Page 19 of The Tex Hex (Bitches With Stitches #3)

MANDY

The lights in pre-op burn white and clinical, like they’re trying to scrub the fear out of me.

The stench of bleach clogs my nose, heavy and bitter, coating everything in dread.

My gown itches at the collar, and my hands won’t stop shaking, no matter how tightly I knot them in my lap.

A nurse checks my IV again, but I can barely hear her over the thud of my heart in my ears.

West sits beside me, his hand firm on my knee. Rhett leans against the wall, arms crossed over his chest like he’s guarding something priceless.

West finally breaks the silence. “You’re going to be fine, Nutter Bud.”

I force a breath, but it shudders on the way out. “You ever feel like you’re not scared of dying… just scared of waking up and being someone else?”

West’s face softens, and he nods like he understands every word I didn’t say.

Rhett moves closer and bumps my shoulder with his fist. “You’re not waking up as anyone else, Mandy. Just a slightly upgraded version with better nerve endings and a doctor-approved smooch mechanism.”

That gets a huff of a laugh out of me, but it fades fast. “What if I look worse?” My voice cracks. “What if I sound worse? What if Tex…”

I can’t even finish the thought.

Will he still want my mouth on him after this? Will he still look at me like I’m something beautiful, instead of a salvage job no one asked for?

Rhett squats beside me now. “Tex isn’t going anywhere. You’re the one that’s gotta catch up.”

A lump builds in my throat, and I swallow hard. “Tell him I—if something happens, I just…”

“You’ll tell him yourself,” West says, his voice hard, strong, like a wall I can lean against.

The nurse returns, all apologetic smiles and clinical efficiency. It’s time.

They help me onto the gurney, and everything suddenly feels too fast. Like I didn’t get enough time to breathe, to think, to say all the things that might matter if this doesn’t go the way it should.

My mind goes wild. To the last look Tex gave me. To the weight of his head on my shoulder. To the warmth of his hand wrapped in mine, the curve of his smile, the ridiculous way he popped his gum and made me laugh when I wanted to fall apart.

I love him.

I love him, and I don’t know if I’ll be brave enough to tell him.

The anesthesiologist places the mask gently over my nose and mouth.

“Just take some deep breaths,” he says, calm and distant, like he’s done this a thousand times.

I try, but my chest is tight, my skin is crawling, and I’m scared to death.

Scared of the scalpel. Scared of the mirror. Scared that the person I see when I wake up won’t be someone worth loving.

The last thing I hear before the world fades is Rhett’s voice, soft in my ear.

“You’re still you, Mandy. No matter what.”

And then the darkness takes me.

Everything hurts.

Not in the sharp, screaming way I expected, but in a dull, crawling ache that spreads across my face and down into my chest, like a tide of pain soaked in fear. My mouth is packed with gauze. My throat burns. My lips feel… foreign.

Tight. Swollen. Wrong.

The room is dim, and there’s a soft beep-beep of monitors keeping time with the rise and fall of my panic.

I’m alive.

That’s my first thought. Followed immediately by the second…

What did they do to me?

My tongue is thick in my mouth. I want to ask someone, anyone, for a mirror, but I can’t talk. I can’t even breathe right. Something in me starts to spiral, clawing at the edges of my mind, screaming without sound.

A nurse appears, her presence kind but blurry.

“You’re in recovery,” she says, her voice sounds like cotton wool. “Everything went well. Try not to talk yet, honey. Just rest.”

I close my eyes because it’s easier than dealing with the weight of the unknown, of the changes I haven’t seen yet. The numbness. The silence inside my cheek where feeling should be. The raw tension in my jaw where they reshaped something that wasn’t good enough before.

And through it all, one name surfaces and floats above the fog like a lighthouse…

Tex.

I wonder if he’d still kiss me.

If he’d lean in now, with stitches in my lip and bruises under my skin. If he’d still smile that lopsided smile and tell me I’m beautiful, even if it was a lie just to get me through.

Would he still hold my hand?

Would I let him?

I blink against the sting in my eyes. It's not the pain. It’s the terror that I’ve passed some invisible line, one that makes it harder for anyone, especially someone like him, to look at me the way I look at him.

And yet, despite it all, despite the fear, I whisper one thing in my head, over and over again, like a prayer, like a lifeline: Tactical Glitter.

Come back, Tex. Please.

The lights overhead hum softly. My world is a dull blur of beeps and soft footsteps, along with the occasional rustle of paper or the clink of medical tools far away. Somewhere in the distance, a machine pumps and sighs like it’s breathing for me.

Time has no shape in recovery, just drifting, and all I can do is think.

The bandage around my head itches. My face is heavy and swollen, and my mouth hurts in a way that feels… existential. Like something vital was taken, cut away, and reshaped into something new. Something not mine. Something I never asked for.

I try to swallow, but it hurts. Sometimes… sometimes I wish I’d just died that day. It would have been so much easier. Instead of fearing my own reflection like a fucking coward. What will I see when I look in the mirror? Will I recognize myself?

I want to believe that I will, but I don’t. Not right now.

Not when I can’t feel the left side of my cheek. Not when I’m so full of someone else’s flesh, someone who died and donated tissue, and now I’ve got their mouth. Not mine. A stranger’s. I want to crawl out of it, crawl out of me .

Tears burn down the sides of my face, slipping into my ears, soaking the scratchy fabric of the hospital pillow. I turn my head away from the door just in case someone walks in. I don’t want to be seen like this.

Ugly.

Weak.

Alone.

You’re not alone. Tex said that once, just a whisper, a promise I wanted so badly to believe. But I keep pushing him away, don’t I? I keep shutting the door right when he reaches for the handle.

Maybe that’s safer. For both of us.

Because if he touches me now, if he sees me now, I might shatter.

And I don’t know if he could love someone in pieces.

I close my eyes again and bite back a sob. One hand curls under the blanket. The stitches pull when I move. My lip feels wrong. Numb. Foreign.

I whisper his name in my head like I’m calling out across some battlefield, lost in the smoke:

Tex. Come find me. Please, just… find me.

But all I hear in return is the sound of machines and the echo of silence.

I drift again, and when I return, West’s face is the first that I see.

“You get uglier every time I see you,” I croak in a voice I barely recognize.

West smirks, eyes red-rimmed but shining. “And you sound like a eighty-year-old chain smoker. Sexy.”

I try to smile, but my mouth won’t cooperate. My eyes well up, traitorous things, and I look away.

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tight. “You scared the shit out of us, Mandy. You’re blood pressure spiked, and they…”

He doesn’t finish, just stares at me, biting back the fear and emotions I’m doing a shit job of hiding myself.

“I scare myself,” I whisper.

He doesn’t laugh. Just nods slowly, solemn. “Yeah. I know.”

The silence stretches. Not heavy. Just full. I watch his boots shift on the floor and think about how many hours he must’ve sat like that, guarding the door, refusing to leave. The thought guts me.

“Did Tex…” My throat sticks. “Did he come?”

West doesn’t answer right away, just runs a hand through his short hair and exhales. His silence says more than words could.

I look away, blinking hard, staring at the IV line in my arm like it holds some kind of answer. The pain in my chest has nothing to do with incisions or stitches. It’s deeper than that.

Maybe I shouldn’t have expected anything else. Maybe I deserve the quiet.

I shut my eyes, trying to keep it all down, not to let it crack me open here in front of West. But I’ve been hollowed out before, and this feels worse somehow. Because I finally let myself want something.

Want him .

And now all I want is to forget I ever hoped.

West must’ve sent out a damn flare, because by the time the nurse comes to check on me, the door swings open and in march the Bitches like a damn parade of misfit emotional support animals.

Rhett’s first, holding a massive balloon that says, “You Did It!” with a cartoon graduation cap on it. “They were out of ‘Congrats on Surviving Facial Reconstruction’ so this was the next best thing,” he says, letting it bob dramatically over my head like it’s proud of me.

Brandt’s behind him, grinning like a gremlin and holding a “Build-Your-Own Grenade” kit from the Army surplus store. “Therapeutic,” he tells me. “Comes with instructions and a complimentary background check.”

My mouth tries to tug into a grin, but the skin burns like fire from being stretched, and I wince. “Thanks. I’m smiling on the inside.”

Nash has two boxes of tissues, one decorated with cats wearing party hats and the other shaped like a coffin. “You pick the vibe,” he says cheerfully.

McCormick walks in holding a paper bag. “Mystery meat,” he announces. “Possibly beef. Possibly raccoon. I make no promises.”

“Goddamn,” West gripes. “Are you trying to kill him off completely?”

“Just kidding,” he wheezes, laughing at the horrified look on everyone’s face. “I stopped for donuts. Mandy can’t eat, but we can.”

They crowd around my bed, cracking jokes, dropping candy into my lap, arguing over who gets to sign my gauze. Riggs sits off to the side with a soft smile, watching them fill the room with too much noise and too much love.

And it’s good. It is .