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Nope, scratch that.
I’d started falling in love with him sometime around when he’d managed to convince me to give him coffee. Or maybe when I’d made us brunch the first time. Or maybe it just happened in between cooking shows and frozen pizzas and takeout eaten on the floor. I don’t fucking know.
It doesn’t matter.
I was in love with him now, and I’d been spending the better part of the last month trying to run away from that because I was a huge fucking coward who was afraid that I would end up getting my sorry ass dumped.
Which is pretty much exactly what I deserved.
I’m right fucking here.
I’d known it. I was just too afraid to do anything about it, and Taavi Camal had seen right through me.
Fuck it.
It didn’t matter if he broke my heart, because every goddamn day I spent without him was already breaking it. So I might as well be a fucking adult about it.
I rested my cheek on his dark hair. “I’m right here,” I whispered, knowing his sharp ears could hear me.
And then felt my stomach clench when he let out a sob, one hand gripping the back of my shirt, his face pressed into my chest.
“I’ve got you,” I murmured into his hair and just held him. I don’t know for how long. Ten minutes? Fifteen? Thirty? Honestly, I didn’t have a clue.
After the tears faded, he was still shaking, and I didn’t know how much of it was the aftershocks of fear and how much was pain.
“Let’s sit down, okay?”
He nodded into my chest, but didn’t move away or let go of me.
That was fine. I didn’t want him to.
Keeping my arms around him, I guided both of us to his second-hand futon, somehow managing to get us sitting down. Well,mesitting down and Taavi half-draped across me, still curled into my chest.
He was still shaking.
I put a hand on his forehead, feeling heat radiating off his skin. I wasn’t very good at the whole medical care thing. I knew shifters ran hot, but I didn’t knowhowhot. And I didn’t know if the shaking was all adrenaline or if some of it was pain or a sign of physical damage.
“Taavi?”
He made a small whine that sounded much more like his Xolo self than it did his human one, and I tightened my arms around him again.
“Can I call Doc?” I asked him. Doc might be a historian, but he was also an EMT, and he’d patched me up more than once. At the very least he’d be able to tell me if I needed to take Taavi to the hospital. If he answered, anyway.
A shudder rolled through Taavi’s frame, and I felt him shake his head.
I suppressed a sigh. The last thing Taavi needed was me being an autocratic prick.
“Okay,” I said softly, stroking my fingers over the close-cut soft hair on the side of his head.
His shaking eased as we sat, although it didn’t stop completely, which worried me. But I wasn’t going to force him to go anywhere or talk to anyone he didn’t want to. I’d been enough of a bastard that I wasn’t about to argue with him or overrule his decisions now.
Okay, maybe if he passed out I might say to hell with it and take him to the ER. But short ofthat,I was going to do as he asked.
Outside, the shadows were lengthening, and it occurred to me that some of the shaking might be helped with food—adrenaline did one hell of a number on blood sugar. But then I’d have to stop holding him, and I didn’t want to do that.
More time passed, and he still hadn’t stopped trembling.
“Taavi?”
