They stay for an hour. Luke pulls a pen from his jacket and flips William's coloring page over to the blank side, and suddenly the hospital room is a classroom and the bed is a desk and my son is leaning forward with his IV arm propped on a pillow watching a professional football player draw a play on the back of a dinosaur.
"Okay, so these guys here—" Luke draws five x's in a row. "That's the wall. The offensive line. Their whole job is to keep the bad guys out."
"Like a castle?" William leans forward, IV arm propped on a pillow.
"Exactly like a castle." Luke draws arrows off two x's on the edges. "And these guys — the receivers — they're the fast ones. They run out here and here, and the quarterback has to find them before the castle falls down."
"What if the castle falls down?"
"Then the quarterback's on the ground and everybody's sad." Luke taps the pen against the o in the center. "That's why this guy matters most. The quarterback stands back here, reads what the other team is doing, and throws." He draws a long dotted line to one of the receivers. "But he can't do any of it without the wall."
"So what position do you want to play?" Luke taps the pen against the paper. "When you're out of here and back on your feet."
William doesn't hesitate. "Quarterback." He says it with the absolute certainty of a child who has never been introduced to doubt.
Luke nods, serious as a contract negotiation. "Good choice. But you know what's better than a quarterback?" He draws a circle around one of the x's on the line. "The guy who protects him. That's the real hero — the one nobody talks about but everybody needs. Without him, the quarterback's on the ground before the play even starts."
William considers this with the gravity of a five-year-old making a life-altering decision. His brow furrows. His small fingers trace the x's on the paper. "Okay," he says finally. "I'll be both."
Luke laughs and the sound fills the hospital room the way his laugh fills every space — warm, full, the kind that invites you in instead of shutting you out. I have to turn toward the window because my eyes are doing something I can't control, something wet and ridiculous that has no business happening in a fluorescent-lit recovery ward. Through the glass the parking lot blurs into watercolor.
Olivia appears during her rounds. She's in fresh scrubs, stethoscope around her neck, the particular energy of a woman who's been on her feet for ten hours and is running on coffee and spite.
She hugs me — tight, quick, the hug of someone who knows exactly how many pieces you're in and is holding them together with pressure alone. She squeezes Luke's shoulder with one hand, and then leans in the doorway watching the three of us — Luke still drawing plays, William asking questions faster than they can be answered, me sitting on the edge of the bed with my hand on my son's ankle because I need to be touching him to believe he's real and recovering and here.
Olivia's expression is the one I know too well. The one that says she's doing math I'm not ready for — adding up the way Luke crouches to William's level, the way William says his name like it's made of gold, the way I keep turning toward the window when the picture gets too sharp and too beautiful and too much like something I could want. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't need to. Her face is a full paragraph.
In the corridor afterward, while Luke is saying goodbye to William through the glass — pressing his palm flat against the window while William matches it from the other side, their hands lined up, the size difference enormous — Olivia stands beside me.
"Did you know he calls?" Olivia's voice is quiet, aimed at the floor.
"What do you mean, calls?"
"The nurses' station. Every other day." She crosses her arms, watching Luke through the glass. "Asks about William's vitals. Whether he's eating. Whether he's sleeping through the night." She glances at me. "He asked about the medication dosage last Tuesday. By name. He'd looked it up."
I didn't know that. The information lands in my chest like something dropped from a height — not painful, just heavy, filling a space I didn't realize was empty. I look through the glass at Luke waving to my son, his palm still flat against the window, and something enormous shifts inside me. Not a crack this time. A tectonic plate moving, slow and irreversible, rearranging the landscape from underneath.
Luke drives me back. The truck smells like pine and gym bags and the particular warmth that lives in the seats of cars owned by people who use them for real things instead of photoshoots. We sit in the driveway of Jared's house — his mansion looming through the windshield, all glass and money and sharp angles, every window reflecting the sunset like a building that's learned to perform even when nobody's looking.
Luke stares at the house, then at me. He doesn't say anything about his feelings. He doesn't mention the kiss or the bathroom or the corridor or the fact that he's been calling a hospital every other day to check on a child who isn't his. He just says, "Same time Thursday? William asked if I'd come back."
I nod. My throat is too tight for words.
He smiles — warm, patient, the smile of a man who has decided to play the long game and isn't interested in announcing the strategy. I get out and close the door. Walk up the driveway on legs that feel less certain than they did an hour ago. At the front door I turn back. Luke is still parked there, engine idling, waiting until I'm inside. I wave. He waves back — one hand lifted from the steering wheel, steady, unhurried, the gesture of a man who will always wait until the door closes.
I walk into Jared's house. He's standing in the hallway. Not sitting, not passing through, not pretending to be on his way somewhere — standing, arms crossed, positioned with a direct sightline to the front window. His eyes go past me to the truck pulling away from the curb.
"Matthews again." It's not a question. It's a deposition.
"He drove me to the hospital to see William." I set my bag down, keeping my voice even, clinical. "Visiting hours."
"How generous." The word generous comes out of his mouth like something he chewed on and spat out, the consonants sharp enough to cut. His jaw is tight and his eyes are still tracking the space where Luke's truck used to be, as if the absence of it is just as offensive as the presence was.
I start to walk past him toward the stairs and his hand catches my arm — not hard, not like Ron, no pain in the grip, but enough to stop my momentum. Enough to make my body register his proximity, his cologne, the heat of his palm through my sleeve.
"You smell like his car."
I stare at him. "Excuse me?"
"Gym bags and pine." His voice is low, rough, the words scraped from somewhere he didn't mean to access. "His whole personality in a scent."
I pull my arm free. Hold his gaze. "Are you jealous?"
The question hangs between us in the hallway like a lit match over gasoline. His jaw works — the muscle ticking, the tendons in his neck shifting, his eyes locked on mine with an intensity that has nothing to do with contracts or cameras or PR schedules. He doesn't answer. The silence stretches for three full seconds, and the not-answering is louder than anything he could have said.
I walk upstairs. His cologne replaces Luke's warmth with every step — heavier, sharper, the scent of a man who fills rooms instead of settling into them. I close the bedroom door, lean against it, press my palms flat against the wood, and think: I am in so much trouble.