HENRY POV
The hospital room was quiet, save for the soft beeping of the monitors and the steady hum of the air conditioning. I sat beside Nick's bed, my fingers laced tightly together as if holding them apart would unravel me. The sterile white walls around us pressed in like a cage. He was sleeping—calmly now—but every time I looked at him, my chest tightened. My boy. My son. Hours ago, they were pulling a bullet out of him.
It still didn’t feel real.
He looked too pale against the hospital sheets, too still. The doctors said he’d be fine, but I’d been around long enough to know that "fine" was often a slippery word.
The door opened softly behind me.
I didn’t have to turn to know who it was. Evelyn. Her perfume arrived before her voice did—something expensive, overly sweet, the kind
