His Affection Meter Hit 100% novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: What It Cost

Heath's POV

I woke up in a room that smelled of floor wax with my mouth full of cotton.

Ainsley was asleep in the chair beside the bed with her head against the wall and her jacket over her knees.

Frankie lay on the floor under the window with a hospital blanket pulled up to her chin.

Neither of them had taken their boots off.

I lay there and looked at the ceiling for a long time.

Nothing above my head.

That was what I kept thinking.

I couldn't see it, and I had never been able to, but I could feel the lack.

Something had sat on me for months and now it was gone.

I tried to say Ainsley's name, and my voice came out cracked.

She was awake before the second syllable.

"Hey," she said, and her face crumpled. "Hey. Hey."

"How long?"

"Two days."

"My dad?"

"Down the hall, shouting at a vending machine."

I laughed, and it hurt, and I did it again.

Frankie sat up on the floor with her hair in her eyes.

"He's awake," she said.

"I'm awake."

"Say something stupid."

"You get a vote. You always did."

She threw a pillow at my head and missed.

The doctor came in with a clipboard and the face of a man trying hard not to say a thing.

"Mr. Gresham, I need to be honest with you."

"Go on."

"Your scans show a man about sixty. Your heart, your arteries." He turned a page. "The strange part is, it's stable. It isn't getting worse. But it won't go back."

Ainsley's hand tightened on mine.

"How long?" I asked.

"With care, I'd say you could have another twenty-five years. Maybe thirty."

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