*Isabella's POV*
Damien stood behind me, a solid, irritable presence I could feel. I didn't have to look at him to know there was a deep, thunderous frown engraved onto his face. I couldn't see him, but I could feel the anger rolling off him in waves, a cold, prickly heat that raised the hairs on my arms and made the air in the sterile room feel thick and hard to breathe.
Ignoring the chill coming from him, I focused on Jacob. I took his left hand and brought it to my lips. I pressed a soft, desperate kiss against his knuckles. And I felt it. A slight movement. A twitch. I kept his hand pressed against my cheek, a silent plea for him to come back to me, and his fingers, weakly, unsteadily, tightened. He squeezed my cheek. It was the faintest pressure, but it was everything.
"Sweetheart," he said, the word a hoarse whisper, a rough scrape of sound. But it was his voice.
I swallowed back the fucking tidal wave of tears that threatened to break. No more crying now, I told myself fiercely. He's fine. He's awake. He's the same Jacob I'm fucking crazy about.
"Are you crying, sweetheart? Why are you crying?" he asked, his words barely audible as his eyes fluttered open, squinting against the harsh light of the room. They were hazy, unfocused, but they were his eyes.
"You need water," I said, my own voice shaking with a relief so profound it made my knees weak. "Hold on, I'll call the nurse." My eyes darted around the bed, frantically searching for the call button, my fingers fumbling with the crisp white sheets, my mind a scramble of pure instinct to take care of him. My fingers finally closed around the small, plastic button. I was about to press it, about to bring a nurse, about to finally breathe a sigh of relief, when all hell broke loose behind me.
"What the actual fuck, Jacob!"
The sound was a savage roar, of pure rage that shattered the fragile peace of the room. My head snapped around, a gasp caught in my throat. Damien was no longer the indifferent, pained figure in the corner. His face contorted in fury, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
"I told you not to open that damn club," he snarled, his voice laced with a venom that was years in the making. "I fucking told you it was a bad idea." He took a step closer to the bed, his eyes blazing. "You think because you snorted coke for three months you can deal with drug lords? You don't have what it takes. You should have stayed in your room making fucking web apps!"
"Damien!" I said, my voice a shocked plea, pushing myself up from my kneeling position. This was wrong. So fucking wrong.
But he wasn't having it, he was a mix of fear and frustration could no longer be contained. "You'll get yourself killed," he said, his voice cracking slightly on the last word, revealing the raw terror beneath the anger, "and I can't even do anything about it."
That was it. I'd had enough of this bullshit. "Damien, get the fuck out!" I yelled, my own voice rising to match his. "Where the hell is that nurse?" I spun around, frantically searching for the call button again, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Through it all, Jacob hadn't even flinched. He just lay there, taking the verbal assault, his jaw set with a strange, defiant kind of pride. But his eyes... they slid away from mine, fixing on a point on the wall just over my shoulder. He wouldn't look at me. And that hurt more than any of Damien's angry words.
Just as I was about to scream in frustration, the door swung open. "Is he up?" a nurse asked, "I need to check up on him. Please wait outside."
"We'll be right back," I said quickly, my voice softening as I looked back at Jacob, a silent apology in my eyes. I grabbed Damien by the arm and practically shoved him out of the room, the door clicking shut behind us, leaving us alone in the cold, sterile hallway with a whole new fucking storm to weather.
I spun around, the fury I'd been suppressing since he opened his mouth finally boiling over, hot and sharp.
"Damien, what the hell was that!" I snapped, my voice low and dangerous. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't fucking believe he'd just done that. "Your brother just had surgery! Are you out of your fucking mind?" I continued, my hands clenched into fists at my sides, my whole body trembling with a rage so intense it was scary.
"No, Isabella," he shot back, his own anger flaring, a desperate, defensive thing. "Someone needs to tell him off. The people he surrounds himself with won't do it. They're on his fucking payroll, those fucking suck-ups." He started pacing, a caged animal in the narrow corridor. "Can't you see? He's just a child with money to spare."
"He's your twin brother!" I countered, my voice rising with each word. "You have to care about him no matter what he does!"
"That's what I did all my life," he retorted angrily, stopping his pacing to glare at me, his eyes burning with a pain that went deeper than just anger. "And look where that got him. He won't ever grow up."
But then, just as quickly as it appeared, the anger seemed to drain out of him, leaving behind a hollowed-out shell of a man. He slumped against the wall, running a hand through his hair, a deep, shuddering sigh escaping his lips. "I don't even know where I went wrong," he said, his voice barely a whisper, laced with a self-blame so thick it was suffocating. "I gave him tough love whenever I had the chance, but he's still playing around, not thinking everything through."
He looked so fucking broken, lost in a past I couldn't see, and for a moment, all my anger evaporated, replaced by a sharp, painful pang of sympathy. "You..." I said, my voice softer now. "You aren't responsible for Jacob's actions."
"I was wiser than him," he sighed, his gaze fixed on some distant point on the scuffed linoleum floor. "I could have taught him. I could have tried harder." The weight of his guilt hung in the air between us, heavy and suffocating, a confession that felt like it had been locked away for years. And I had no fucking idea what to say to that.