Page 49 of Devil
Okay, that didn’t sound so bad. She liked the idea that he saw this as a joint effort, not something wrong with her that she needed to figure out. She wasn’t sure he was right—in fact, she knew he wasn’t—but she could roll with it for now.
“If I had been knocked on the head and unconscious for any period of time, would you want me to tell you about it?” she asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“But yet you didn’t extend that same courtesy to me. I know there was a lot going on, and I know this is probably a little unreasonable. But when I realized what had happened and that you hadn’t told me, it felt like you either didn’t care what I thought, or that you thought I wouldn’t care even if you did tell me. Neither of which felt very good.”
He remained silent, but she felt his eyes on her as he digested her words. She was pretty sure she’d unintentionally pushed them out of the friends-with-benefits category. The thought made her feel mildly ill, but it was too late to put that horse back in the barn.
After several miles of silence, he nodded. “I can see where you’re coming from. Like you said, if what had happened to me happened to you and you didn’t say anything, I’d probably be questioning you the same way you’re questioning me. I can understand it and I’m sorry. It wasn’t intentional in any way. First, as you said, we were a little occupied. Then, honestly, I was so focused on getting through the decontamination process and on the road that I sort of forgot. I know that sounds lame, but it wasn’t until about twenty minutes ago that I even started getting a headache or feeling a little stiff from the hit I took. I think my adrenaline was up, blocking the pain and letting me ignore what had happened.”
His words were sincere, and as she played out those minutes from when he returned to the house to when she’d discovered his wound, she had to give him some slack. There really hadn’t been a great time to say, “Oh, hey, I was hit on the back of the head and was unconscious.”
“Did I overreact?” Yes, she had, and now she felt like an idiot.
He shifted again, then reached for her hand. “No, your feelings are your feelings, and you’re allowed to have them in whatever way you want or need to. But maybe it’s good to talk about them rather than make assumptions about each other. I truly didn’t do it on purpose, Lily, and Iamsorry that it came across that way. Like I said, if the roles had been reversed, I would be having the same thoughts you did. I made a mistake in not telling you, and you made a decision not to talk to me about it, to make assumptions instead. We both screwed up. The good news is we’re talking about it now.”
She wasn’t convinced talking about it constituted good news, but she’d take his word for it. At least for now.
“How are you feeling now?” she asked.
He stretched his neck, tilting his head from side to side. “The Advil should help with the headache. I’ll probably be a little sore tomorrow, but nothing problematic.”
“Tired?”
He hesitated. “A little, and before you say it, yes, I know I shouldn’t go to sleep.”
“Well, you can, but I’ll have to wake you up every hour or so. If you have a concussion, which you probably do, it will be a mild one, but still, I’d rather stay on the safe side.”
He lifted her hand and kissed her palm before setting it back down on his thigh and resting his on top of hers. “I don’t believe that about you, you know,” he said softly.
She didn’t have to think hard to know what he was talking about. Her comment about his assuming she wouldn’t care if he’d been injured had been a hard one to make. But sheknewshe wasn’t the most demonstrative person. And it had hurt to think he, like so many others, believed she was cold and so lacking in emotion that she wouldn’t care. Yes, she struggled with her emotions, she tried to control them, and she had no clue how to manage them when they bubbled up, but she had them. And if nothing else, her reaction showed her that she very much wanted him to see through what the rest of the world, except her closest friends, saw. And when she thought he hadn’t, it had hurt. Hurt her more than she was comfortable admitting.
“It’s…hard,” she said. “I’m not like most people.”
“And you shouldn’t be,” he said. “I’m not saying we don’t all have things we should work on. But you shouldn’t hold yourself to be like people who didn’t grow up with the same experiences as you. Again, the good news is that as long as we’re breathing, we can try to be better people. We can grow and learn and make mistakes. We can figure out what works for us rather than work toward what the world expects from us.”
Her lips quirked. “You sound like a motivational poster.”
He chuckled. “Not my intention, but maybe that’s a second career I could take up once my twenty years is up.”
She turned her palm up and twined their fingers together. “Thank you,” she said. In response, he squeezed her hand.
“Now back to the original question,” Darius said. “There’s no way to figure out an updated time frame between the time of exposure to the virus to the symptoms?”
She shook her head. She was glad they’d talked but even more relieved to be moving back to more comfortable topics. “Like I said, not without doing more research, which the CDC would never let me do.”
“Not that we have the time, anyway,” Darius added.
She nodded. “That, too. I think our best option is to operate under the assumption that symptoms will show in about half the time noted on the chart. It’s a guess, but we have to start somewhere, and I’d rather be prepared for something than caught by surprise.”
“I’m with you on that one. So, what now?”
She filled him in on her conversation with Stella, telling him about the safe house and the testing her team would do. And although it was frustrating to have to isolate at least until the tests came back, neither of them questioned the move. Hopefully, the results would be quick, and they could get back into the thick of things by tomorrow morning.
“What do you think happened to Jennifer Pritchard?” he asked, after a few miles of silence had clicked by.
Devil shook her head. “Hard to say. If she was dealing with the kind of virus that can kill in less than twenty-four hours, she didn’t exactly have the right setup for it. Don’t get me wrong, her makeshift lab was very well equipped, but not for that kind of research.”
