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After everything the shadows had put me through, I should have been terrified of him.But all I felt was an oddly calming peace in his presence.
He was beautiful, in a scary, don’t-fuck-with-me kind of way, and I had the sudden urge to crawl into his lap and beg him not to let the shadows return.
This close, I could see him fairly easily, but if he had been by the door, he would have only been a blur without my glasses.
Another sharp pain ricocheted through my head, and I whined.As soon as the sound left me, I pressed my lips together, embarrassed to show weakness.
Green eyes scanned my face.“Finally,” he whispered, relief thick in his voice.“I thought I’d lost you a few times, little one.”
“I’m a grown woman.Stop calling me little.”When my lips barely moved, I tried to open my mouth, only to realize my jaw was stuck.Fresh pain throbbed in my face.Shifting my tongue around in my mouth, I realized it was stuck behind my teeth.
Because there were bars holding them shut.
I didn’t need a mirror to see what I looked like or to understand what had happened.Someone had broken my jaw.Something similar had happened to my mother when I was twelve.Her dealer had taken his pound of flesh for the bill she owed.The fucker had broken her jaw so badly she’d needed it wired shut.For months, I’d turned all her food into smoothies so she could drink her meals through a straw.
She’d been swollen and bruised for weeks.And because she couldn’t afford to go back to the hospital to get the wires out, she’d gone to some back-alley quack, who had more or less tortured her when he’d taken the bars and wires out for free.
No wonder my face hurt so badly.
“You’re a tiny little thing,” he argued, and I thought his lips twitched.But it happened so quickly before his face turned neutral again that I was sure it was a play of the overhead lighting.“Like a delicate little fairy.You remind me of that dark-haired water fairy fromTinker Bellthat my cousins would force us to watch when they were younger.What was her name…?”
He frowned in concentration and then snapped his fingers when the answer came to him.“Silvermist.Yeah, that’s her name.Pretty, long black hair.Although your eyes are blue rather than the soft brown she has.Don’t tell River or Nova.They were die-hard Tinker Bell and Fawn fans, but I always liked Silvermist the most.She was sweet and quirky.”
“I don’t know who River or Nova are, but I’m neither sweet nor quirky.”My words came out slowly and a little slurred.It was difficult to speak when my tongue was trapped behind my teeth, but he seemed to understand me just fine.
He shrugged.“Jury is still out on that, sweetheart.”
“Ugh.If I’d known you were going to be this annoying, I would have stayed with the shadows.”
It was a lie.No way in hell I would have willingly gone back to that dark, barren wasteland, with those lunatics for company.And if my head hadn’t been hurting so badly, I might have found his annoying qualities endearing.But there was a pounding in my skull that found even the way he was breathing irritating.“Can you breathe a little softer?”
“Breathe softer?”he repeated, his lips doing that quick tilt up before going neutral again, making me wonder if I was going insane or if he really had almost smiled.He was already too beautiful to be real, but what would he look like if he actually smiled?I felt an odd flutter in my chest as I began to crave the sight.“This is how I always breathe.”
“Like an asthmatic bear?”
“That headache sure is making you cranky.Hold on a sec, and I’ll get someone to come give you something for the pain.”
He started to stand, but suddenly, it was me holding on to his hand.“No!Don’t go.I didn’t mean to insult you.Please…don’t leave.”
Straightening to his full height, he allowed me to keep my grip on his fingers while he reached for something over my head with his free hand.“Just pushing the call button, sweetheart,” he murmured before slowly sinking back into the chair.“I promised I wasn’t going to leave you, and I meant it.Be at ease, little one.”
“I…” Nervously, I shifted my gaze from his face to our hands.“Don’t call me little.”
“Are you thirsty?Hungry?You’ve been out for several days, so you must be starving.”He leaned back enough to pull a phone from his jeans pocket.“Hospital food is disgusting.Let me text my aunt and get you some chicken noodle soup from Aggie’s.My cousin Kingston is a hell of a cook, and they always have soup on the menu.You can drink the broth through a straw, or I can feed you.”
“I haven’t eaten in…” I frowned, unable to count because I was no longer sure what day it was.The darkness and shadows had been too disorienting to keep up with the time.“It’s been a while.”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart.We’ll get some meat back on those bones in no time,” he assured me as he typed one-handed.He hit send and looked at me just as the door opened, making me yelp and try to burrow back into the pillows to try to make myself smaller, wanting desperately to disappear.
The shadows were coming back.
They would kill this man and take me.
Hurt me.
Kill me.
Or worse…
