fear.

“She’ll wake up. Dixie is strong. You know that.” I had to believe that.

Scarlet nodded, but then frowned. “How long do I have? When do the others get here?”

“They’re all at a hotel with Momma. I expect they’ll be here in an hour. I can text Steel to let me know when they’re headed this way.”

“Is it that bad? Do you think I need to leave?”

I didn’t want her to feel like she couldn’t stay, but I knew her presence here would hurt my brothers even more at a time when they were already hurting. “They’ve come to blows. It didn’t fix things. They’re not the same, Scarlet.”

She hung her head and closed her eyes. “I wasn’t thinking. I should have never let Brent believe I loved him.” She shook her head as if to clear it and stood up. “But that’s not what is important now. Dixie is what’s important and when she wakes up, she will need you here. Not me. I’m going to go, but I won’t go far. I’ll ask Charlotte to keep me updated.”

This wasn’t easy for her. I knew that. I would have understood had she wanted to stay. All the drama with my brothers felt less important right now.

Scarlet hadn’t been gone long when my mom and brothers returned. Momma came to sit beside me and put a bag with what smelled like buttered biscuits and bacon in my lap. “Eat,” she said. “Won’t be as good as mine, but it’ll do. You need to eat.”

I didn’t have an appetite, but telling her that was pointless. She’d make me eat anyway. So I did as I was told.

“Heard anything?” Brent asked, sitting down in the seat Scarlet had been in not long ago.

I thought about telling him and Bray, but decided against it. “No,” I just answered.

Momma patted my leg. “I had Brent pull this condition she has up on the internet with that phone of his. I read about it. She one of the lucky ones. And she can live with this. Now that they know about it, they can keep a watch on it.”

I’d done the same. I had read everything I could find on my phone about this Syndrome. The doctor hadn’t been exaggerating when he said she was lucky. She’d shown no symptoms until she collapsed, and she could have easily died then had Charlotte not been there to see it and act fast.

Even once she was released, I didn’t know how I would ever let her out of my sight again. My fear of something happening to her again wasn’t going to go away overnight. I knew I had to deal with this.

Her mother walked into the waiting room. “They’ll be taking the ice away and warming her up today. The doctor said she is responding well. He feels good about it all so far.”

I felt both relieved and stressed even more. Something could go wrong. They weren’t talking about that, but I knew it could. I suddenly needed some air. I felt like the whole room was closing in on me.

“I’m going for a walk,” I said and headed for the door without looking back.

When I got outside the waiting room, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. She needed me to be strong for her. To believe she could do this. I wanted to be strong. But right now, all I wanted to do was cry. All I could think about was that I could lose her. That fear was slowly choking me.

The door behind me then opened and while I expected to see my mother walking through it, my eyes found Charlotte. I got myself together. She didn’t need to see me breaking down. She was scared as it is and I didn’t need to add to it.

“Sorry. My family can be too much sometimes,” I said, wondering if she was needing to get away from them too.

She smiled. “They’re fine. Great, really. Having all of you here means a lot.”

Several of the people from their church had come by, including the pastor. They’d brought flowers and snacks. But no one had stayed overnight. Dixie’s aunt was in town, as was her grandmother. They’d come yesterday and said they would be back today.

“I can’t leave her.”

Charlotte nodded. “And if it were you in there, she wouldn’t be able to leave you either. She’d be much like you are now, doing all she could to hold herself together. The two of you,” she smiled to herself before continuing. “You’ve been dancing around each other since you were kids. You worried you were too old, she worried you’d never see her for more than a little girl. Then when you finally come together, those letters appear and ruin it all. So many obstacles. So much pain. Yet here you are. Not leaving this hospital. That’s what happens when you know you’ve found the one. I once told her you weren’t it. That there was someone else out there for her. I wanted it to be true because I wanted her to have a chance to be happy. But I see now she knew better. You two make a whole. Knowing she found that, that she found you at such a young age, gives me hope that she will fight to open her eyes. That she will fight to live. That she will fight to come back to us.”

Asher Sutton

THE WAITING ROOM was slowly filling up. I’d woken up here for the third morning in a row to find more and more people from Malroy arriving. The girls from the salon, Norton Knolls and his wife, Denver Watson, even Amber and Hannah, as well as faces that were familiar but I couldn’t place. I kept my head down, mostly, lost in my thoughts. They’d be waking her up today. Or trying to. The doctor had said there was a chance she would go into her own coma and then we’d have to wait it out. I wanted to see her eyes. God, I wanted to hold her hand and promise her that we’d get to be all she wanted us to be. I would bust my ass to make sure the past three years became a distant memory for her.

As nice as it was that these people were here offering their support to Luke and Charlotte, I wished they’d all go away. The voices around me were grating on my nerves. I needed silence. I needed to think of all the ways I would try to make Dixie happy.

“Brent said you haven’t left at all.” Hannah had kept her distance until now, but she had worked her way over to me.

I nodded. What was I supposed to say to that? Of course I hadn’t fucking left.

“Can I go get you something?”

This wasn’t the Feed and Seed. This wasn’t a lunch break. It was the damn hospital. Did she think a sandwich would make it all better?

“No,” I knew I was being rude, but I couldn’t get myself to care. Dixie might never wake up and I’d be here eating a damn sandwich.

She didn’t say anything after that. She just sat there beside me in silent support. But I kept thinking that Dixie wouldn’t want her there beside me. I needed her to go. Talk to someone else. Leave me alone.

“Asher, go with me to get a coffee.” Bray was suddenly standing in front of us, looking down at me. He knew I needed some space and Hannah didn’t seem to get that.