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I instinctively tightened my grip, giving her a moment to deal with what she saw reflected there. That was, until a painful shriek, escaped her lips.
I instantly intervened, ‘It’s ok, Bea. Everything is going to be ok. You’ll heal.’
‘It’s not ok,’ I could hear her wail as my arms became tightly wrapped around her, trying to calm her down. Only I seemed to have had no effect on her. Her internal war was much fiercer than I initially thought it would be, making her faint after just a few seconds of delirium.
Ferris was gone, so it was on me to put her back in bed and watch over her for the day... okay,watchwas improperly put since the last seventytwo hours without sleep were taking their claim and I managed to doze off in an armchair right next to her.
‘Don’t you ever go home?’ Bea’s voice woke me up... at least it wasn’t another panic attack this time.
‘I have a new fetish for sleeping on a chair.’ I was the one who could barely open his eyes this time around.
‘Could have offered you a spot on my king-size bed, but now that I know why you sit over there, I couldn’t interfere with your fantasies.’ She seemed in the mood for jokes.
‘Is this an invitation to get in bed with you? Because you do know that most of my fantasies do includeyou.’ And that invitation sounded heavenly for my back at the time. Not laying for seven days seemed to have put another two decades in my bones.
‘I thought you didn’t need an invitation. It’s your prerogative.’ Her sarcasm definitely didn’t leave her during these nightmare days.
‘A prerogative that I gave up.....’ I thought I made it perfectly clear to her that I renounced the deal.
‘Still, this doesn’t explain why you chose the chair.’
‘I didn’t want to hurt you in my sleep or something like that. Though now that you’re awake, I can change that,’ I leaned over her just to find that spot next to her neckline I loved so much. I needed to feel her scent, let it seduce the last part of my sanity away. ‘You fucking scared me there for a second.’
I snuck an arm around her, closing the distance as much as I could without hurting her. Even if I considered it to be a one-sided gesture, I just couldn’t stop myself from holding her at least just one more time.
Turned out I was wrong, it wasn’t just me that needed to feel that way. Her arms barely brushed the flanks of my neck, wrapping themselves around it and securing me in that exact position. But her thoughts still haunted her, turning our moment of privacy into an interrogation about her family and the way she ended up in a hospital bed.
Fortunately, I managed to dodge that bullet since Brax interrupted our conversation, turning Queen Bea into Queen Bitch the instant he set foot into the room.
I never thought I would see a living person chase Brax away, but somehow Mouse was doing exactly that to the point I almost feel sorry for him.
I was somehow in his shoes just a few weeks ago, recognizing his pain even though he didn’t want to admit it himself. I knew the hours spent in the hospital demanded an unimaginable sacrifice. And that sacrifice couldn’t only surface from much more complex feelings than sexual lust.
But I wasn’t one to carry anyone else’s battles. He was grown up enough to take care of himself the way I was to take care of a part of me that I always neglected — my own soul.
I may have been a fool, but I couldn’t hold back from joining my lips to the small curve of her neck, filling my lungs with every drop of the alluring scent of her body.
‘It’s going to be ok, Mouse.’ I was somehow repeating the words for myself because I could never accept a different outcome. Everything will be all right!
Maybe I was losing my mind, but I couldn’t help myself from making room to lay beside her on the white silky sheets. I wanted nothing from her body except the comforting warmth of feeling her heart beating strongly again.
Life was also about a spiritual connection. The fuck if I ever thought I would use the wordspiritualin my life, but that was it, the pure truth. I’ve become the prisoner of everything that she meant, from her feisty comments to the way that she sometimes loses herself in the depths of my eyes.
And as a confirmation of everything I was feeling, Bea tried to pull me into an embrace that seemed impossible at the time. She was far from being healed and the movement yanked an excruciating cry to leave her lungs.
‘Slow down. I know you can’t resist me, but you still have a few broken ribs,’ I drove her closer, careful not to go to hurt her, trying to close in the distance the way she wanted earlier.
‘Stay,’ she pleaded, with a request that seemed impossible not to follow. ‘I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.’
‘Tell them what?’ I asked.
‘That you have a decent bone in your body.’
‘The fuck if I want a single living person to know I’vecuddled.’ The old Cole would have puked just by hearing the word. But the new one needed to know its exact physical meaning.
I need to feel her close, even though it might have been for the last time. I didn’t have the deal in my hands anymore, and it wasn’t up to me if the plea to stay was only for the night or for the long run.
Such a strange feeling that she was wanting me to stay. A feeling that I couldn’t control. The same feeling that was bringing my lips to fuse on the top of her head, letting out a confession that came directly from whatever I could consider being a soul. ‘You know, Mouse. You fucked me up really good. Not going to willingly admit it to your face, though,’ I just whispered words so quietly that they came out like a murmur.
