Those dark purple eyes narrowed, and I didn’t want to imagine what I looked like right then, especially so close. “I’ve waited long enough,” he told me solemnly.
He’d waited long enough? To what? Leave? He was leaving me herenow?
Before I could say a word,Alexandershook his head.
I was never going to get over knowing his real name. Never.
“No,” he grumbled almost gently, so different from the way he’d been talking to me before. “I’m not leaving you, Gracie. Stop doing that. If you’d listen—”
“I’m listening,” I tried to say.
He scowled. “If you wouldlisten, I can explain our plan.”
Our plan?
Almost like he could read my mind, he barreled forward. “Drink water and eat a nutrition bar. We’re leaving after that.”
I opened my mouth to tell him I really didn’t think I was going to be able to follow, at least not any time this year, but he raised his eyebrows and somehow told me to shush without actually saying it out loud.
“We’re going together.” His face was oddly even, gaze intense. “I’ll carry you.”
He would? I gulped, and somehow his scowl got worse.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Doing what?” I could barely get out.
Those purple eyes zeroed in, and I didn’t even realize my bottom lip had started trembling, like I was getting ready to cry.
Oh. “Because.”
“No ‘because’.No.” A grumble built in his throat that I felt along my head. “Don’t do it.”
I turned my cheek into his shoulder, like I had a right to. Like I wasn’t being a complete inconvenience and this shit wasn’t totally my fault. It was needy and unnecessary, but he was beingso nice—in his own way—and it’d been a long, long time since I’d been held.
If I hadn’t used up my one tear already, I would have cried.
What might have been a few minutes later, a big hand nudged at my knee. “Get up, eat your bar, drink water, and use the bathroom,” he said above my head. “We need to go.”
We need to go.
Because he hadn’t left me even though he easily could have.
I wouldn’t forget this. I would never forget this. I took in the crabby man’s jaw and swore to myself right then that I owed him my life. That I would stand by him for the rest of mine in any way I could.
Slowly, I rolled off his thighs, accidentally balancing myself on one of them, noticing just how hard it was. I counted to three, then tucked my feet under me and tried to get up.
My thighs said no.
Taking a deep breath, I planted my feet and tried again.
A push on my butt had me standing up straight.
My legs shook, everything hurt, and suddenly the urge to pee was a punch to my stomach that had me waddling straight for the toilet, ignoring every urge in my body that had me wanting to be shy about going in front of him now that he was awake. But what the hell did I have to be embarrassed about? He’d already seen everything, hadn’t he? And that’s why I dropped my pants and took the absolute longest pee of my life.
And I was in the middle of releasing half my bodyweight in fluid when a huff had me lifting my gaze to the man still up against the wall. He was focused on the ceiling.
Was he smirking?
