He lay in the hospital bed, eyes closed, his chest rising and falling with every breath. He was alive. That was something.
Life had taught me to expect the worst. When I’d been summoned to the emergency room, my head had been filled with disaster. Death. My stomach already twisting, my heart sick with grief. But Riley wasn’t dead.
He was unconscious, and his arm was broken, but that was it. The nurse told me he’d woken once, to ask for me, and was simply sleeping. I was having a hard time believing her. I’d been sitting by Riley’s hospital bed for hours, holding his hand. Waiting.
If this were normal sleep, he would have woken. Wouldn’t he?
The white bandage wrapped around his head was a jarring contrast to his tanned skin and dark hair. Riley couldn’t be hurt. Riley was strong and smart. Riley was everything. Since the day we’d met, he’d taken over my life. It seemed impossible that anything, even a pickup truck and a drunk driver, could slow him down.
The nurse came back in, narrowing her eyes at the sight of Riley, still asleep.
“Shouldn’t he be awake by now?” I asked.
She spared me a sidelong glance as she checked his vitals and made notes on the chart. “Not necessarily. The doctor can tell you more when he does rounds, but your boyfriend has a concussion and a broken arm. So far, that’s it. No internal bleeding and his brain isn’t swelling. I would have expected him to be up by now, but I don’t think there’s cause to worry.”
She patted my shoulder as she left. I didn’t think you were supposed to go to sleep when you had a concussion, but it seemed ridiculous to question the nurse. I knew nothing about head injuries, and she was a medical professional. If she wasn’t worried, I shouldn’t be either. I knew that. It didn’t seem to make a difference. I wanted Riley to open his eyes.
His dark lashes fanned against his cheeks, hiding the green-flecked hazel of his eyes. I loved Riley’s eyes. They were the first thing about him to capture my attention.
I’d been watching him for two months before we officially met. He sat three rows ahead of me in Intro to Psychology. Three rows up and just enough to my right that I could stare at his profile when I was supposed to be paying attention in class.
One day, as he stood to grab his backpack, he’d looked up, and his eyes met mine. Warm, light hazel framed by the kind of long lashes men never appreciated, and women envied. A strong blade of a nose, dark hair a little too long, and the hint of a tattoo peeking up from the collar of his gray T-shirt.
He was prime eye candy for a girl like me. He wasn’t too pretty. None of that highly polished, pampered look I’d been over by the time I hit my teens. I’d grown up around rich boys with their expensive haircuts and overpriced watches. Designer clothes didn’t do it for me. The way that gray T-shirt stretched over his arms definitely did.
He slung his backpack over his shoulder, locked those hazel eyes onto mine, and winked. My heart stopped in my chest. By the time I’d recovered, he was gone. I’d never looked forward to a class as much as I did the next session of Intro to Psych. He was there, in the same seat he always took—three rows up and four to my right.
The class went by in a blur. I took notes, but later I realized none of them made sense. I spent most of my time studying the curve of his ear, the way his hair was a little too long in the back, curling up over the collar of his T-shirt, this time a faded navy blue with the logo of a classic rock band on the front.
His jaw, the side of it I could see, was clean-shaven and strong. His shoulders were broad, and his left arm was just muscled enough to be sexy. I could tell you I didn’t sketch the edges of his tattoo, visible below the T-shirt sleeve, but I’d be lying.
That time, when he winked at me, I had just enough composure to smile back. I leaned down to grab my own backpack, and when I looked up, he was gone. Again.
We played that game for another week, and suddenly it seemed like I saw him everywhere. Checking his mail at the student union, waiting in line in the cafeteria. Every time I caught sight of him, my heart sped up.
I thought about approaching him, planned on it, but when I had the chance, I chickened out. My mystery man was older than the rest of us, at least by a few years. He had a detached air about him that was intimidating, even to me.
I’m not easily intimidated. Not by most people. I’m Annalise Winters. Yes, one of those Winters. The Winters family of Winters Incorporated, heir to a company whose value dwarfed most country’s GDPs. I’d been born a billionaire.
Most people thought that made me lucky. In some ways it did. I didn’t have to worry about tuition. I’d never had to worry about paying bills or going hungry. I had a beautiful home and a sweet, tricked-out SUV my oldest cousin had gotten me for my high school graduation.
But I don’t know that ‘lucky’ was a good description of my life. I also had two dead parents, victims of a murder/suicide that had drawn relentless media coverage, a clusterfuck that had only gotten worse when the aunt and uncle who raised me died in an almost identical crime when I was seventeen.
The scandal had been irresistible. The legitimate news, gossip columns, people I’d grown up thinking were my friends—they were all obsessed with the downfall of the Winters family.
Money could insulate you from a lot of problems, but it couldn’t fix everything. Not the stuff that really mattered. By the time I started high school, I knew how to keep my guard up, knew how to be cautious. I’d learned the hard way not to trust easily. Threats could hide anywhere. Even in the hazel eyes of a cute boy in class.
So, I’d watched him, and I’d let my heart beat too fast when he winked at me, but that was it. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. I was just trying to be normal for a while. Normal never lasted long for me.
A few weeks after that first wink, I’d turned around and bumped right into him, almost spilling my coffee all over another one of those faded, well-fitting t-shirts.
“Whoah,” he’d said, reaching out to steady my arm. His strong fingers closed over my elbow, and my heart fluttered.
“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t see you there,” I babbled.
His fingers firmly gripping my arm, he led me away from the line at the coffee shop. “It’s my fault. I was standing too close. To tell you the truth, I was trying to figure out what perfume you’re wearing.”
Up close, I could see that his hazel eyes were flecked with specks of green and gold. My brain struggling to catch up, I said, “It’s not perfume, it’s lotion.”
“Good to know,” he said, the side of his mouth quirking up in a half smile that made my knees weak. “I’d offer to buy you a coffee but—” he gestured to my coffee with his own. “Looks like you’ve already got that covered. How about a walk?”
“Okay,” I said, my head spinning a little as I let him lead me out of the coffee shop and into the street. We’d fallen into step together, exchanging names, though I only gave my first. I didn’t want to tell him who I was.
Not yet.
I had my own reasons for being gun-shy about relationships, reasons that had nothing to do with my family. But I didn’t want to tell Riley who I was until I decided if he’d be worth the trouble.
It didn’t take long to figure out that Riley Flynn was worth the trouble, and I ended up spilling more than I meant to about my personal life by our third date.
I found out that he looked older than the rest of us because he was. He’d taken off after high school and backpacked around Europe before settling down for college. He’d taken the news about my family in stride, seeming disinterested, though he’d shied away from meeting them. I didn’t care.
I was living on campus for the second year in a row, and I was more than happy to keep Riley all to myself. My oldest cousin, Aiden, was technically head of the family now that his parents were dead, and he’d come home to take the reins of Winters Inc. My oldest brother Gage had joined the Army the year before, only a few days after our aunt and uncle had been killed.
My twin brother, Vance, was also in his sophomore year at Emory. I guessed everyone figured he was keeping an eye on me.
Not exactly.
Vance was keeping an eye on coeds and parties. His sister? Not so much.
That was fine with me. I was tired of living behind gates. I wanted to pretend to be a normal college student, with a normal life. I wanted to get serious about my photography and study art. So far, everything had been working out perfectly. I should have known it wouldn’t last.
I watched Riley sleep in the hospital bed and tried to tell myself that people got into car accidents. It wasn’t good, but it was normal. It happened. It didn’t mean Riley was going to die. If it were that serious, they wouldn’t let me in his room. The nurse would’ve seemed more on edge. Everything was fine.
I must have squeezed Riley’s hand too hard because his fingers flexed over mine and he let out a low groan. Those thick eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks, and his eyes opened, bloodshot and swollen, but the familiar green-flecked hazel soothed my worries. I felt my own eyes flood with tears, and Riley smiled weakly.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he said. “I’m okay.”
“You wouldn’t wake up,” I said.
Riley squeezed my hand again. He knew me, knew what I was thinking. Knew how I feared more loss. More death.
“I’m awake now, and I’m fine.”
I swiped a tear from my eye and nodded. He squeezed my hand again.
“Lise, look at me,” he ordered. I did. His pupils were uneven, and his words were a little slurred, but he was still Riley. “I’m okay,” he said. “Everything is okay. I’m not going to die on you.”
“Promise?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Promise.” His eyes slid shut, and he murmured, “Just need to close my eyes.”
I pressed the button to call for the nurse. By the time someone showed up, and I let her know Riley had woken, he was fast asleep again. The nurse was unconcerned, both that he’d woken and that he was back to sleep.
I tried to reassure myself that this was another sign everything was okay. She adjusted something in the IV attached to his arm, murmured to herself, and left the room. I settled back into my chair by his side to wait.
Alarm bells woke me from a light doze. Running footsteps, flashing lights, and I was pulled from his bedside, his hand torn from mine. I knew better than to interrupt. People in scrubs leaned over him, their voices urgent, the words coming fast and unintelligible.
I didn’t know what was happening; I only knew that it was bad.
I did what I always did when things were bad. What all of us did when things were bad.
I called Aiden.
He was there twenty minutes later, bullying the nurses with his implacable authority, insisting I be allowed to stay by Riley’s side, demanding to know what was happening.
He shoved a paper cup of tea into my hand and made me sit in a chair in the waiting room on Riley’s floor.
“As soon as he’s stabilized, they’ll let you back in, though they’re not happy about it,” he said.
“What happened? He was fine. He was sleeping and then—”
“A mixup with the drugs,” Aiden said, shaking his head. “The nurse misread the dose on his morphine. They don’t know where she is, but they’ll question her as soon as they find her. What’s important is that they caught it in time and he’s going to be fine.”
“They messed up his medicine? How does that happen? I thought he would be safe in the hospital—”
When I heard the alarms, saw the flashing lights and the rushing nurses, I’d assumed it was something to do with his concussion. It never occurred to me that they might accidentally kill him.
I wanted to bundle Riley up and take him home to Winters House. Except Winters House had never been particularly safe either. There was nowhere in my life that was safe. Nowhere death couldn’t follow.
“After all this, are you going to bring him home for dinner?” Aiden asked, nudging my shoulder with his. My cheeks flushed. I hadn’t dated a lot in high school. Between my family’s notoriety, my aunt and uncle’s deaths my junior year, and other stuff, I just wasn’t that interested.
Riley was the first boy—man—to catch my eye. What we had was so perfect I hadn’t been willing to bring it into the mess that was the rest of my life. But maybe it was time.
“Is it all right if he comes home to Winters House when they let him out? He has an apartment off campus but—”
Aiden wrapped his arm around me and pulled me into a hug. “Of course it’s okay. Now that I know what’s really going on with you two, I’d rather have him where I can keep an eye on him.”
I made a disgruntled sound low in my throat and rested my cheek against his chest. Aiden was overprotective. If I thought he was bad with me, I just had to see him with my little cousin Charlie. She was twelve, still shaken from losing her parents, and Aiden hovered over her as much as his responsibilities would allow.
He was only twenty-two, barely two years older than me, but he was the one who held us together. He’d left college after his parents died, finishing school in Atlanta and taking his father’s place at the company and at home.
He read to Charlie at night and made sure Vance and I got our college applications in on time. He’d been the one to insist I live in student housing when I suggested I should stay home and help him with the kids. He’d given up everything so we could have normal lives.
I’d tried to argue, but no one argued with Aiden. He just stared you down and steam-rolled over you.
I hadn’t fought him that hard. Both Vance and I felt guilty about running off and leaving Aiden with the kids, but as much as we’d wanted to help, we’d wanted to get away even more. And it wasn’t like we’d gone far. All the Winters went to Emory, right in Atlanta, so we were close if he needed us. Only Aiden had gone out of state to school, but he’d ended up leaving Harvard and finishing at our fathers’ alma mater in the end.
We’d gratefully acceded to his demand that we be normal college students. Or as normal as we could be. But now, seeing Riley in a hospital bed, all I wanted was home.
It felt like hours before they let me back into Riley’s room. I imagined he looked paler, more worn. Aiden left to make whatever arrangements he was going to make, after reassuring me that Riley would be released in a day or two.
I took my place beside Riley’s bed, twining my fingers with his, rubbing absently against his callused thumb, and waited patiently for him to wake.
I opened my eyes the next morning to see a nurse enter the room, her face blocked by a huge arrangement of mismatched flowers. My stomach tightened at the sight of the flowers, and I asked, “Where did those come from?”
“They were left at the desk,” she said, setting them on the table across the room. “Odd arrangement. I don’t like it much, but I’m sure whoever sent it meant well.”
I was sure they didn’t.
I waited until the nurse left the room after reassuring me that Riley would wake soon. I had a sick feeling that it no longer mattered. Not for me. Trapped in a nightmare I thought I’d escaped, I pulled my fingers from Riley’s and stood.
The few steps across the room seemed to take forever.
The nurse had called the arrangement odd. It was a generous description. The flowers clashed, discordant and ugly together, but the sender hadn’t been going for pretty. The flowers were a message, one he knew I could decode.
My mother had loved flowers, had taught me their language, but experience had forced me to understand what they really meant. The clash of yellow and pink blooms told me exactly what had happened to Riley.
Yellow Hyacinth for jealousy.
Rhododendron for danger.
And most terrifying, the deep pink blooms of Begonia—a warning of future misfortune.
The car crash was no accident. Neither was the overdose that had almost killed Riley.
The flowers were a threat and a warning.
Numb, I picked up the arrangement and carried it from the room. I didn’t look at the card until I was in my car. It had been a year since I’d seen those precise block letters. A year since he’d sent me flowers.
I’d convinced myself it was over. Convinced myself he’d moved on, or forgotten about me, or died. I’d been so sure I was free.
Safe.
I never would have let myself fall in love with Riley if I thought he was still out there.
Still watching.
I turned the card over in my fingers, knowing I had to read it. Knowing that once I did, my path was set. I’d have to write a note of my own to Riley, one that would make him hate me.
Hate would keep him far from me.
Hate would keep him safe.
A hot tear slid down my cheek as I tugged at the seal of the small white envelope. I’d been arrogant. I wanted Riley so badly I’d convinced myself I could have him. That arrogance had almost gotten Riley killed.
I understood what the flowers were saying; Walk away from Riley, or the next time he’ll be dead.
I didn’t need to read the card.
I opened it anyway, my fingers shaking.
TELL HIM GOODBYE, OR I’LL DO IT FOR YOU
