Page 78 of Tempt

He took my breath away. Battered and bruised, but still saying things that caught me completely off guard.

He brushed my face with his battered hand. “The conviction in your love for me is the only truth I believe anymore. It’s so pure and powerful it’s wiped away everything else I thought I knew.”

Chapter 28

Itossed and turned all night. Sleeping wasn’t easy when I saw Theo dying every time I closed my eyes. My mind had a terrible sense of foreboding. Apparently going over every worst-case scenario was my subconscious’ way of preparing for the unpredictability of the future.

My mind was stupid.

And it was going to terrorize me at the rate it was going. So I got up an hour earlier than normal and went straight for the shower. If there was a place where I could relax and wash away my worries, it was there.

The water was hot and relieving, but the release it gave me wasn’t the kind I expected. Instead of my muscles relaxing one by one, I cried my eyes out. I’d been holding everything in—every damn emotion on the spectrum from terrified to angry to uncharacteristically hopeful. And holding that much in check wasn’t possible anymore. I’d thought keeping up a calm front was the best thing. As if maybe that calm would somehow make everything better.

I was wrong.

It hadn’t made anything better because I had no control over anything that was happening. All I’d done was bottle myself up into a rocket of insanity. And now it was leaking out of my soul and all over the shower.

I placed my palms flat against the white subway tiles, leaned forward, let my neck relax, and sobbed my damn eyes out. I couldn’t remember ever crying this hard, but it felt good. Like a reset.

Then the shower door opened and Theo stepped in—bandages and all—and placed his hand on my back. “Are you okay?”

No. Not even a little bit.I shook my head.

“Come here. Please?” He lightly pressed on my shoulders so that I could turn into him.

It felt so right to be in his arms. As if every doubt and worry disappeared as long as I was here, pressed into him. We melded together. My arms under his, lightly holding on to his back. He held me close with one arm around my waist and the other around my upper back. And when I pressed my forehead into the space where his neck met his shoulder, he leaned his head to down to mine and began running his hand slowly down my wet hair.

He just held me. He didn’t make me talk and he didn’t try to make it better with meaningless words. We just held each other and felt all the things we were so scared to feel. Until none of those felt quite so overwhelming anymore.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” I whispered against his skin as I fingered the bandage around his ribs.

“Fuck that.”

I laughed. “You have a way with words sometimes.”

He kissed my shoulder. “I say how I feel when I’m with you. It makes it interesting.”

I kissed his neck, his skin warm and soft against my lips. “But you really shouldn’t be in here.”

“This is exactly where I should be. You don’t ever cry alone, you hear me?”

I froze mid-kiss on his collarbone and nodded.

“And I need to wash off. Who better to help me than the prettiest nurse in town?”

He did have blood on his knuckles. Again.

“Well then, let me help you with that.” I reached up to the built-in ledges where Theo kept his washcloths. I took one down and lightly soaped it up before wrapping it around his knuckles to help loosen the dried blood.

“Will you see a doctor?” I didn’t know how all this worked. Martin stitched him up, so maybe they didn’t do doctors?

“Yeah,” he replied, watching me closely. “I’ll go see him before I head into the office. He’s got all the latest gadgets and meds. He’ll have me good as new by the end of the week.”

I moved to his other hand. “Good. I don’t like seeing you hurt.”

At all. Ever.Flashes of my nightmares came back.

He tilted up my chin. “I’m sorry.”

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