“You’re back,” he says after a minute.
I make a sound low in my throat, half moan, half grunt.
Ludo treats me to a fleeting, magical touch—a brush of fingers down my forearm. “You’ve been gone ages. I thought you’d died.”
I can’t tell if he’s being serious, but I imagine he is. Ludo doesn’t joke much. He is honest and earnest, and nice—basically my opposite. “I...” I pause to moisten my cracked lips. “I didn’t die. Just wish I had.”
Ludo stills, and his gaze sharpens. “Don’t say that.”
“But it’s true.”
“It’s not, or you wouldn’t be living.”
I’m too addled for this conversation, but somehow, through the nightmare my life has become, I know I’ve fucked up. “Ludo.”
His name is all I have, and it comes out as a plea. Red-hot spikes are being jammed into every part of my body and I need him to stop frowning at me the way he is right now—as though I’m an unexploded bomb he’s not sure he wants to dodge. As though he wants my pain to be his pain because he deserves it more than I do.
Fucking psychic, are you?
Hell no. But I apparently consider myself an expert on what Ludo is thinking, despite the fact he’s never, ever told me.
Twat.
Ludo’s silence is deafening. For a long moment, I fear he’ll leave, but then he sags and drops into the chair I’ve come to think of as his. “You’re in pain.”
It’s not a question. He knows. He touches my arm again, and I barely contain the shiver that will make me hurt a thousand times more.
I focus on his icy fingertips and note that he’s wearing only a T-shirt and pyjama bottoms. The baggy hoody he usually wears is missing, and though his cool touch is soothing, I can’t bear the thought that he might be cold.
As if on cue, he shivers, and I realise he’s trembling, digging his teeth into his bottom lip to keep his jaw still.
Fuck this.“In the cabinet,” I grind out.
“What?”
“My hoodie. Put it on.”
“Why?”
“You’re cold.”
“I like it.”
It takes me a moment to compute his words. And even then it doesn’t work.Nope. Not doing it.“Please.”
Ludo sighs and rises from his seat, using his uninjured arm to lever himself upright. “I’m only doing it to stop you having a tantrum.”
His choice of words is so legit ridiculous I laugh, and ithurts, but it feels good.
Seeing his slight frame dwarfed by my huge hooded sweatshirt feels even better, and for the first time, I’m grateful to the paramedic who plucked it free from Bernard’s ruined van. It’s all I have, and I want Ludo to have it.
Ludo returns to his seat. He doesn’t touch me again, but I don’t mind. He’s warm, and that’s enough for me until another wave of pain eclipses any coherent thoughts I have left.
I groan as my body tightens to fight it. Tension ripples through me, adding to the jackhammer in my bones. This shit is insane. I can’t take it.
Cool fingers brush my forehead, easing my hair back from my face. They’ve lost their icy edge but none of their magic. “Shh,” Ludo whispers. “It’ll get better, I promise.”
But I don’t believe him. The surgeon warned me I’d have a rough twenty-four hours after the surgery, and it’s barely started. If anything, it’ll get worse, and my morphine pump is empty.
