“Do you know where you are?”
“Hospital.”
“Do you know what happened?”
My throat tightened.
“My father hit me with a brick.”
The doctor’s eyes changed—not with shock, but with a controlled kind of anger.
“All right. We’re going to take care of you.”
Wyatt appeared beside the stretcher, his shirt torn at the shoulder and his hands scratched from the rose bushes.
“I’m her fiancé.”
A nurse tried to stop him.
“You need to wait outside.”
“No.” I reached blindly for him. “Please.”
Wyatt caught my hand.
“I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m not leaving.”
They cut away part of my dress to check for other injuries. A nurse cleaned blood from my neck while another placed an IV in my arm. The ceiling blurred whenever I tried to focus.
I could still see my mother’s smile.
I could still hear Melanie saying, “I told you she wouldn’t move.”
Dr. Hart examined my left eye carefully.
“Sadie, your eyelid is badly swollen. I need you not to force it open.”
“Am I blind?”
“We don’t know yet.”
The fear that entered my chest was so sharp that for a moment it hurt worse than my broken face.
Wyatt squeezed my hand.
“No matter what happens, I’m here.”
I turned my right eye toward him.
His face was pale. His jaw trembled with rage. There was blood on his cuff—my blood.
“My mother said you wouldn’t love me anymore.”
His expression broke.
“Don’t listen to her.”
“She said—”
