Page 217 of Mile High Ruin

Maybe mine.

Maybe—

I shut the thought down before it reaches the other name.

“You’re exhausted,” I say quietly.

She opens her eyes. “You don’t get to be nice to me now.”

“I’m not being nice.”

“You’re holding my stomach.”

“I’m preventing you from collapsing in a hospital corridor.”

“That sounds suspiciously considerate.”

“Then I’m doing it badly.”

Something almost like a smile touches her mouth and disappears so quickly I might have imagined it. I ease my hands away. She immediately looks annoyed at the loss of support.

That nearly makes me smile too.

“Come.”

She hesitates. Then, reluctantly, she follows me.

The moment she steps into the suite, memory catches me with enough force that I almost stop. The aircraft. The first time I ordered her into a room because I decided she needed rest and she looked at me like I was the most unbearable man alive.

I close the door behind us.

She glances around at the bed, the sofa, the private bathroom, the small table already stocked with water and food. Then she looks back at me. “You haven’t changed at all.”

I lean against the door. “Difficult to change when you were not around to supervise the process.”

Her expression shifts.

The line was meant to be dry, but it doesn’t feel dry once it’s out.

She looks away first. “You survived.”

“Barely.”

Her eyes flick back to mine. I let the silence sit there. She doesn’t ask what I mean.

Maybe she already knows.

Eventually she crosses to the bed and sits down carefully, one hand braced behind her while the other rests over her stomach. She looks so tired that my anger toward her becomes inconvenient again, refusing to remain uncomplicated when she’s sitting in front of me looking like she has spent months carrying the entire world by herself.

“Lie down.”

“I’m not five.”

“Then demonstrate adult judgment and lie down before you fall down.”

She gives me a look, but she does it. She lowers herself onto the mattress and turns onto her side, adjusting the pillows until she finds a position that doesn’t make her uncomfortable.

I remain standing.