Brothers of Paradise Series

Bright lights on a dark road that I couldn’t evade.

The sound of metal bending and breaking as we’re rammed by a truck. Lily’s weight in my arms as I drag her out of the wreckage. The car so bent I had to force my door off the frame to open it.

Lily’s mother is the first to arrive at the hospital. Eloise is still in her pajama bottoms, a frantic look in her eyes. Parker is right behind her.

He looks the way I feel-hollow inside.

The questions are relentless. No, Lily wasn’t conscious, and yes, I had been the one driving. No, I didn’t know what happened. The truck had come out of nowhere.

Parker grabs my shoulder and shoots me a wild, bloodshot look. “Thank God you’re all right, man.”

“Yeah. Yeah…”

“Do you know when she’ll be out?”

“No. They said family only, so they haven’t told me anything…”

Mrs. Marchand’s eyes narrow to slits. It’s a look I’ve seen before, in her daughter. It’s only a matter of minutes before we’re escorted down to the room being prepared for Lily.

She’ll be out of surgery in mere minutes, they say, and so far everything’s good-but the following days will be crucial.

Crucial.

The word bounces around in my head. How did I only have a few fractured ribs and she has to fight for her life?

When Lily is finally rolled into the room, her face is pale and serene, as if she’s just sleeping. Her hair frames her face, devoid of makeup or her usual teasing smile. She looks so young like that.

Like Sleeping Beauty, who only needs a kiss to be woken up. Instead, she’s sedated and fighting for her life.

I choke back my fear and nausea.

Commotion in the hallway makes all of us turn our heads, Eloise most of all. Then I recognize the voice.

“Where is she?”

“Down here, sir. Sorry. Let me just-”

More words are exchanged, muffled by the thick walls, before a livid Mr. Marchand comes through the door. He’s wearing a suit and carrying his overnight bag, and his expression wracks guilt through my body.

His face crumbles the second he sees his daughter.

I stand in the corner and watch as they crowd around Lily in the bed. Please, I pray. Please, please, make sure she’s all right.

They ask me to explain it to them. Exactly what happened-why she’s lying in that hospital bed, connected to tubes and wires.

“He was on the wrong side of the road,” I say, my voice cracking. There had been a lot of smoke.

“Speak up, son.”

“A truck. On the wrong side of the road.” I shake my head, trying to clear it, and I’m rewarded with a thunderous ache. “I don’t know why. Maybe he fell asleep at the wheel… I tried to swerve, but I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. It hit… it hit us straight on the passenger side.”

Lily’s mother gives me a weepy look and reaches out to rest her hand on my shoulder. It’s the one that’s bruised, but I know she doesn’t know that.

“Are you okay, Hayden?”

I don’t deserve her sympathy, not with her daughter only a few feet away and fighting for her life. “I’m fine.”

She nods and turns away. I can tell that I’m forgotten the instant her eyes fall on her youngest child, her only daughter. Lily looks like a doll in the giant hospital bed.

Her father is still looking at me. “What were you doing out so late?”

“Driving.” The glare of the truck’s headlights flash before me. “We just wanted to… to get away for a while.”

His eyes narrow, and I know exactly what he’s seeing in that moment. He’s seeing everything. My pathetic longing for his daughter, her sweetness being taken advantage of. Making her stay out too late.

Considering not applying to Yale.

Crashing a car with her in it.

If I could sink through the floor with shame I would.

There’s a low groan from the bed and he turns away from me. Lily isn’t conscious, her eyes still shut, but she’s making noise. My heart feels like it might burst from the mingled fear and relief.

Over the next week, one after another, her family and friends appear. Rhys, white with worry. Parker is there daily, his shirt buttoned wrong. Henry is the picture of calm and composure, but when he thinks no one is looking, I see his jaw tense with fear. Jamie stops by with cookies but breaks down in tears at the sight of Lily. Parker consoles her, his own face drawn tight with worry.

All because of me. I caused all this.

So I sit by, gripping the armrest of the chair in the corner as I watch her family crowd around her in the hospital bed.

It takes a long, long time for her to wake.

But eventually she does.

Hayden

The present

After the greenhouse, I go home to my empty house, my empty bed, my empty life, filled with regrets.

Fuck.

We were doing everything in the wrong order. It didn’t matter that it had been… well, the most life-changing, soul-altering sex of my life. Being with Lily again-being inside her-was nothing short of a religious experience.

But she’d run out of there like she was chased by the devil.

And I was him.

Of all the times I’d dreamed of being with Lily again-fantasizing about it-it had always been in a bed, for starters. It had been sweet and gentle, and she’d moaned my name against my lips. I would make her shatter over and over again with my mouth before I’d push inside her, making sure she was on fire and begging me to.Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.