My vision is tunneling, the edges going gray. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” His jaw flexes. “In through your nose.”
“I said I can’t.” The words come out raw, humiliating, thin with panic.
For a second, I think he’s going to snap back at me. Instead, something shifts in his face. Not softer exactly. Worse, somehow. More honest. Like whatever he’s been keeping bolted down just slipped a notch.
Then he does touch me.
One hand closes around my wrist—not tight, not restraining, just solid enough that I feel it all the way up my arm. The other braces on the mattress by my knee. Heat sinks through my skin like he’s the only warm thing left in the room.
“Match me,” he says.
I stare at him.
His thumb drags once over the inside of my pulse point, a deliberate, grounding stroke. “Now, Delilah.”
He inhales, slow and measured. Holds it. Exhales. Again. Again. The movement in his chest is steady, infuriatingly steady, and I hate that I’m following it without meaning to. Hate that my body still knows how to calibrate itself to him. Hate that it works.
The monitor begins to slow. Not enough to be dignified. Enough to be survivable. Enough that the room stops tilting and the edges of my vision stop trying to disappear.
“That’s it,” he says, quieter now. “Good.”
I swallow hard, throat burning. My lashes are wet. I don’t remember deciding to cry. The tears just sit there, hot and humiliating, refusing to fall.
His gaze catches on them and goes strange. Darker. Rougher. Like it costs him something to stay where he is and not do more. “You’re alright.”
The lie is so obvious it almost makes me laugh, but nothing about this feels funny. “Don’t.”
His eyes narrow slightly. “Don’t what?”
“Say things like that.” My voice shakes anyway. “Don’t stand there and talk to me like I’m something fragile and then leave every time it gets inconvenient.”
The words land between us like broken glass. Sharp, glittering, impossible to take back.
He goes still. Not frozen—worse. Controlled in that frightening, military way where you know every emotion has just been shoved behind steel doors. “You think that’s what I’ve been doing?”
I give him a look that probably says more than anything my body is currently capable of. “What would you call it?”
He lets go of my wrist. The loss of contact is immediate and stupidly noticeable, my skin cooling too fast where his hand had been. He straightens just enough to put space back between us, and I hate that too.
“I’ve been giving you room,” he says.
“No.” I push myself up a little higher despite the pull in my side. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
His mouth tightens. “You were hurt.”
“And you’ve seen hurt before.”
“Not like this.”
The words come out before he can catch them. He knows it as soon as I do. I watch it hit him—the brief flash of regret, theinstinct to pull it back. But it’s too late. The room has already heard it. So have I.
I stare at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He scrubs a hand over his jaw, rough and impatient, like he’s trying to sand the honesty off himself. “It means you almost died.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
