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TWENTY-THREE
Laia
Feet tucked up beneath me, I blow on the frothy top of my hot chocolate and lift the steamy romance book Kenzi lent me closer to my face, snuggling down in the old woolly cardi I pulled on over my pajama shorts and tank. The thunderstorm is raging out there. It hasn’t let up all day. Kenzi assured me that it’s normal for this time of year, but that’s not stopped me jumping at every deafening roar. The book is helping to keep the fear at bay. It isn’t, however, helping with the low buzz of arousal that’s been pulsing since my run-in with Felix last night.
That kiss. I blow out a long breath and try to focus on the pages of the book again. I’m messing with his head. I gnaw on my bottom lip and try to imagine letting him in. Telling him the truth. Trusting him.
I roll my eyes and groan. I don’t even know if he wants to be let in. Telling Kenzi was kind of liberating, I guess. But that’s different?, it doesn’t change anything?, won’t affect things between us. With Felix it would—with Felix it affects everything.
My cell rings, pulling me from the crazy hot sex scene on the page. A sex scene my brain may or may not have started super imposing Felix into. I glance at the phone, balanced on the arm of the sofa. I could just let it ring off. It can only be Kenzi or Felix. They’re the only people who have my number.
Felix’s cell is out of service. I had a moment of braveness before, but the snotty, automated message informed me that he was either switched off or has no network. That leaves Kenzi. And really. How much trouble could she have gotten herself into since this morning?
On second thought, I reach for the phone and swipe the screen. “Kenzi, this better be important, you’re disturbing some pretty riveting reading.”
“Laia. There’s been an accident.” Her voice cracks on the last word and I’m already on my feet. “I need to get to the hospital. Can you take me?”
“Are you okay?” I pull on my fluffy slipper boots, my cell tucked between my shoulder and my chin. “Hold tight, I’m coming.”
“It’s not me. There was an accident. Jackson called. Mylo’s okay, but Felix” —she sniffs down the line— “he was unconscious when they loaded him into the ambulance.”
My heart stops cold in my chest. “I’m on my way.”
It takes me ten minutes and about seven panic attacks until I’m pulling up next to Kenzi’s apartment block. She’s already on the side of the road.
“Get in.” I stretch over to the passenger side door and shove it open. “Where’s the hospital?” I ask before her butt even hits the seat.
“Straight along Main Street until the church. It’s sign-posted from there.”
The rain has lessened to a fine mist, but the sky’s still eerily dark. A shiver rips down my spine. “He’ll be okay, Kenzi.” I glance over to where she’s staring straight ahead, biting her nails, her hair soaked and plastered to her head.
Her eyes dart from the road to me, and she nods mutely, face pale, as if she’s in another time.
“It’s just” —she takes a shaky breath— “the last time I got a call like this…” She breaks off and shakes her head, her bottom lip trembling.
“Felix will be okay,” I repeat. He has to be.
We run through the stark white corridors of the hospital, dodging people and stretchers as we go. He’s going to be okay. I repeat my mantra over and over as we follow the directions the nurse gave us at reception.
Mylo, leaning against a wall, lifts his head as we round the corner. I slow to a walk, my tummy doing that origami trick it always does when things have gone to shit. Kenzi just keeps on running straight into Mylo’s arms.
“He’s awake.” He cups her face with bandaged hands. “In a shitter of a mood, but he’s awake.”
I peek through the glass panel of the door behind them. My face goes hot, and my eyes burn, but I make myself push the door open.
“Just get me whatever papers I need to sign to get out of here.” Felix drags both hands down his face then glares at the male nurse still standing with a clipboard by his bed. “Now! Please.”
His big body fills the tiny bed right to the edges, his head snapping up when the door shuts behind me. The scowl on his face smooths. Okay, not all the way smooth, but close enough. He’s in gray athletic shorts and a black T-shirt—not a hospital gown. That’s a good sign—I think.
I hold his stare, barely managing to swallow down the nerves, or relief, or whatever it is I’m feeling before it leaks out of my eyes. “Hi.” I lift a hand from where I’m clutching my cardi around myself, suddenly unsure of whether I should be here, whether he wants me here after last night. “I can … I should probably…” I turn back to the door. “I’ll get Kenzi.”
“Laia.” His voice is hoarse. He coughs to clear it. “Don’t.”
“Are you okay? They said you were—I was so worried, I thought—”
“I’m fine.” His brows are low, face serious.
“Good.” My hand shakes as I scratch my forehead. There’s a new wariness hanging between us—a wariness I put there.
I glance once more at the door then turn back to him and everything just falls out in a rush. “Felix, I’m so sorry about last night. Jayne, the kissing, the” —I flap my hand in front of my top half, my cheeks flaming miserably— “I shouldn’t have pushed, and then the jar and you, and me. And I know no means no, but I just ran away.” I press my lips together fully aware of how little any of that made sense. “I shouldn’t have just run out on you like that.”
“And I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.” He reaches up and massages the back of his neck but doesn’t look away from where I’m loitering between the door and the foot of his bed. “Come here.”
I twist the front of my cardi, the residual, if ridiculous, wariness of him after last night refusing to budge. Logic, Laia. Logic. He’s nothing like Damon. “Felix, I … I’m not good at this. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know if I can—”
“That makes two of us,” he interrupts me before I can veer off on another elastic band stress ramble. “Can you please come and sit down?”
I shuffle over to the green pleather recliner by his bed, far too aware that I’m still wearing my short pajamas, a stretched out old cardi and ugly, fluffy slipper-boots and don’t even get me started on my hair. “I should get someone else. I’m probably the last person who should be here.” I lower myself down onto the edge of the seat, the padding flat from the thousands of other shell-shocked visitors who have sat here before me, and glance over to the door.
“The last thing I remember thinking about before the tree fell was you.” He blurts it out like he’s as shocked to be admitting it as I am to hear it.
My hands fall from fidgeting with my cardi to my lap and I just stare. No elastic snap back or random outburst, just semi-shocked, but fully confused silence. I should say something. Tell him how scared I was, how many deals I made with the universe that if they just let him be okay, I’d never push anyone away ever again. I’d stop being scared and grab onto this thing with two hands and make it work. “I…” I lick my lips. In the sterile light of the hospital with him alive and watching me, I think I may have just lied to the universe.
“Fee, don’t ever do that to us again.” Kenzi bursts through the door, her cheeks flushed, her hair still soaked and stuck to her head but with a hooded jumper that can only be Mylo’s hanging off her.
We both snap around to face her, Mylo behind her, filling the doorway completely.
With one last glance my way, Felix lies back into his pillows and offers a tired smile to Kenzi. “Takes more than a tree to keep me down, Zi.”
Kenzi shakes her head, and for a second, I think she’s going to burst into tears until Mylo’s hands clamp over her shoulders, pulling her back into his massive chest.
“Just … stay away from trees from now on. And cars.” She wipes her eyes roughly with the back of her hand. “And roads too.”
“If you insist on signing yourself out, Mr. Ashur” —a white-coated doctor pushes the door open with his back, already scribbling something on the clipboard of papers clutched in his hand. He glances up when the door swings closed behind him, taking us all in before settling his unamused gaze on Felix— “I have to insist that someone accompanies you home.” His tired, dark eyes slide to me. “Ah good, a girlfriend. Any dizziness, nausea, blurred vision and you bring him right back.”
My mouth flops open. “Oh, no, I’m not—I mean we’re not…”
“Well, I’m afraid someone needs to take him home, or I can’t sign off on him leaving.”
Felix glares at the ceiling, then back over to the doctor.
“I’ll do it.” I clamp my lips together when everybody turns to look at me including Felix. I meet his serious face and shrug. “I mean, I’ll do it if you want me to…” I turn back to the doctor. “If he wants me to?”
Felix stills for a second, jaw ticking as he scans my face for long enough to have me doubting myself.
“Or not. I mean if you don’t want me—”
“I want you.” He cuts in, his forehead creasing even more.
He wants me. “Okay.” I nod, completely incapable of dragging my stare from his.
“Okay.” Still scowling, his gaze flicks down to my lips.
“That’s settled then. Laia, you take him in your truck. Me and Mylo can catch a cab home.” Kenzi claps her hands, snapping both out heads around. “Perfect.”
