Page 33 of I Wish I Would’ve Warned You (Forbidden Wishes #3)

COLE

Not really sure how much time has passed…

T he oxygen tube feels like a leash, pinning me here beneath the weight of scratchy sheets and the stale tang of disinfectant. That smell hits first—bleach, latex, something sour beneath it all. Hospitals always smell like they’re trying too hard to scrub away the truth.

My eyes stay fixed on the ceiling. Pale gray. Cracked near the vent. The kind of detail I never used to notice until the last time I woke up in a place like this—slumped in a hospital bed after the DUI, my jaw bruised and hands trembling from what I hadn’t yet admitted.

He was there that night too. Same overpriced cologne, same tight-lipped expression that made him look like a disappointed father instead of one who was proud of him. He sat beside me with this calm, quiet grief, the kind that only appears when there’s an audience.

Now there’s no audience. Just him and me, and the hum of machines that won't stop.

He leans forward, elbows on his knees like we’re about to have a heart-to-heart.

“You gave us a scare, son,” he says, and the word son makes something in me twist.

“You’re probably the last to know, but—” he says. “Heather and I are pushing up the wedding.”

My jaw tightens, useless against the tape and tubing.

“It’s going to be this summer at the estate, because life’s too short to wait.”

He says it like it’s noble. Like he’s just been through something tragic and come out enlightened. Like my seizure was his seizure.

I turn my head—slow, deliberate—until I’m staring directly at him.

His eyes light up like he thinks it’s affection.

“I knew you’d understand.”

Understand? I try to glare at him, but it hurts too much.

I want to tear the IV out of my arm and rip the mask off just to tell him how wrong he is. To tell him to get the hell out and send in Emily.

I want to feel her hand in mine. I want to hear her voice, the one that doesn’t change for a microphone.

But he keeps talking.

Some joke about cake or centerpieces or how it’s the “right thing at the right time.” He stands and squeezes my shoulder like we’ve sealed some pact.

Then he leaves.

The room feels colder the second the door clicks shut.

And for reasons I can’t explain, the wedding announcement hurts more than any other promise he’s broken with me before. Maybe because this time, he didn’t even try to hide the choice he made.

He chose himself.

He always does.