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“Oh, you know,” I lie. “Being a tomboy. Climbing trees. Falling into streams. That kind of stuff.”
His shoulders visibly relax. He had automatically assumed someone had hurt me and it made him angry. Why? We don’t even know each other.
Had Jeff ever hurt me physically? Yes.
Was it any of this guy’s business? No.
While my mind whirs away, he sticks to the subject at hand. “There was some blood loss, but not enough to be worried about.” His eyes dart to the bin hidden in the corner. It has his stained white shirt in it. “Head wounds tend to bleed a lot.”
I experience a quick flashback of seeing bright blood on my fingers, and the shock of that small crimson puddle on the concrete. It still feels surreal.
“She was concerned about you being concussed. So … I was keeping an eye on you.”
Slowly, I reply, “You were watching me sleep.”
“It sounds creepy when you say it that way.”
“That’s because it is creepy.”
We both know I’m not being honest. I don’t think he’s a creep at all, and I quite like the idea of him watching me sleep—apart from the fact that I was muttering strange things about him being a god. FML.
“You’re not supposed to sleep at all when there is suspicion of concussion,” he notes.
“And yet you just sat there in your fancy couch and watched me do it.”
“You didn’t give me a choice. You were out for the count. Nothing I did woke you up.”
I feel a little thrill at that. “What exactly did you try?”
“Let’s just say that nothing was working. Short of giving you an adrenaline shot to your heart, Quentin Tarantino style, we were out of options. Syd said to just, well, as I said, keep an eye on you. It seems to have worked so far. She is a very good doctor.”
“You didn’t think I’d be better off in a hospital?”
He scoffs. “You’d still be bleeding in the waiting room.”
Most probably true. “Why did you help me?”
He averts his gaze. I wonder if he’s about to lie. I know that when someone is fabricating a story, they look up in one direction—retrieving a memory is the other direction—but I never seem to remember which is which.
He shifts in his seat. “I feel partially responsible.”
What? Why? I stay quiet and frown at him, waiting for him to finish, but he doesn’t.
“Because?” I prod.
His jaw muscles clench, then he sits back. “You haven’t worked it out yet?”
“If I had worked it out, I wouldn’t be asking. Plus, in case you’ve forgotten,” I point at my injured temple, “I’ve probably lost a significant number of brain cells.”
Of course, I have my suspicions, but I want to hear it from him. The ridiculously beautiful hotel room, the private doctor on call, the designer shirt in the bin, all point to one thing. A conclusion I both need to hear and want to block out. The inconvenient truth that the most magnetic and magnificent man I’d ever met is my sworn enemy.
Chapter 5
Kraken
“Ihave a suggestion,” he says.
“I’m all ears.”
