Page 53 of Speak

Ihateher.

When we leave the room, we hear the lock click into place and Jonas hangs back, he looks so out of place and fucking helpless. “I’m going to wait around. I’ll catch up to you later.”

I scoff. “Seriously? You said you wouldn’t be able to handle talking to her. I’ll hang back. I’ll let you know what happens.”

Forty minutes later, Doc Archer is on his phone, holding the IV pole. He looks up at me and smiles. “Ah, good. One of her friends are still here. I just ordered her some soup from Southern Style. Could you please pick it up and have her eat it? At least half.”

“You want me to fucking babysit her?”

He arches a dark eyebrow. “No. I’m asking you to be a good friend to your very sick friend.”

Well, when he puts it like that… “She’s not my friend. She’s the girl my best friend was fucking.”

“Ah, and you’re jealous you didn’t get to, is that right, Mister Prescott?”

“Absolutely not.” I half-lie.

“Get her the fucking soup. Be the gentleman of caliber your parents raised you to be and help her out without trying to rape her.”

I make a disgusted face. “I wouldn’t touch Raven Monroe with a ten-foot-pole.”

“No, but you’d get close enough to try and break her hand, wouldn’t you?”

All the blood drains from my face. “She’s a fucking liar.” I rasp.

“She didn’t tell me anything, Chase. Your demeanor did. I watched the way you tensed up when I asked her in the room who did it to her, through the mirror on her vanity and then heard when you sighed a breath of relief. I’m a psychiatrist, Prescott. My entire career is spent analyzing behaviors in humans. Get her the goddamnsoup. And had she told me you were the one who did it, make no mistake, I would have called the authorities myself.” He walks away shaking his head.

Twenty-five minutes later, I knock on her door but then, fuck that. I’m striding into her room, goddamn soup in hand.

I hold my breath when I see her in nothing but her RMU sweatshirt and panties, looking for pants. I tell her not to bother, to get into bed so she can eat the fucking soup. She bends over and crawls back in bed, those white panties clawing themselves into my spank bank.

She looks better. Not the best… but better with the IV juice. I sit on her bed, back against her headboard and turn her TV on. If I’m going to have to babysit, I’m at least going to enjoy it.

I hand her the container but she looks sick just looking at it when she opens it.

I prove I didn’t poison her food for the second time in one day, (the soup is fucking delicious) and when I hand her back the spoon, letting her know it wouldn’t have herpes because I don’t eat pussy unless I’m really into someone, she chucks it across the room like a fucking toddler. Anger bubbles up my chest and I blink at her.

“You’re fucking infuriating. I can’t believe I got put on babysitting duty.”Again, I leave out. But just to fuck with her, becausepsychological warfareor whatever, I end up saying, “I could be upstairs getting laid right now.Ceciliais always hot and willing and readily available for me to sink my cock into her.Anyhole me or Jonas want.”

Damn, whatever the head doctor said to her was good. She doesn’t even flinch. I grab the spoon, wash it, and then watch her eat from my periphery, the first spoonful that goes into her mouth, I can almost hear her moan, her eyes shut and her head tilts back, letting the flavors settle over tongue. I know the soup is delicious… but she makes it look like it’s the best thing she’s ever eaten. Like she’s been transported back in time when her life was good. Before she was almost murdered by the Syndicate and she could talk. She does it with each bite and soon my cock is hard watching thiscreatureeat and my stomach grumbles.

I try to take it away from her but then she leaps out of bed, and I follow. When she puts it above her head, it’s almost too easy.She’s five-foot-nothing compared to me. But then she swipes it and puts it behind her and my football trained, eyes-always-on-the prize hands follow. And soon, I’m so close to her. I’m too close to her and she smells divine and her beautiful little face is a hair away from mine and I feel this… static spark between us and suddenly the TV is too loud and too quiet and her perfect lips are so close, her hips are in my hands and her warm cinnamon eyes are wide and her chest is heaving against mine and it feels like a sin to be away from her.

It's suddenly too much to not touch her, to not feel her skin underneath the pads of my fingertips. She thrusts the soup at me and kicks me out of her room.

I fly past her, angry at her, angry at me, and mostly angry at Jonas for making me feed her not once, but twice.

Christ, when she passed out earlier today after upchucking the wrap, the only thing I could think was, ‘what a waste of fucking food,’ and now I almost just kissed her.

My brain has to be glitching.

I pass by Jonas who’s sitting in the common area waiting for me. “Did she eat?”

“Yup.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah.”

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