I’d taken the sharpest thing I could find and aimed it at the one guy who’d had my back since day one. The one who had literally helped carry me off the field when my legs wouldn’t work.
I scrubbed a hand over my face. When my fingers brushed the edge of my speech processors, I removed them both and gently tossed them on the bedside table.
Finally, quiet. No more hallway noise or guilt echoing in stereo. Just the rush of my own pulse in my ears and the faint vibration of my heartbeat against the mattress.
The dark felt bigger without sound. Safer, somehow.
No one could knock and expect me to answer. No one could ask me how I was feeling when I didn’t have the first clue myself.
I stared at nothing.
Bella’s face kept surfacing in the black. I wanted to call her. Really, I did. I wanted to hear her say my name and tell her all of my worries, so the weight wasn’t just mine anymore.
But the thought of her seeing me differently, of disrupting her life in any way made my throat close up all over again.
I rolled onto my side and let the silence swallow me whole.
Tomorrow, I’d figure it out. For now, the dark was enough.
Sometime later, the door opened again. I didn’t hear it, but I did see the thin strip of light slicing across the ceiling.
I rolled over, already bracing to snap at whoever had come to check on me this time.
But then, I saw her.
In the doorway, backlit by the hallway glow like the fucking angel she was.
Her curls were messy, like she’d run her hands through them the entire flight here. Her face was pale, eyes wide and shiny with something between worry and relief.
Her mouth moved faster than I could follow. It was too dark to accurately read her lips, and from the look of it, she was talking a mile a minute.
I sat up straight and held out my hands.Hang on,I signed quickly.I don’t have my processors on and you’re going way too fast.
My fingers fumbled and clicked them back into place behind my ears. She waited patiently for them to turn on.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said definitively.
She cocked her hip. “Oh, that’s rich, Bennett King. I haven’t heard from you in two days. The only reason Iamhere is because your friend thought I should know you were taken to the hospital.”
I looked away, jaw tight. “I didn’t ask him to do that.”
“Oh, I know you didn’t, you stubborn asshole.”
She crossed the room and planted herself on the edge of thebed. When she flicked on the bedside lamp, I squinted against the sudden burst of light.
“The question iswhy? Especially after you made me promise to be so open with you. ‘If you want something, say it. If I do something that scares you or pisses you off or turns you on,pleasetell me.’Yousaid that.”
Well, shit. I had said that.
I’d already known she had one hell of a memory, but damn.
“And right now,you’repissing me off by shutting me out.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
Guilt hit harder than the panic had. “Baby, look at me. I’m a mess—”
“You’rehuman.”
“I am not going to be the thing that pulls you under.”
