“You shielded me and got the brunt of the explosion. I should check your condition.” I try to leave his lap, but he tightens his arms around me.
“Not yet,” he whispers, gritting his teeth. “Stay a little longer.”
I’m not sure what he is feeling right now. But the reassuring warmth of his body is what I need as tears start falling down my face. If Ezra hadn’t dragged us out, we could have both died. I dig my nose into his neck, trying to get as much of his scent inside my lungs as I can. But it’s not enough.
I pull back and lean my forehead against his. “This okay?”
“No need to ask,” he says.
This close, he can hear my frantic pulse, the racing of my heart, the tremble in my body. They are pulling me underwater, into the suffocating darkness as I fight against the anxiety attack.
“Your darkness cannot contend with mine, Little Chick.” My breath catches inside my throat as I hear his words. How? How does he know what I’m thinking? What I need to hear?
The low sobs that leave my mouth are filled with relief and fear.
Ezra
The water in the bathtub turned lukewarm, but I keep Sully’s body against mine. It stopped shaking. He hasn’t uttered a word since I took him home. He checked on the hamsters and ferret and brushed his teeth. His eyes grew shiny, and his shoulders hunched. Then, like a broken dam, he let go. His face turned flushed, his body began quaking, and he silently cried. I undressed him and sat us in the large bathtub while the water was still filling it. The traumatizing event must have triggered his PTSD condition once again.
After the bomb went off, it took a few minutes for the ambulance to arrive. Then the firetruck and the police. It was chaos. I just wanted to take Sully home, but I needed to be sure he was okay. So the paramedics drove us to the hospital, where we were checked out, and then an officer took our testimony—a made-up story about us leaving the pet shelter without haste when we heard the explosion behind us. Ren joined us at the hospital—being the shelter’s owner—to corroborate our story, while Dare canceled the security footage, claiming a malfunction.
Ramiel is reaching out to his buddy in the fire squad to try to pass the explosion as an accident—just like they did for the doctor’s house. Gabriel and Lori used their lawyer skills to stop the police from breathing down our necks. Since I’m using a fake identity, it might be better at the moment.
I try to keep my eyes fixed on Sully’s hair. If I look down and see again the bruises and abrasions the explosion caused to his body, I’ll fucking lose it. Nine needs to fucking suffer. I’m so damn tired of her nasty games.
I close my eyes and focus on his body against mine. His warmth. His steady breaths. The smoothness of his thigh brushing against mine in the water.
“How do you feel?” I ask, reining my fury in and keeping my tone flat.
He sighs. “Aching everywhere but okay.” His voice sounds weak, broken, too fragile for my liking.
“How about here?” I tap my finger on his temple.
“I don’t know.” Another long sigh. “I was such a damsel in distress after the explosion. I even puked. When will I learn to be strong, to control my fears and reactions, and to, to…” His head falls on my shoulder in defeat.
I run my fingers through his hair, pushing the locks back. “The human brain is built in layers, and way down deep, there’s the lizard one. It’s all action and reaction. You can’t train it not to react. You can’t hide your reactions.”
“But you do it all the time.” He turns halfway into my arms. His incredible eyes—water green and caramel brown—gaze at me with so much…feeling. If anybody else aimed that emotional look at me, I would have discarded them like trash—I actually did it in the past, more than once. But this is Sully, my little chick, and whatever he gives me, I take.
“My head is built differently; it lacks certain emotions,” I remind him. “What I saw back at the shelter was you ordering me tofree those animals and then checking they were all right. Even at the hospital, the first thing you told Ren was that the dogs ran away.” That irritated me to no end actually. He should have thought about himself or me, not two strays.
He nods with a flimsy smile.
“Little Chick, I told you already, you can’t have control over your fears. But you can give them the middle finger.”
He ponders my words for a moment. “Like that dream,” he mutters before looking at me again with a determined stare. “When I have a panic attack, it’s like being underwater. I can see the beautiful surface, but I can’t move; fear keeps pushing me down.” I follow the movement of his fingers when he flicks the bathtub water.
“Beauty and death can coexist in the same place. Just like the ocean, those shiny waters can easily suck you in deep.”
“Exactly!” he exclaims. He’s slowly coming back to his usual self. “Can you hold me underwater? I want to try and give the bird to my fear.”
My lips twitch. Never knew a person could be this cute. “Okay. If this is what you want, I’ll give it to you. Then I’ll take what I want, though.”
“Deal!” He slides toward the other edge of the bathtub. He bends his knees and is about to go under when I stop him.
“If you open your eyes, I’ll pull you out. Keep them closed if you want to stay under.”
He nods with a nervous smile. “You’ll be here.”
