Page 48 of Sparrow

John manages to get through the door now and sits on the bed next to her. He takes her arm and holds two fingers to her wrist, checking for a pulse, then frowns and tips his head. He moves to her other wrist and takes her pulse again, and then puts fingers to her neck.

“What is it?” I ask sharply.

He looks up at me, takes in my expression, and quickly clears his own face of concern. “Nothing,” he says. “Just a quick heartbeat. Probably due to the fact that you ran here with her.”

I feel the flush creeping up my neck and realize I’m going to need to come up with a reason I did that or the guys will tease me about it for weeks.

“You ran here with me?”

I jump at the question, but then grin.

“You’re awake.”

Arden narrows her eyes at me like this is the stupidest thing she’s ever heard. “Yes. Answer the question. You ran here with me?”

“I was in a hurry.”

She scoffs. “And you thought running was better than taking a car?”

Mars steps into the argument and puts his hand on her shoulder. “Girl, you went down like a sack of rocks. What happened? Are you okay?” He glances at John like he already knows Arden is going to lie to him. “Is she okay?”

There’s panic in his voice, and I add that to the list of firsts. I’ve known Mars ten years and I’ve never heard him frightened.

“I’m fine,” Arden snaps. “I just fainted. It’s not the end of the world.”

“Not the end of the world?” Mars snorts. “You fainted!”

“Yes, and it’s happened before. I’m sure it’ll happen again,” she says, waving this off. “It’s just stress.”

“Stress?” I ask. “We were in the middle of a mud fight that you started!”

She levels a rather cold look at me. “And yet I’ve spent the last four months in a rather stressful position. You don’t think my body might still be reacting to that?”

I don’t believe her.

I don’t believe a word of it.

I mean yes, I know she’s been in a bad position for months, and that we haven’t actually even talked about what happened to her when she was in captivity. I don’t know what she went through or what it might have done to her body.

But she’s been healthy since we brought her home. She’s been laughing and teasing us, and just tonight, rolling down hills and slinging mud. She hasn’t acted like someone who’s on the edge of fainting.

And when I look at her, I see a guarded, secretive glint in her eye. Her lips are pressed together like she’s holding something back rather than telling the whole truth. This isn’t a girl who’s giving us the real story.

She’s given us a story, for certain. And she’s waiting to see whether we buy it.

And I have exactly no way to make her tell me the truth. She’s too stubborn and too protective of herself to give it up–especially if she thinks it’s going to worry us.

“Well then,” I say. “Guess there’s no reason for us all to be up here worrying about you. Glad you’re awake.”

I leave the room without another glance, her stare burning holes in my back as I walk away. But I don’t turn, and I don’t go back.

Because I don’t like how upset I am about this whole episode.

I don’t like how much it hurts to know she’s hiding things from me.

And it’ll be a whole lot easier to ignore that emotion if I’m not standing next to her, her scent in my nose and her voice in my ears, my body yearning to take her in my arms again and shake her. Tell her to be more careful. Tell her to let me take care of her.

Tell her I won’t be able to stand it if she leaves me, too.