Page 34 of Cash

“Around eight o’clock.”

“I slept all this time?” she asked, eyes like saucers.

“Yes, indeed. I’ve never seen anybody who needed it more.” And I was accustomed to staying up for twenty-four hours at a stretch. I knew what fatigue felt like.

“I’m sorry to put you out like this. You, ahem, slept on the floor?”

“I did. You would likely remember if I hadn’t.”

Her cheeks flushed—another good sign after seeing them so ghostly white.

I let her off the hook. “What I mean is, I tend to take up a lot of space in the bed. You wouldn’t have slept nearly as well had I been in there with you.”

“I don’t know. I was out cold. I don’t even remember getting here from the lab.” She looked down at herself, as if checking to be sure she was still fully dressed.

I stopped short of asking how little she thought of me that she had to check for such a thing.

“Thank you,” she finally whispered. “You’ve been nothing but kind to me.” That was when her voice broke, and a sliver of that wounded, fragile girl came through. She left the last piece of toast on the tray and pushed away the rest.

“You’re finished?”

“I’ve had enough.” She looked down at her hands.

“Now, do you feel like telling me what’s really happening with you? And stop lying, please. You’re only wasting my time, and yours. And you’re insulting me.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“Sorry, nothing,” I growled, jumping to my feet. “I watched you cry yourself unconscious last night. You collapsed in my arms and slept ten hours solid. You’ve just eaten enough to feed a full-grown shifter. Your bones are practically sticking out of your skin. You’re not taking care of yourself. You’re falling apart—nothing like the person you were when we first met. What is it? What’s happened in such a short amount of time?”

I glared down at her once I finished pacing.

Tears filled her eyes, spilled over onto her hands, onto the blankets around her. They streamed down over her cheeks.

I went to her again, taking her arms in my hands. “You can tell me. Don’t you know? All I want is for you to be safe. There has to be something I can do.”

“You won’t want to help me when you know the truth,” she promised in a barely audible whisper. “I wish I didn’t… I wish you weren’t so nice to me. I wish I didn’t like you at all. It would be at least a little easier that way.”

Certainty struck me like a ton of bricks, and I let her go, looming over her. “I see. So you’ve been using me all along, just like I guessed. You’re working for someone else. That’s why you’ve fallen apart like this. It’s guilt. You’re an honest person, and they want you to be dishonest.”

I was almost surprised at the depth of my disappointment in her. I wanted to believe the best. I wanted to trust her.

She shook her head. “I’ve wanted to tell you all this time. I like you, I trust you, and it’s been killing me to keep it to myself.”

“You don’t deny it, then. I let you sleep in this bed and gave you my food, and you’re nothing but a traitor.”

Another shake of her head. “Cash, they have my nephew. They kidnapped my nephew, and he’s five years old, and they won’t give him back until I give them your blood.”

It all came out in one breathless rush, and when she finished, we both swayed as if a bomb had just gone off.

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