“Were you?”
“I was. I won’t say I wasn’t scared because yeah, I was, but I… I dealt with it. I just didn’t think he would make me bleed.”
“Maybe this is my fault,” I say, shaking my head as I turn away from her and search out a dissolvable stitch in my kit.
“Howdid you even come to that conclusion?” Snow asks in disbelief.
Turning back to her, I focus on preparing the stitch. “I was reckless with you. I was reckless in handling contact with you after you got stuck by the needle. Being unable to control myself and giving in to sex with you hardly highlights how important it is for you to have minimal contact with people until your results come back.”
As I reach up with the stitch, her lower lip wobbles and tears spill down her cheeks as she glares at me.
“Don’t,” she croaks. “Don’t you dare take that from me. Don’t you dare!”
16
SNOW
“Don’t you dare take that away from me!”
I need him to stop talking before he ruins the only good thing that exists in my life right now.
Try as I might, I lose control.
The tears come like a wave and I can’t hold in my sob even as I clutch my hands to my mouth.
“Snow?” Xander’s voice softens, losing its scolding edge. “I… I’m sorry. I’m not trying to take anything away from you, but I see the correlation. I was too relaxed with you, taking too many risks.”
“No!” I gasp between my fingers. “You don’t understand!”
“Then… then talk to me. Help me understand because right now, all I see is that my desire for you has fed into a streak of you putting yourself in danger and others at risk.”
“It’s not true, it’s not! What we have, what we’ve done is the only good thing I have going for me right now, okay, and I just…”
Suddenly, Xander’s too close.
His kitchen is too small and he’s far too close.
He steps out of my way when I push past him and slide off the counter, pacing to the other side of the island counter until my breathing feels less restricted.
“I knew him,” I gasp. “Dickson. I didn’t know it until I saw him, but I knew him. He came to my apartment once and he attacked me because he was looking for Caleb. And Caleb washidingin my closet the entire time! I didn’t know his name then, but Caleb was in debt to him. That’s where my money went. Caleb stole it to pay that bastard, and I was so angry but as soon as I saw him, I felt like I was back in my apartment up against a wall with nowhere to go. And he was saying all these things about how I could fuck him to earn my money back.”
Xander stiffens on the other side of the counter, and he takes a half-step toward me, then he thinks better of it.
I’m grateful. The last thing I need right in this moment is to be touched.
“And when he was talking, all I could hear was Caleb. All the shit he used to say when he was angry, and how sweet he could be when he was just looking to get laid. So I got angry and he talked and talked and when he reached for me, I hit him with that lamp, and it felt so good that it scared me because… because…”
The tears come thicker and faster, as if something’s unlocked inside me and all my grief about Caleb’s death and more is finally free to surface.
“I said horrible things to Caleb the last night I saw him. We argued so much and I said the most horrible things, and then hewent and stole from me and then hedied. He died! And I can’t help but think if I hadn’t said those things then he would still be alive! So it felt good to lash out.”
Each word drags raw from my throat, trembling between each ragged gasp I manage to breathe as I pace back and forth.
“I said those things and then he went out and he died! And it hurts, but I don’t understand why because he was so horrible to me, but I feel so guilty! And my money is gone so I can’t go and see my family, and my friends didn’t like Caleb so they were glad when I told them and I feel so alone! It’s like this hole is opening up inside me to the point that I can’t breathe and I thought I was dying, and then I got stuck by that needle and my entirelifehinges on the results. And then you came along!”
I meet his gaze and his handsome face blurs through my tears.
Despite that, the sympathetic warmth in his eyes radiates like the warm glow of the sun and the tight pain in my chest throbs deeper.
