Page 62 of Dash

“Yes?”

His brows come together. “Are you asking me if that’s who you are or telling me that’s who you are?”

I shake myself. “No. I mean… yes, I’m Dayna. I’m not asking. She is me.” My god, stop rambling.

The way he’s looking at me has me wanting to shrink into myself. I don’t have to know that he could kill me with his bare hands.

“He came around for a couple minutes before they took him down for a brain scan. He was asking for Dayna. I didn’t know who that was.”

He was asking for me? In that tiny window where he was conscious, he was asking for me? The hope I had buried is now sparking to life again.

“Hang on… brain scan? What happened to him?”

He leads me through the doors to the treatment area, and I expect someone to stop us, but they don’t. People give him a wide berth though.

“He hit his head. Did you know that if you hit the frontal lobe hard enough, it can change your personality?”

I blink at him. “Did he… hit his head that hard?”

Does he not remember me? Is this guy trying to tell me that the only man who has actually given two fucks about me, who I’m fairly certain I’m falling for, has a brain injury that means he doesn’t know who I am?

No, he asked for me.

I need to breathe.

“The doctor said his scan came back clear. They’re only keeping him in because he lost consciousness.”

I glare at this mountainous man. “Then why did you say that?”

“It’s interesting.”

Who the hell is this guy? “Can I see him? Is he awake?”

He doesn’t say yes or no, just walks away. Am I supposed to follow him?

I rush after him, and when he rounds the corner, there’s a small cubicle. The curtain is pulled halfway over, but it’s not enough to hide him.

Dash’s face is pale, blood-crusted from his temple to just below his ear. There’s a bandage in his hairline, and they’ve dressed him in one of those awful scratchy hospital gowns. He looks too big for the bed, and unlike the times I’ve watched him sleep, he doesn’t look settled.

I pause at the end of the bed, my feet refusing to move any farther. The blood on his face turns my stomach, and my breath hitches violently enough that his eyes flutter open.

He struggles to focus, but then they settle on me, and his face softens in a way that makes my chin wobble.

“Hey, babe.”

Oh, shit. I’m going to cry. Like properly cry. I dig my teeth into my bottom lip, as if that can stop the flood threatening inside me.

“I thought you got fed up with me, and all this time, you were lying in a hospital bed bleeding.”

I let out a hiccupping sob.

“Come here.” It’s a command, and I follow it because, fuck, I need to touch him.

I need to hold him.

I need to make sure he is still breathing, even though he clearly is.

As soon as I’m close enough, he wraps his fingers around my wrist and pulls me down onto the edge of the bed. He’s warm—and alive. I fold my body in half, my head on his chest. Gripping him like he’s rope in stormy waters, I close my eyes and just…breathe.

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