Page 99 of The Au Pair Affair

“I don’t want you here.”

“I need to be here,” she whispered, unable to keep the tremor out of her voice.

He looked away sharply at that, jaw flexing furiously.

Burgess was not unaffected. He didn’t mean the terrible things coming out of his mouth. She was close to getting through to him, and that belief caused courage to well in her chest. She had no idea of the source, only that she was grateful for it. Clinging to it with both hands. “I came here to tell you I love you.” Her heart got stuck in her throat halfway through that sentence, making her words run together, high-pitched and breathy. Speaking that truth was freeing. The greatest adventure of all. And at the moment, the scariest. “Don’t shut me out. We’ll get through this.”

He started at her confession, his blue gaze deepening in color, that large chest starting to pulse up and down. He opened his mouth to speak, then snapped it shut.

Another handful of seconds passed.

“You think you’re strong enough to get me through this? You’re not a coward who walks away, right?” His voice turnedalmost unnatural, like he was rushing to get the words out or he’d lose his nerve. “But there’s a ziplock full of postcards in your purse that say different.”

Those words rang so loudly in her ears that she didn’t even hear the nurses entering the room, didn’t see them until they were surrounding Burgess, checking his blood pressure and asking him questions. He didn’t answer them, continuing to stare at Tallulah as she backed toward the door, hardly able to feel her feet on the linoleum.

Cold shock swallowed her in one bite. This wasn’t the Burgess she’d fallen in love with. He was unrecognizable. A different man altogether. He’d fooled her. Tricked her into thinking he was different. Lulled her into a sense of complacency, before ripping off the mask. Perhaps not as bad as the man who’d locked her in a closet with the intention of killing her, but emotional cruelty brought its own brand of injuries. And as she continued to back toward the exit, those open wounds started to hemorrhage.

The farther she got from Burgess’s bed, the more drastically his chest heaved, panic making dents in his hard resolve.

“Tallulah, my God, I’m so fucking sorry,” he said, right before she stepped backward into the hallway. He pushed off the nurses’ hands and attempted to climb out of bed, but roared over the pain it caused his back and landed on the bed again, face white. If it was a fraction of the agony detonating on repeat in her heart, it had to be excruciating.“Tallulah.”

Those increasingly desperate calls of her name fell on deaf ears.

She turned and walked away.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Burgess had no idea what day it was. After seeing the replay of his injury once, he’d banned the television from being turned on and refused repeated attempts by the nurses to open the window shades. If the sun was shining outside, he didn’t want to fucking know about it. Anything less than a postapocalypse would be unacceptable. And confusing. It didn’t seem possible that the world could carry on as usual when his chest had been reduced to a smoking crater.

He stared into the darkness now, the latest painkiller beginning to wear off, no longer targeting the hellish pain in his freshly repaired back, but he didn’t ring for the nurse, like he’d been instructed. Nor did he press the button to release more morphine. No, he just lay there and let it grow increasingly worse, praying the pain would expand until it swallowed him whole.

His mindset was garbage. As an athlete, he was painfully aware of that. This defeatist attitude was pathetic. He should be meeting with the team physicians and trainers, plotting out his recovery time. Scheduling rehabilitation. He should be in touch with his teammates, assuring them they wouldn’t miss a beat in his absence. As the captain, that was his duty.

Then there was Lissa. Apart from a brief phone call to assure her that he was okay, there’d been no communication. She’d be worried. He’d learned over the course of the last month how much their relationship benefitted from simply talking and heshouldn’t backslide now. But he just lay there in the darkness and willed himself to die, instead.

I just want to die. Let me die.

Having all the time in the world to think was turning out to be a curse. Because he could see the events of the last month so clearly now. Knowing his duty as a captain extended to emotional support of his teammates... that was all Tallulah. Realizing his daughter needed a more open line of communication. That was Tallulah, too. All these worthy things he worried about now, even while his world was burning down, were worries because she’d heightened his awareness of the people around him. His relationships, his legacy, his outlook.

She’d altered everything for the better.

This woman had come into his life and flooded it with light.

And he’d kicked her out.

Time had stood still since the second she walked away. He’d let the doctors numb his body and steal his consciousness, rearrange his spine, talk to him in medical jargon that went in one ear and out the other. But Burgess was still living in the second Tallulah disappeared into the hallway. He was still there, replaying it repeatedly, growing increasingly sick with grief.

Jesus Christ, how could he say something so fucking horrible to the best thing that ever happened to him?

He could see it now, like a projection screen playing on the wall of the hospital room, the way she’d paled and stumbled backward a little, totally unprepared for him to lash out with that particular weapon—and oh, he was a bastard for using that against her. She was right to leave. She was right to keep walking while he shouted her name. Ignore his calls and texts.

She was right to never want to see him again.

He’d been wounded, devastated to have hockey taken away from him. But ironically, he’d stopped mourning the loss of his career as soon as she walked out.

That was a special kind of fucked up.

Because he might be able to recover from this back injury, but he would never, ever, get over the loss of Tallulah. No, he’d be living without oxygen for the rest of his miserable life.

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