As soon as he got into the gray room (that was apparently at one point white), he panicked inside. Kenzie looked perfectly fine, maybe even more beautiful than normal, with her black hair splayed on the pillow, her face lily white. The only abnormality was a little scratch underneath her eye that had stopped bleeding and been cleaned. Around it, a blue-purple bruise was forming.

     He stood over her bed, casting a shadow over her face, and pushed a piece of hair off of her eye without thinking. She kept sleeping. The nurse was talking, but Kyle wasn’t taking any of it in.

     He just wanted her to wake up.

     He just wanted her.

     “Are you okay?” the nurse asked, timidly. No, he wasn’t, but it didn’t matter. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said quickly. “Well, her body just rejected it…” the nurse continued.

    Ashton ruined you. That was all Kyle could think, looking at her, and then letting his eyes slide over the cut. When I met you, you were clean.