Page 62 of Anything for You
I glared at him. “Maybe not, but I was trying to get you to admit you went to visit Nan and are for some reason not telling me. Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
I’d gotten a text that simply said, “Best soup I’ve ever had.” And I knew.
“I wasn’t trying to keep it from you. Just didn’t want you to worry about it.”
“Why would I worry about you seeing Nan?” He didn’t make sense.
He squeezed the place on my calf where his hand had been resting, then removed it.Tragic.Resting his elbows on his knees, he knitted his fingers together.
“I know it’s hard for you to have someone taking care of you. I didn’t want it to feel like it was one more thing you need to keep track of.”
Oh.Was I that obviously uncomfortable?
“I don’t want you to feel bad. I just… I want to thank you properly. I can’t believe you went to see my grandma and you’ve never even met her.” Like, who did that?
Who just up and took homemade soup to someone’s grandparent?
“You go see her every few days. You have lunch with her at least once a week. I figured she’d be missing you and wanted to let her know you were okay.”
His gaze avoided mine as though his choice might’ve embarrassed him now that I knew.
And me?
I could hardly breathe through the crushing, aching, smothering kind of love exploding out of me for this man.
“That’s so ridiculously sweet,” I eked out, stapling my mouth shut to avoid blubbering.
He heard it, though. Of course he did, and so did Bear, who edged himself closer to my hips and settled his head on my thigh, brows knit with that dog empathy he brought just by being nearby.
Dorian plucked up one of my hands after I swiped at some tears.
“If I’d known it’d make you cry, I wouldn’t have admitted it,” he said, looking borderline agonized tracking one tear as it slid down my cheek and caught on my chin.
I chuckled out a messy laugh-cry and ducked my head into my shirt in a most ladylike move. With the help of my shirt, I dried my tears and emerged from my little turtle shell a complete wreck of emotions.
“Why are you crying, Dove?”
His voice was so, so gentle. His expression echoed that careful tone.
“I can’t tell you.” I couldn’t blurt out my feelings for him right here in the middle of my veritable sick bed. I couldn’t tell him how much every single thing he’d done for me meant, or how much I admired him, or how often I thought of him.
His gaze didn’t waver, didn’t leave mine. He stayed focused, studying me and clearly desperate to understand what was going on inside this cuckoo little brain of mine.
“Promise me you’ll tell me if I can help, okay?”
I nodded, and eventually, he seemed convinced after I verbally promised. I could say the words with honesty because I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before I had to let the truth come out. I wouldn’t be able to resist telling him how I felt, but I had to try not to scare him with the ferocity of my feelings, and letting them fly now would do exactly that.
He’d gotten me medicine and nursed me through an awful fever. He’d loaned me his dog. He’d visited my grandma. He’d arranged for my best friends to keep me company while he was gone. He’d fed me and refilled my water and clucked at me when he worried I wasn’t drinking enough.
Maybe it was the illness-induced exhaustion that had me feeling downright nineteenth century about all of this, but right now I was absolutely overwrought.
I’d never felt so much, so viciously, ravenously much, for someone, and I had no idea what to do about it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Dorian
Dove went back to work Friday.
