Chapter 13 - If I Could Just Move
506 Words
Grayson’s POV
Everything feels… distant.
Sound is muffled. Light is a blur behind closed lids. Time doesn’t tick — it drips, slow and uneven.
But when she walked in, everything changed.
He didn’t know if the door made a sound. Didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there, sketchpad in her lap, breathing like she belonged to a softer world. But the moment she entered the room, he knew.
It was her.
Amelia.
Her name rose from somewhere deep inside — the place he’d been trapped, stuck in stillness and silence.
She was here.
After everything — after months of searching for her, of wondering if he imagined that one brief moment in New York — she was here. In this room. Sitting only feet away, unaware of the way his entire world shifted.
Her voice, when it finally broke the quiet, felt like sunlight on his skin.
“I don’t really know why I stayed,” she whispered. “I just… did.”
He wanted to answer. God, he tried. Muscles strained against nothing. His fingers didn’t move. His lips didn’t twitch. But inside, he was shouting.
Don’t leave.
She kept talking, unsure, nervously filling the air. She told him about Isabel. About herself. That she was a designer. A dreamer. Lonely, sometimes.
He wanted to say, Me too.
He wanted to tell her that he saw her that day in the bookstore. That he remembered the way her eyes moved across a page, the shape of her smile. That he didn’t forget — not once. Not through the surgeries. Not through the coma. Not even now, when everything around him felt so far away.
He wanted her to know he’d been looking for her.
But all he could do was listen. And hope it was enough.
Then, suddenly, she stopped talking.
He could hear her shift, feel her energy change.
And then the worst words:
“I should probably head out.”
No.
His chest tightened. His breath caught.
She was leaving.
After all this — after he’d finally found her, after she’d finally come — she was leaving.
What if she doesn’t come back?
What if she realized he wasn’t worth it? Just a man stuck in a bed, unmoving, unreachable. What if she saw nothing left to hold onto?
He panicked.
His body couldn’t move, but something inside fought. Clawed.
And then — it happened.
The monitor spiked.
A beeping sound filled the room, fast and sharp. A jolt of something. Doctors rushed in. Voices blurred. One of them said it was just a surge. Just emotion.
But he knew better.
It was her.
He heard a laugh — low, gentle.
Zach.
“Looks like Gray doesn’t want you to leave.”
Please don’t.
That’s all he wanted to say.
Don’t leave. Not yet. Not again.
Because now that she was real — now that she wasn’t just a memory or a wish — the thought of her walking away felt unbearable.
And he could only hope… that she felt it, too.
- Writer
