And now, here I am. The fiancée. Sitting in the dark, waiting for the man I tackled into a piece of Renaissance statuary to wake up and destroy me.
Brooks shifts in the bed.
The movement is small, a roll of his shoulders, but it drags a groan from his throat that sounds like gravel grinding together. The sound scrapes against the quiet of the room, making me flinch. He grimaces, his brow furrowing as he fights to pull himself back to consciousness.
I hold my breath.
He blinks. Once, twice. His eyelids look heavy. His dark eyes wander, unfocused and swimming, scanning the sterile white tiles, the heart monitor, the IV bag dripping saline into his arm.
Then, the wandering stops. His gaze lands on me.
He doesn't smile. He doesn't look confused.
He stares at me for a long minute. The quiet thickens until I can barely breathe through it. His gaze presses down on me like a physical thing. His eyes are sharp, stripping away the hospital haze with terrifying speed. This isn't the look of a groggy victim waking up from a nap; it's the look of a man scanning a contract for a loophole.
"Water," he rasps. His voice is a wreck, dry and cracked.
I jump up, grateful for a task, any task, that doesn't involve explaining myself. I grab the plastic pitcher from the bedside table, my hands shaking enough to splash a little water onto the tray. I pour it into the small cup and fumble for the bendy straw.
"Here." I step up to the rail, holding the cup out. "Small sips. You've been out for a while."
He ignores my advice completely. He leans forward, his face twisting in a sharp grimace as he moves and wraps his lips around the straw. He drinks with a thirsty intensity, draining half the cup before dropping his head back against the pillows with an exhale.
He closes his eyes again, his chest rising and falling in shallow, careful breaths.
It's unfair, really.
A man who recently face-planted into a marble cherub has no business looking this good. Even with a bandage taped to his temple and hospital lighting washing him out, Brooks Taylor is annoyingly handsome. Dark hair, messy in a way that looks editorial rather than traumatic. High cheekbones. A mouth that, under different, non-litigious circumstances, I might spend time thinking about.
If I wasn't hyperventilating about a potential prison sentence, I might even be attracted to him.
"Head," he mutters, interrupting my internal assessment. "Ribs."
"You have a concussion," I say, my voice sounding thin in the small room. "Grade two. And significant bruising on your right side. But the CT scans were clear. No internal bleeding. No fractures."
He opens his eyes again. The lingering confusion in his expression vanishes, replaced by a cold realization.
"You," he says.
"Me," I agree. I keep my face neutral, the same practiced mask I use when telling a hysterical mother-of-the-bride that the reception tent is leaking.
He lifts his hand, the one without the IV, and touches the square gauze bandage taped to his temple. His fingers graze the tender skin, exploring the bump underneath. Then his hand drops, and he looks at me. The temperature in the room seems to plummet ten degrees.
"You hit me," he says.
It isn't a question. It is a statement of fact, delivered with zero emotion.
"I intercepted you," I correct him, instinctively reaching for corporate euphemisms. "You were moving toward the altar with disruptive intent. I performed a necessary event management maneuver."
"You tackled me," he says, louder this time. His voice is gaining strength, the rasp smoothing out into something harder. "You tackled me. Into a statue."
"It was a cherub," I say, as if the specificity matters. "And it was a garden installation, not a statue. And you were about to ruin Mark and Laurie's wedding. I couldn't let you object."
"I wasn't going to object," he snaps. He tries to push himself up, but his arms tremble, and he collapses back against the mattress with a sharp intake of breath. He glares at the ceiling, frustration radiating off him in waves. "God. You're insane. You are actually psychotic."
"I'm professional," I counter, though the ground beneath my feet feels like quicksand. "There is a difference."
He turns his head on the pillow to look at me, his eyes dark and furious. "I was going to save my friend from making a massive financial mistake."
