**Chapter 52**
**Betha's POV**
Alex picked me up at eight thirty sharp, which under normal circumstances I would have complained about extensively. These were not normal circumstances. I was in the car before he had fully stopped it.
Ray was already in the passenger seat.
"You're early," Alex said, looking at me in the mirror.
"I didn't sleep," I said. "Drive."
He drove.
---
The hospital in the morning was a different place than the hospital at night - busier, louder, the particular organized chaos of a building that had been running quietly for hours and was now in full operation. We signed in at the front desk and split without discussion - Alex toward the surgical recovery wing, Ray and I toward Cossette's room.
Then Ray's phone rang.
He looked at the screen. Made the expression of someone who needed to take this and was not happy about the timing. "Two minutes," he said to me. "I'll be right there."
I left him in the corridor and pushed Cossette's door open.
And stopped.
Alaric was sitting on the edge of Cossette's bed.
His forehead was resting against hers. Her hand was on his arm. The morning light was coming through the window at that particular low angle that made everything look like a painting and neither of them had heard me come in.
I stood in the doorway.
Looked at them.
Looked at the ceiling.
Looked back at them.
"Seriously," I said. "You didn't even wait for the wound to heal?"
They separated like two people who had been electrocuted simultaneously.
Cossette's face went from peaceful to crimson in approximately zero seconds - the full Cossette Jonas red, hairline to jaw, instant and complete and absolutely incriminating.
And Alaric -
I blinked.
Alaric Veynor, who I had watched smirk his way through every situation I had ever seen him in, who had the particular unshakeable confidence of someone who had never once been caught off guard by anything -
was flustered.
Actually, genuinely, visibly flustered. A color in his face that had nothing to do with his injury. His hand going to the back of his neck. His eyes doing a brief tour of everywhere in the room that wasn't my face.
It was, objectively, adorable.
I filed that information away for later use.
"I was just -" he started.
"You were just," I agreed pleasantly.
Cossette made a sound into her hands.
Alaric stood - slowly, carefully, with the deliberate movement of someone navigating significant pain and also significant embarrassment simultaneously. He straightened his shirt. Recovered something approaching his usual composure, though the color in his face remained.
"I should get back to my room," he said, with great dignity.
"Probably," I said.
He moved toward the door. Paused beside me. Looked at me directly for a moment with those storm-Blue eyes.
"Betha," he said.
"Alaric," I said back.
Something passed between us - an understanding, brief and mutual. Then he nodded once and went into the corridor, pulling the door behind him.
I turned to Cossette.
She was still hiding behind her hands.
"So," I said, sitting in the chair beside her bed.
"Don't," she said into her palms.
"I haven't said anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to say good morning."
She lowered her hands and looked at me with an expression that communicated she did not believe that for one second.
I smiled. "Good morning."
She dropped her head back against the pillow. "Betha."
"Cossette."
"It's complicated."
"Everything with you is complicated. That's not new information."
She looked at the ceiling. Then at me. Then something in her face went soft and honest in the way it only ever went with me - the face she wore when she had stopped performing for the world and was just being herself in a room with her best friend.
"I don't know what I'm doing," she said quietly.
"I know," I said.
"I have a plan. I have a revenge. I have -"
"I know."
"And he's Frost's best friend."
"Also know."
A pause.
"He kissed me last night," she said. Very quietly. "Properly."
I looked at her.
"And?" I said.
She didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
Her face said everything.
---
Ray arrived seven minutes later, slightly breathless, phone call apparently concluded, carrying a bunch of flowers that he had clearly acquired from the hospital gift shop downstairs with the focused determination of a man who had decided flowers were happening regardless of the logistical challenges.
They were white. Simple. He held them out to Cossette with a directness that had no performance in it.
"These are terrible," he said. "Hospital gift shop. But they're what exists."
Cossette laughed. "They're lovely, Ray."
He pulled the chair to the other side of her bed and sat, and the three of us talked - about how she felt, about Alaric's surgery, about nothing particularly important - and I watched Ray watch Cossette with that particular quality he had, that warm certain attention, and I thought about the fact that Alaric had just been sitting in this exact spot and wondered if Ray could feel the residue of it somehow.
Probably not.
But still.
His phone rang again.
He looked at the screen and exhaled. "I have to take this. I'm sorry - I'll be back in five minutes." He stood, squeezed Cossette's hand briefly, and went into the corridor.
I stayed with Cossette for another twenty minutes. We talked about Alaric's father - I had not yet finished processing Victor Veynor and his remarkable personality - and about Emma, who Cossette described with genuine warmth, and about what came next, practically speaking, once they were both discharged.
Then my stomach informed me that it had not received coffee this morning and was not going to continue operating without it.
"I need coffee," I announced. "I didn't have any before we came. I'll be back."
"There's a machine near the surgical wing," Cossette said.
"Perfect."
---
The corridor near the surgical wing was quieter than the main hospital - fewer visitors at this hour, mostly staff moving with purpose between rooms. I found the coffee machine in a small alcove and was engaged in the deeply unrewarding experience of trying to make it produce something drinkable when I heard footsteps behind me.
Ray.
Still on his phone call, walking slowly, heading in my direction without having seen me yet. He ended the call as he reached the alcove, and looked up and found me there.
"Coffee," I said, gesturing at the machine as explanation.
"Clearly," he said, coming to stand beside me and studying the machine's options with the expression of a man who had higher standards than this but had accepted the situation.
"A lot of phone calls today," I said. "You could've just come tomorrow when things were less busy."
He looked at me. "No," he said simply. "I couldn't have."
I looked at him.
He looked at the coffee machine.
I thought about saying something. Decided against it. Put my cup under the dispenser.
And then -
Voices.
Coming from the main corridor, low and tense, the specific quality of a conversation that was trying not to be overheard and wasn't entirely succeeding. I recognized both of them before I had consciously processed what I was hearing.
I grabbed Ray's arm.
He turned to say something and I put my hand over his mouth.
He went completely still.
I pressed us both back against the wall of the alcove - my back to the wall, Ray directly in front of me, close enough that I could feel him breathing, my hand still over his mouth, both of us not moving.
In the corridor, two sets of footsteps slowed and stopped approximately four meters from where we were standing.
Frost's voice, low and tight: "We should check on Cossette too. Not only Alaric."
Anika: "I don't want to see her. You know that."
"If you don't visit her they'll notice, Anika. People will talk."
"No one will notice, baby." A pause - I could hear the shift in her tone, the performance sliding into place. "No one is paying attention to us."
"Stop." Frost's voice was different suddenly. Harder. Something underneath it I hadn't heard before. "Stop hurting Cossette, Anika. You've done enough. With her father already - enough."
The corridor went completely silent.
I felt Ray go absolutely rigid in front of me.
I took my hand off his mouth.
Neither of us said anything.
Neither of us breathed.
I looked at Ray's face - inches from mine in the narrow alcove, his eyes wide, completely still, processing the same words I was processing.
*You've done enough. With her father already.*
With her father.
Her father.
Anthony Jonas.
My heart was doing something loud and wrong in my chest. My mind was running the words back - replaying them, examining them, turning them over to see what was underneath.
*With her father already.*
What did that mean.
What did that mean.
I looked at Ray.
Ray looked at me.
In the corridor, footsteps resumed - moving away, Anika saying something else that was too low to catch now, Frost not responding, the sound of them diminishing down the hall until it was gone.
The alcove was very quiet.
Ray and I were still pressed against the wall, still close, still not moving, the coffee machine humming beside us with complete indifference to the fact that everything had just changed.
"Betha," Ray said. Very quietly.
"I heard it," I said.
"With her father already -"
"I heard it, Ray."
We looked at each other.
And I thought about Cossette - upstairs in her room, in her hospital pajamas, with the crystal dust of a chandelier still caught in her hair - and I thought about Anthony Jonas and his heart attack that the doctors had called natural and I thought about Anika's smile on the gala floor when the chandelier was falling -
"We need to talk to Cossette," Ray said.
"Not yet," I said immediately.
He looked at me.
"She just woke up," I said. "She's in a hospital. She just -" I stopped. "Not yet. We need to be certain first. We need to know what we actually heard before we say anything to her."
Ray held my gaze for a moment.
Then he nodded.
Once.
We stood there in the alcove for another few seconds - the coffee machine still humming, the corridor now empty and quiet, the weight of what we had just heard settling around us like something physical.
Then I reached past him and picked up my coffee cup from the machine.
It was terrible.
I drank it anyway.
Author's Note 🤍
Sorry for not posting a lot this week, I've been super busy these days 😭 .
I hope you'll enjoy it!
As always, don't forget to vote and support the story, it really means a lot to me. Thank you 🤍