Chapter 11: Care
The hospital private suite held a quality of suspended time. The world outside the window—Denver’s skyline under a flat, grey morning sky—felt like a painting, static and distant. Inside, the only movements were slow, careful. Lily’s shuffling steps from the bed to the armchair by the window. The steam curling from a mug of herbal tea. The turning of a page in a magazine someone had brought.
Andy had returned at seven a.m., looking like he’d slept for ten minutes. He carried a paper bag from a bakery. “Blueberry muffin,” he said, setting it on her tray. “They said it was easy on the stomach.”
She nibbled at it, the sweetness cloying but comforting. He took up his post on the sofa, a familiar statue of watchfulness. The silence between them wasn’t hostile; it was exhausted, a minefield temporarily neutralized by shared trauma.
The door swung open without a knock. Ronnie Radke breezed in, a blast of cold air and cigarette smoke clinging to his leather jacket. He held a small, black rectangular box. “Morning, patients. Brought you some entertainment.” He tossed the box onto Lily’s bed. It was a brand-new, high-end portable DVD player.
Lily picked it up, a faint smile touching her lips. “A DVD player? Ronnie, it’s 2023.”
“Yeah, and hospital Wi-Fi is shit, and you shouldn’t be staring at your phone yet. So, I went old school.” He pulled a handful of DVDs from inside his jacket, spilling them onto the blanket. The selection was aggressively Ronnie: a mix of vintage horror films, over-the-top action flicks, and a few documentaries about serial killers. “Figured you could use some distraction that doesn’t require brainpower. Also, The Thing is a masterpiece. It’ll take your mind off… you know.”
Andy raised an eyebrow. “The Thing? The body-horror paranoia flick? That’s your idea of comforting viewing?”
Ronnie shrugged, dropping into the other armchair. “It’s about a group of guys in an isolated place, dealing with an invisible threat by sticking together. Seems relevant. Minus the alien, hopefully.”
Lily actually let out a soft laugh. It was the first real sound of amusement Andy had heard from her in days. It was brittle, but it was there. “Thanks, Ronnie. Seriously.”
“Whatever. Just don’t die of boredom in here. It’s bad for your rep.” He leaned back, pulling out his phone. “I’m hanging for a bit. Ben’s doing a coffee run for the troops.”
True to his word, Ben arrived twenty minutes later with a carrier holding eight cups from a fancy local shop. He distributed them—black for Andy, some sugary concoction for Ronnie, a decaf vanilla latte for Lily. “Doctor said a little caffeine is fine, but we’re not pushing it.” He pulled up a chair. “How’s the pain?”
“Manageable,” Lily said. “Just a deep ache. The pills help.”
“Good. Eat your muffin.”
The morning settled into a strange, easy rhythm. Ben and Ronnie bickered amiably about setlists for upcoming tours. Andy mostly listened, interjecting occasionally. Lily sipped her latte and watched them, a quiet spectator to the normalcy they were trying to fabricate for her sake.
Matt Good and Max Green showed up just before noon. They didn’t come empty-handed. Matt carried a sleek, expensive-looking acoustic guitar case. Max had a small, velvet pouch.
“We thought you might be sick of staring at walls,” Matt said, opening the case. Inside was a beautiful, maple-bodied acoustic. “It’s tuned down a half-step. Nice and mellow. No pressure. Just if you want to feel some strings under your fingers.”
Lily’s eyes welled up. She reached out, her fingers brushing the polished wood. “That’s… Matt, this is too much.”
“It’s on loan,” he said with a wink. “From my personal collection. You give it back when you’re back on your feet and playing your own.”
Max stepped forward, uncharacteristically solemn. He opened the velvet pouch and tipped a single, heavy pendant into his palm. It was a dark, smooth stone—maybe obsidian or jet—carved into a simplified, abstract helix, wrapped in a cage of blackened silver wire. It hung from a thick leather cord. “This is from both of us,” he said, his voice unsteady. “It’s not… religious. Just a thing. For protection. For grounding. We heard you lost… you know. This is supposed to represent, like, life force. Continuity.” He looked embarrassed by his own explanation. “It’s stupid. You don’t have to wear it.”
Lily took the pendant. The stone was cold and heavy in her hand. She understood. It was an amulet. A tangible wish for healing, crafted by men who spoke more readily through music or sarcasm than through sentiment. “It’s not stupid,” she whispered. She looped the cord over her head. The stone settled against her sternum, a cool, solid weight. “Thank you.”
The presence of the guitar changed the room’s energy. Later that afternoon, after Matt and Max had left, Lily picked it up. She didn’t play a song. She just let her left hand form slow, simple chords—Em, C, G, D—while her right thumb plucked arpeggios. The sound was soft, resonant, and human. It pushed back against the sterile silence.
Andy watched her from the sofa. Her head was bent, her hair a curtain hiding her face. Her fingers, though slightly weak, moved with muscle memory. This was her language, far more than words. He saw her breathing deepen, synchronizing with the rhythm she was creating. For a few minutes, she wasn’t a patient. She was a musician again.
The door opened softly. Danny Worsnop and James Cassells slipped in, followed by Bobby Schubenski. They froze on the threshold, listening. Lily looked up, her fingers stilling on the strings.
“Don’t stop,” James said quietly. “Sounds good.”
They gathered around. Danny pulled the desk chair over. Bobby leaned against the wall. James sat on the floor. They became an impromptu, silent audience. Lily went back to it, this time weaving a minor-key progression that was melancholy but not despairing. It filled the room.
When she finally set the guitar down, her fingers were tired, but her eyes were clearer. “That’s all I’ve got,” she said.
“It was perfect,” Danny said. He’d been uncharacteristically quiet since the plane. Now, he rubbed a hand over his face. “Look, Lil… we’ve all been talking. Out there. About the tour, the schedules.” He glanced at Andy, then back at her. “We’re pushing everything back. Black Veil dates, Asking Alexandria stuff, all of it. Two weeks. Minimum.”
Lily stared at him. “You can’t do that. The fans. The venues. The money—”
“It’s done,” James stated, his voice leaving no room for argument. “Management is dealing with it. ‘Unexpected logistical issues.’ It happens. The world doesn’t end. What matters is you have time to recover without the clock screaming in your ear.”
“But your guys…” Lily said, looking at Andy.
“My band agrees,” Andy said. He’d known about the discussions but hadn’t told her, wanting it to be a done deal before she could argue. “Jake, Jinxx, CC, Lonny… they all know. They’re cool. Everyone’s cool.”
The magnitude of it sank in. These men, with their careers and commitments, had collectively decided to hit pause. For her. The guilt was immense, but so was the humbling, awe-inspiring wave of loyalty. She had no words.
Bobby spoke from his spot by the wall. “We’ve all been in the shit before. You don’t leave someone in the shit. You just don’t.”
Later, after the room had cleared again, the evening shift arrived in the form of Mitch Lucker. He didn’t bring gifts or music. He brought presence. He nodded at Andy, then went to the window, staring out with his hands in his pockets. After a long while, he spoke without turning.
“The silence is the worst part, isn’t it?” His voice was low, almost inaudible. “Not the pain. The quiet afterwards. When everyone leaves and you’re just alone with the ‘what if.’” He finally looked at her. “It eats at you. You have to find a noise to drown it out. Or it will.”
Lily held his gaze. Mitch wasn’t talking about a miscarriage. He was talking about a lifetime of fighting internal demons. He was offering a hard-won, bleak piece of advice from one survivor to another. “What’s your noise?” she asked.
“The stage. The van. The next city. The next drink.” He gave a grim, half-shrug. “Some are healthier than others. You’ll find yours. But don’t sit in the quiet too long.” He pushed off from the window. “I’m downstairs if you need an enforcer.” He left as quietly as he came.
His visit left a different kind of mark. It was a recognition of the psychological battlefield that lay ahead, long after the physical wounds closed.
On the third day, Lily was stronger. She could walk to the bathroom unaided. The pervasive ache had dulled to a reminder. The doctor came in, pleased with her progress. “Your levels are stabilizing. The bleeding has stopped. We can talk about discharge tomorrow, if you have a quiet place to go and someone to keep an eye on you.”
“She does,” Andy said, before Lily could speak.
That afternoon, the mood shifted. The distraction campaign couldn’t last forever. The real world, in the form of a silent, charging phone, was in the duffel bag. Lily had been avoiding it. Andy had been avoiding prompting her.
She was sitting in the armchair, the guitar across her lap, not playing, just staring at the palimpsest on the side table. The black silk seemed to absorb the room’s light.
“You have to call him,” Andy said from the sofa. He didn’t want to say it. But he knew someone had to. “It’s not fair to let him hear it from a tabloid if the story leaks.”
Lily’s shoulders tensed. “I know what I have to do. I just don’t know how to do it.”
“There’s no good way. Just a less bad way.”
She put the guitar down carefully. She took a deep breath, walked to the duffel, and pulled out her phone. It was dead. She plugged it into the charger Bobby had brought. They both watched it power up. The screen lit up, and a second later, it began to vibrate, a relentless, angry buzz. Notification after notification piled up: missed calls, texts, voicemails, social media tags. The flood of the outside world.
She didn’t look at any of them. She just unlocked the phone, went to her contacts, and tapped Adam’s name. She put it on speaker, setting the phone on the windowsill. She needed Andy to hear this. She needed a witness to her honesty, even if it destroyed her.
It rang twice.
“Lily?” Adam’s voice was tight, a blend of worry and simmering anger. “Jesus Christ, where have you been? Are you okay? I’ve been calling for days. Your label said you had a ‘private health issue’ and were unreachable. What the hell is going on?”
“Adam.” Her voice was calm, hollow. “I’m in a hospital in Denver.”
A beat of stunned silence. “What? Why? What happened? Are you hurt?”
“I’m… I was pregnant.” She forced the words out. “I didn’t know. I found out on the plane here. I had a miscarriage. I lost it. I needed surgery.”
The silence on the other end was absolute. It stretched so long Lily thought the call had dropped. Then she heard a shaky exhale.
“Pregnant,” Adam repeated, the word a foreign object in his mouth. “How… when?” The question hung there, loaded, terrifying.
Lily closed her eyes. “It wasn’t yours.”
Another crushing silence. Andy, on the sofa, stopped breathing.
“Explain.” The word was ice.
“After the Seattle show. Andy was there. We… it was a mistake. A huge, fucked-up, catastrophic mistake. It went on for a few days. It’s over. It was over before I even knew… about this.” Her words were clinical, stripped bare. “I’m so sorry, Adam. You don’t deserve this. Any of it.”
“Are you with him now?” Adam’s voice was dangerously quiet.
“Yes.”
“Let me talk to him.”
Lily looked at Andy. He stood, walked to the windowsill, and leaned down towards the phone. “I’m here, Adam.”
“You piece of shit.” The anger was pure, unadulterated. “You selfish, destructive piece of shit. Is she alright?”
“Physically, she’s recovering. She will be okay.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your assessment, Biersack. I’m asking her. Lily, are you safe? Do you need me to come there? I can be on a plane in two hours.”
The contrast was brutal. Adam’s immediate pivot to her safety, even through his betrayal and hurt, highlighted everything Andy had failed to be in the beginning. It was a knife twist of decency.
“I’m safe,” Lily said, a tear finally breaking free. “The guys are all here. Ben, Ronnie… everyone. They’ve been… amazing. I don’t need you to come. Not yet. I need you to… process. And I need to figure out how to look at you without wanting to die of shame.”
“Don’t you dare,” Adam snapped, his voice cracking. “Don’t you dare shut me out because you’re ashamed. You made a horrible choice. He made a horrible choice. I am so fucking angry I could break something. But you’re hurt. That changes the math. We deal with the hurt first. The anger comes later.”
He was being reasonable. He was being good. It was unbearable.
“I know,” she whispered. “Thank you. I’ll… I’ll call you tomorrow. When I know about discharge.”
“You do that. And Andy?” Adam’s tone shifted back to arctic fury. “You stay the hell away from her after this. You’ve done enough damage for one lifetime.”
Andy said nothing. He just stared at the phone.
Adam hung up.
The dial tone buzzed in the quiet room. Lily slowly picked up the phone and ended the call. She stood there, trembling, the weight of the pendant heavy against her chest.
Andy felt gutted. Adam’s response had been everything his hadn’t been: concerned, patient, putting her well-being above his own ego. It was a mirror held up to his own behavior, and the reflection was ugly.
“He’s a good guy,” Andy said, the admission costing him everything.
“I know,” Lily replied, her back to him. “That’s what makes it so much worse.”
That evening, the group assembled in the hospital room one last time before discharge was finalized. It felt like a war council. Ben had gotten takeout from a decent Italian place—plain pasta for Lily, heartier fare for the rest. They ate off paper plates, the smell of garlic bread cutting through the antiseptic air.
“So, the plan,” Ben said, wiping his mouth. “You’re discharged tomorrow morning. The hotel suite is paid for for the next five days. After that, we need to get you home to LA. Private car to the airport, private jet back. Andy, you’re on the same flight.”
Andy nodded.
“Once you’re back in LA,” Ben continued, looking at Lily, “you go to ground. Your place. No work, no studio, no nothing for at least two weeks. We’ll have groceries delivered. You rest. You see a doctor there for a follow-up. And you…” He pointed a finger at her. “You actually do it. No sneaking off to write songs at 3 a.m.”
“I’ll make sure,” Andy said.
“We know you will,” Ronnie chimed in. “You’ve got the guilt-fueled watchdog thing down pat now.”
It was a harsh joke, but it landed with a grain of truth that made the air easier to breathe.
“What about Adam?” Matt asked quietly.
All eyes went to Lily. She pushed her pasta around her plate. “I talk to him. We see. There’s nothing else to do.”
“And the… other thing?” Max asked, glancing at the silk-wrapped parcel.
Lily followed his gaze. The palimpsest. The reason for the Seattle trip. The catalyst for everything. It sat there, inert yet potent. “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s a problem for later. After I can walk a mile without getting winded.”
The meeting broke up with a sense of practical closure. The crisis management was ending; the long,
The meeting broke up with a sense of practical closure. The crisis management was ending; the long, awkward road of personal aftermath began. The guys filed out with promises to return in the morning for the discharge, leaving Lily and Andy in a room that suddenly felt too large and too quiet. The half-eaten food containers and empty soda cans were the only evidence of the gathered tribe.
Lily moved to the bed, sitting on its edge with a tired sigh. She picked up the obsidian pendant, running her thumb over its smooth surface. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. Emotionally and physically.”
“That’s because you have been,” Andy said from the armchair. He was scrolling on his phone, but his attention wasn’t on the screen. “A few of them, actually. Parked on you for good measure.”
A weak smile touched her lips. “Poetic.”
The silence returned, but it was different now. The urgent, medical tension had dissipated. What remained was the residue of their shared history, the phone call with Adam, and the uncertain future. It was a thick, uncomfortable substance in the air.
“I don’t want to go to the hotel and just… stare at the walls,” Lily said after a while. “I’ll go insane. The walls here are bad enough.”
“What do you want to do?” Andy asked, putting his phone away. “We can watch one of Ronnie’s horrific movies. I think he left The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
“Pass. My stomach can’t handle leatherface right now.” She looked around the room, her gaze landing on the duffel bag. “Is there anything in there that isn’t clothes or… that thing?”
Andy got up and rummaged through the bag. He pulled out a small, flat box from beneath a stack of t-shirts. He turned it over in his hands. “Well. This is random.”
“What is it?”
He showed her. It was a jigsaw puzzle, still sealed. The image was of a massive, gothic cathedral at night, spires reaching into a star-flecked sky. It was the kind of cheap, mass-produced souvenir you’d find at an airport gift shop. “Ben must have thrown it in,” Andy said, a faint, confused smile on his face. “Or maybe Max. A weird, quiet activity.”
Lily stared at the box. A puzzle. It was so mundane, so utterly normal, it seemed to exist in a different universe from the last week of her life. There was no pressure in a puzzle. No right or wrong. Just pieces fitting together. “Yeah,” she said, her voice soft. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
They moved to the small round table by the window. Andy cleared it of the coffee cups and napkins. He tore the cellophane and opened the box, dumping the one thousand pieces into a chaotic pile between them. The sound was a soft, plastic rustle. For a moment, they just looked at the heap of shapes.
“Corner pieces first,” they said in unison, then looked at each other, startled.
A genuine, unprompted laugh bubbled out of Lily. It sounded strange to her own ears. “Some things never change.”
Andy’s smile reached his eyes for the first time in days. “You always cheated. You’d pretend to look for edge pieces but you were actually hoarding chunks of the sky.”
“I did not! You’re the one who’d get obsessed with one stupid gargoyle and ignore whole sections.”
“That gargoyle had character,” he protested, already sifting through the pieces, his long fingers deftly separating the straight edges. “And you’re a liar. I remember that puzzle of the London skyline. You had Big Ben’s clock face completed in your lap while I was still doing the Thames.”
Lily began flipping pieces, the simple, focused task a relief. Her hands still felt weak, but the motion was soothing. “You were taking too long. It was a tactical decision.”
This was an old rhythm. Before the tours, the occult texts, the bitterness. This was the rhythm of two teenagers in Andy’s parents’ basement in Cincinnati, passing rainy afternoons with puzzles and cheap soda, talking about bands they loved and places they wanted to escape to. The stakes were nothing. The goal was just to finish the picture.
They worked in concentrated silence for a while, the only sounds the click of cardboard and the distant hum of the hospital. Lily found two corner pieces. Andy assembled a long stretch of the cathedral’s foundation. Their hands occasionally brushed against each other in the pile. Neither pulled away.
“Remember that impossible one?” Andy said without looking up. “The one with the Dalí painting. All the melting clocks.”
“Oh my god,” Lily groaned, fitting a piece of dark blue sky into place. “We never finished it. We got in that huge fight because you said surrealism was pretentious and I said you had the aesthetic sensibility of a brick.”
“You stole a piece and hid it. I know you did.”
“I swallowed it to protect the integrity of the art.”
He chuckled, a low, warm sound. “You were such a little shit.”
“You loved it.”
The words just slipped out, hanging in the air between them with a new, fragile weight. The easy teasing paused. Andy’s fingers stilled on a piece. He looked up at her. The lamplight caught the blue of his eyes, and for a second, he wasn’t the frontman or the angry ex. He was just Andy, the boy from the basement, looking at the girl who knew all his stupid secrets.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice quiet. “I really did.”
They held the gaze for a heartbeat too long. Then Lily looked back down, her heart thumping strangely against the obsidian pendant. “Found another edge.”
They fell back into the work, but the atmosphere had shifted. The guard was down, disassembled as quietly as the puzzle was being assembled. The conversation drifted, not to the present, but to the past. The time they tried to drive to Chicago for a show and got lost for five hours. The awful shared apartment with the leaking ceiling and the mice. The way he’d bring her tea exactly how she liked it when she was writing lyrics late at night.
“You remembered that?” she asked, surprised, as he mentioned the honey and specific amount of milk.
“I remember everything,” he said, and it wasn’t a line. It was a simple, devastating statement of fact. He was focused on connecting a cluster of stained-glass window pieces. “The stupid stuff sticks. The big fights… those blur. But the stupid stuff is sharp.”
Lily’s throat tightened. She watched his hands work. He had a small, faded scar on his knuckle from where he’d punched a wall after their first real argument. She remembered cleaning it. She remembered the feel of his skin under the antiseptic wipe, his breathing slowing as she tended to him.
Ben and Ronnie returned an hour later, pushing the door open without ceremony. They stopped short on the threshold.
Lily and Andy were leaned over the table, their heads close together. The puzzle was half-finished, the cathedral’s main structure clear. Andy was pointing to a section of the spire. “This dark grey piece has to go here, see the slight gradient?”
“I think you’re right,” Lily murmured, sliding it into place with a satisfying snap. She smiled, a real, unburdened smile that lit up her tired face.
Andy smiled back, bumping her shoulder with his. “Told you. My gargoyle senses are tingling.”
They hadn’t even noticed the door open.
Ben and Ronnie exchanged a look. It was a long, communicating glance that held years of shared history watching these two idiots orbit each other. They saw the ease in Lily’s posture, the softness around Andy’s eyes. They saw the intimate space between their bodies, a space that had been filled with nothing but hostility for months, now charged with a different, older electricity.
Ronnie cleared his throat loudly.
Lily jumped slightly. Andy looked over, his expression shifting from open to guarded in a microsecond, but it was too late. They’d been seen.
“Brought you degenerates some real food,” Ronnie said, his tone carefully neutral. He held up a bag from a diner. “Grilled cheese, tomato soup. The classics.”
“Thanks,” Lily said, her voice slightly breathless. She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear.
Ben walked in and set down a small paper bag. “And this.” He pulled out a bottle of wood glue and a cheap frame. “For when you finish. So it doesn’t just get dumped back in the box.”
Andy took the glue, a weird lump in his throat. “You bought a frame?”
Ben shrugged, looking at the progressing puzzle. “You’re gonna want to keep it. Looks like you’re almost done.” His eyes flicked from Andy to Lily and back again. There was no judgment in his gaze. Just a weary, fond understanding. “We’ll be next door if you need anything. Discharge is at nine a.m. Sharp.”
They left the food and exited, closing the door softly behind them.
In the hallway, Ronnie let out a long breath. “Well.”
“Yeah,” Ben said.
“That was… intense. But not in the usual way.”
“It’s always there,” Ben said quietly as they walked toward the elevators. “Under all the shit. It never went away. It just got buried under egos and other people and plain old fucking life. But it’s there. You saw it.”
Ronnie nodded, lighting a cigarette even though they were indoors. “Like a fossil. Or a landmine. Depends on the day.” He inhaled, the smoke curling around his face. “What happens when Adam gets to LA?”
“That,” Ben said, pressing the elevator button, “is a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, let them have the puzzle.”
Back in the room, Lily and Andy ate the grilled cheese sandwiches. They were greasy and perfect. They didn’t talk about the look Ben and Ronnie had given them. They didn’t need to. The recognition from the outside world made the bubble they were in feel more real, and more fragile.
After eating, they returned to the puzzle. The final third came together faster. Their earlier ease returned, deepened by the unspoken acknowledgment. Their hands touched more frequently. Lily would lean in to see a section from his angle, her hair brushing his arm. He’d point out a piece, his finger tracing the shape on the table near her hand.
“Last piece,” Andy announced, holding the final fragment of starry sky.
“You do it,” Lily said.
He looked at her, then at the nearly complete image. He slid the piece home. It fit perfectly. The cathedral was whole under its blanket of night.
They both sat back, looking at their work. A sense of quiet accomplishment filled the space. It was such a small, stupid thing. But it felt monumental. They had built something together, peacefully, for the first time in years.
“We should glue it,” Lily said. “Before it gets wrecked.”
Andy opened the bottle of glue, spreading it carefully over the back of the puzzle as Lily held it steady on the cardboard. The sweet, chemical smell mixed with the diner grease still in the air. It was a smell of completion.
They left it to dry on the windowsill, the city lights glittering behind the now-cohesive image of the gothic spire. It was past midnight. The room was dim.
Lily was exhausted, but a calm had settled over her that no painkiller could provide. She sat on the edge of the bed, watching Andy clean up the scattered crumbs and paper plates. He moved quietly, efficiently.
“You should get to the hotel,” she said, but there was no force behind it.
“Soon.” He finished cleaning and stood there, awkward again. The bubble was threatening to pop. The real world—the hotel, the flight, Adam, the palimpsest—waited just outside the door.
He walked over to the bed. He didn’t sit. He just looked down at her, his expression unreadable in the half-light. “Lily.”
“Hmm?”
“I know I don’t deserve… any of this. Your time. This.” He gestured vaguely at the puzzle. “After everything. I know that. Adam was right. About all of it.”
She looked up at him. The guilt was still there in his eyes, but so was something else. Something raw and young and familiar. “Tonight wasn’t about deserving,” she said quietly. “It was just about a puzzle.”
He knelt. Not in a grand gesture, but slowly, so he was at her eye level beside the bed. He was close. She could see the faint stubble on his jaw, the intricate lines of the tattoo that curled up his neck. He searched her face. “What happens tomorrow?”
“We go to the hotel. We fly to LA. We try to figure out how to live with this.”
“And us?” The old question, now asked with a new tenderness.
Lily reached out. She touched his face, her fingers tracing the line of his cheekbone. It was the first voluntary, affectionate contact she’d initiated since Seattle. His breath hitched. He leaned into her touch, closing his eyes for a second.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, echoing his own earlier words. “But this… this feeling right now? This is real. It’s not the past. It’s not just memory. It’s a piece that still fits.”
He turned his head and pressed a kiss into her palm. It was soft, undemanding. A seal. When he looked back at her, his eyes were bright. “However it fits,” he said, his voice thick. “However it fits from now on, I’m here. Not to claim you. Just to be… here. However you’ll have me.”
It was a surrender. The most honest thing he’d ever given her.
She leaned forward, resting her forehead against his. They stayed like that, breathing the same air, in the quiet hospital room with their glued-together cathedral watching over them. The love was there, a complicated, battered, living thing. It had survived the fire. Now they had to learn how to tend to the scars.
“Go sleep,” she whispered finally.
He nodded, standing up. His hand lingered on hers for a final moment before he let go. He grabbed his jacket and walked to the door. He paused, looking back at her sitting on the bed, and then at the puzzle on the sill. A small, crooked smile.
“Goodnight, Lil.”
“Goodnight, Andy.”
The door clicked shut. Lily sat in the quiet, the ghost of his kiss on her palm, the solid weight of the pendant on her chest, and the image of something they’d built together, whole and unbroken, dried and waiting for morning.