I was too broken to break,right?
“Wh-what?” He picked his head off my chest and dug the heel of his palm into his reddenedeyes.
“We’ll go back to being . . .” I shrugged to buy myself time to clear my throat. “Friends.” I tried to smile, but my lips wobbled too much for it tostick.
His strong brow grooved. “What are you talkingabout?”
“I . . . you . . . I thought . . .” My eyebrows pulled together. “Whyareyoucrying?”
“Because I lost you.” He said this with an anger that made me shrink deeper into the tough pillow propping my head up. “Because when Liam told me to bite you, I thought it was some sick joke, that he’d gone soft in the head. Ness, you died in my arms. And then for the past week, you’ve been in and out of consciousness. I apologize for being emotional, but until a few minutes ago, I was terrified you might never wake up. Or that when you did, you wouldn’t remember my name. Or that you might not want me now that nothing bindsus.”
“The past week?” I whispered. “The duel was lastweek?”
He nodded carefully, as though waiting for me to touch upon the rest of what he’dsaid.
“You think I forgot you?” I dragged my thumb across his palm. “How could I forget the boy who picked me up from school to buy me ice-cream? Who taught me to climb my first tree and who sat by my bed to make sure all the monsters stayed underneath it?” I kept stroking his palm. “I remember everything about you, August. I remember when you came to talk to me the day of the pack gathering, when you shot Lucas at the paintball arena, when you collected me in the woods the night Liam called me a traitor. I remember our swim in the lake when you tried to tickle me, and the feel of your palm on my skin. It was the day I realized my feelings for you weren’t all that platonic.” While I kept caressing his palm with my thumb, I raised my other hand to touch the faint-white line where I’d carved his cheek the night I’d had a nightmare, and he’d woken me up. “I remember giving you this scar, and then licking the bloodaway.”
A full-body shiver went throughhim.
“I remember our first kiss. Each one of our kisses, for that matter. I remember my birthday dinner and all that happenedafter.”
His lips parted a little, as though he were trying to catch hisbreath.
“I remember you, August.” I cupped his chiseledjaw.
Those glorious emerald eyes bore down onmine.
“And concerning the link, it’s not the first time the bond between us has been absent, now isit?”
His eyes seemed to shine a littleharder.
“What about you?” Iasked.
“What about me,what?”
“Have your feelings for mechanged? I know you love me, but do you still”—I shrugged—“wantme?”
Shaking his head, he captured my wrist and brought it up to his lips. “Want is a mighty feeble word for what I feel for you, NessClark.”
When he kissed the delicate skin, the room filled with the melody of myheartbeats.
He peppered the inside of my arm with kisses before carefully laying my hand down on the twisted sheets, wrapping his fingers around the back rung of the bed to keep his weight off me, and leaning over until his mouth was parallel to mine. I tried to reach around his back, but the cord of the heart monitor fumbled my firstattempt.
“Can you turn off that machine so I can get my finger back? I don’t want to remove the clip and give all the nurses strokes when they hear meflatline.”
Hewinced.
I wrinkled my nose. “I didn’t mean to remindyou.”
“I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever be able to forget, sweetheart. Those were the worst minutes of my life. On par with crashing in the helicopter and having a heart-to-heart withEvelyn.”
“Evelyn! Does she know?” I asked as he studied the EKG machine to figure out how to turn itoff.
In the end, he simply unpluggedit.
“She knows.” He slipped the clamp off my fingertip. “The first two days, she didn’t leave the chair next to your bed, but then Frank forced her to go home at night so she could rest. She made me swear not to leave your side, then muttered a couple things in Spanish, but I didn’t quite catch their meaning. She was probably hexingme.”
I grinned, but it tugged on my injured cheek, so I uncurled mylips.
