“So beautiful.”
The look on my face must have been automatic horror because his mouth twitched into a silent laugh.
“You don’t believe it?” he asked.
I mean, I tried to believe it, but it was hard when my body was the enemy. When the world tilted, I realized I had been holding my breath. Declan’s powerful embrace encircled me.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured into myear.
My gasp sucked in a deep breath, my brain fuzzy with relief, the rightness of the moment, the pain still lingering just around the bend of whatever this was. Even during the worst flares, I had never fainted in my life, but Declan’s hands on my naked body edged me so close that black spots danced in my vision.
Then the warm water closed in, and not even Declan’s solid body behind me stopped the flood of pleasure, relief, safety.
“Invalid bathing wasn’t my choicest upgrade to our friendship.”
He huffed a laugh. “You're between my legs, Honey. Do you think I care?”
My shoulders slumped at that admission, some of my stiffness melting. But that made room for the agony to come back, tenfold. Skittering shards of ice up my arms, my legs, I held in my scream.
Declan was there to cradle me. Whatever happened between us in the temple was there again, and I let him sneak inside me. I felt it clearly now as he stiffened and adjusted in the water. Some of my pain lessened and his squirming increased.
“How do you stand this?” he whispered.
I didn’t have a clever answer for him. “I have to.”
His presence reassured me from the inside. He stroked over my inflamed joints and numb hands. He licked my spasming back. Some of the fatigue drained away as he settled deeper into the tub, head lolling against my shoulder.I knew that motion like my favorite recipe. When your head was too big for your neck and you just needed to rest somewhere.
My pain wasn’t gone, but he seemed to be sharing it, distributing it between us, and no one deserved that.
“Don’t, Declan.”
Once, when I had just arrived at my Aunt’s house after my parent’s death, she tried to help as well. She thought diet, exercise, and grit were enough to overcome Hollow Fever. They were tools to help me manage it, but when that didn’t magically cure me, it somehow became my fault. Many healers since had to convince me surviving it with consequences was not my fault. Some people lived and suffered. Some people died. There was no reason for it.
“Don’t what?”
Don’t care about me so you won’t be disappointed.
I froze. I hadn’t meant to say that so he heard it. To imagine I was enough in this current state was laughable.
He swirled the water around us in soothing circles. “You think you’re a disappointment, Fallon?”
How couldn’t I be when the Fever took everything at random? When I would never work hard enough to make up for it?
“I will disappoint you eventually.” It had always happened before. My sex drive wasn’t high enough. I didn’t clean the house when I came home from the bakery. Evie and Maggie took up too much of mytime.
“You have it all wrong if you think I’m measuring you like them.”
“Who are they?” I was almost afraid to ask.
“Every faceless human and monster I won’t get to smother in their sleep who told you that you had to earn the right to be loved through the amount of work you do. The ones who made you think you’re unlovable otherwise.”
He said it so seriously, as if this was the most important moment of his life.
Emotional discomfort arrowed straight to my hands. I needed to do something with them even though they hurt. Declan understood immediately and lightly rubbed them, allowing me to grip his palms when I was able.
That was insane. Suicidal. I didn’t think I was unlovable if I didn’t work. Surely I had more self-confidence than that. “I don’t believe that.” I tried to inject conviction into my wobbly voice.
“Don’t you? When you sacrifice yourself to work that doesn’t care if you live or die, pushing until you break. What else would you fight so hard for but for love?”
