Theo stepped forward, holding his hands up. “Honey, you’re covered in glass. You need to shower it off before we can patch up those cuts on your leg and arm.”
I looked at my arm and then my leg. Small trickles of blood bled from me. With wide eyes, I nodded to him. He was right. Heck, they both were.
I stared at the outstretched hand, lent forward and took it.
Chapter Eleven
Jasmine
After my shower, I walked out with a towel wrapped around me to find a maid making my bed. “Ah, my apologies,” she said. “I am almost finished.”
I bit my lip and nodded to her, waiting as she hoovered the glass from the floor. “I’m sorry about all the glass,” I told her sheepishly.
She smiled. “Ah, this is nothing.” Then she looked at my legs. “You want me to help you with the Band-Aids?” My brow furrowed, and I looked down. A couple of cuts from the glass were bleeding again.
“No, it’s fine. Thank you.”
“It is no problem. Anything you need, you ask for Stacey.” I smiled and nodded. “Mr Killion said to make your way to the living area when you are ready.” Then she left.
I was alone again.
I started to change and cleaned up the droplets of blood before securing the cuts with Band-Aids. I looked like a patchwork quilt by the time I’d finished. The glass had even cut my throat and the side of my face! It wasn’t anything that wouldn’t heal, but I was still shocked at the damage I’d done with my voice.
I was in no mood to dress up, so I pulled on a pair of joggers and a t-shirt. It was quite warm in the penthouse, considering it was turning into an ice rink outside. When I was ready, I stepped outside the room and into the hallway, preparing for an onslaught of verbal abuse. But what came was quite the opposite.
Kade saw me first. His eyes searched my face, and I saw something in them that made my chest constrict. Not possession or hunger or any of the things I'd learned to watch for. Just... wonder. Like he was looking at something precious and fragile, something worth protecting.
“Your voice,” he said, “is extraordinary. I've never heard anything like it.”
“I'm sorry,” I blurted out, the words tumbling over themselves. My voice came out small and rough, barely recognizable as mine. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I broke your glass. I shouldn't have.”
The shame was hot in my throat again, choking me. I'd destroyed something that belonged to him, had proven I couldn't be trusted with nice things, with professional equipment, with any of this.
“Jasmine,” Kade's voice cut through my spiral, firm but not harsh. “Stop.”
I pressed my lips together, felt them trembling, and stopped.
“It's only a glass,” he said, walking toward me, and his expression softened into something that might have been a smile, faint and barely there. “It's replaceable.”
Only a glass. Replaceable. But it had probably cost more than I made in a week of singing on street corners, and I'd shattered it with a single note, how could that possibly be replaceable?
Kade stopped before me. “You are all that matters,” he said, and the words landed with such weight, such certainty, that I felt them settle in my chest like stones. “Not the glass. Not theequipment. Not anything else in this building. You. Your safety. Your comfort. That's what matters.”
My throat closed up completely. I couldn't have spoken if I'd wanted to, couldn't have forced words past the emotion lodged there like a physical obstruction.
No one had ever said that to me. No one had ever made me matter more than objects, more than convenience, more than the function I served. I'd always been secondary, an afterthought.
But Kade was looking at me as if I were the primary concern.
I didn't know what to do with that.
Movement from Kade's side made me track it automatically. His free hand went to his pocket, then emerged with something white and folded. A handkerchief, I realized. Linen, neatly pressed, the kind of thing people didn't actually carry anymore except in old movies.
He held it out toward me, extending it in the same careful way he'd offered his hand.
“You're crying,” he said gently.
I was? I touched my cheek, felt the wetness there. Tears had been sliding down my face without my awareness, leaving cool tracks on my skin. When had that started? I hadn't felt them fall, hadn't noticed anything past the fear and confusion.
