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‘What?’ He sucked in a breath, and my chest tightened.
‘I was kidding,’ I said, pressing another steri-strip to his cut. ‘You won’t be disfigured. It’ll be a little line.’
His hand shot out, fingers wrapping around my wrist and squeezing. ‘That’s not what I meant.’
Oh.
‘You . . . love me?’ He said the words like they were in another language and he wasn’t quite sure how they fit together in a sentence.
I stopped what I was doing, meeting his gaze. ‘Of course I love you, you idiot,’ I replied. ‘You think I’d risk my head for somebody I just kind of thought was okay?’
He smiled, teeth and all, and it was like the sun was beaming directly onto my face. I felt blood rise in my cheeks as we digested that reality together. Had I really never told him that I loved him? Had he never told me? It was just something that I knew, at a cellular level, something that I didn’t ever have to question, not after that first night we’d spent together. I loved him as ferociously as I had ever loved anyone.
‘You hungry?’
I nodded. I wasn’t offended that he hadn’t said it back. I wasn’t a teenage girl with stars in her eyes. John loved me, whether he said it or not. He’d risked everything for me, more than once. The way he stared at me when he thought I wasn’t looking was not the stare of casual affection. He loved me so much, I was afraid when we had to associate with each other in front of other human beings, because couldn’t they see how bright we burned for each other?
‘Come on. I’m taking you out. He can hardly be suspicious if I take you out for the birthday he forgot.’
I glanced at the clock. It was almost 2 a.m. ‘It isn’t my birthday anymore.’
John shrugged. ‘And?’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Give me a minute.’
I changed into a tank top and a skirt that hung loose over my hips. You know, just in case we stopped off on the way. It’s not like we were going to fuck in a restaurant.
We went to Denny’s, over in Burbank, where nobody would spot us. I was already experiencing the hangover from hell, and I ordered the biggest cup of coffee they had. Strong. Black. When it arrived I dumped my body weight in sugar into it, gave it a stir and mainlined it as quickly as I could.
I had waffles and bacon. John had eggs. ‘Next time I’ll take you somewhere a little more upmarket,’ he said, drinking his coffee.
I shrugged. ‘I love diners,’ I said, stabbing a piece of waffle with my fork and drizzling maple syrup all over it.
John laughed, his eyebrows raised in that adorable way. ‘You lovediners,’ he repeated dubiously.
I winced as I saw the gauze on his forehead redden. ‘Don’t smile,’ I said, gesturing to his wound with my fork. ‘In fact, no facial expressions from now on, okay? Or I will take you to the hospital and make you get stitches.’
He arranged his face into a perfect blank stare. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, dissolving into laughter. I made a disapproving sound in my throat. ‘You’re opening your wound again, silly. You’re gonna bleed all over the place.’
The gauze was steadily getting redder. ‘Jesus, he really got you good,’ I said. After the words had left my mouth, I winced, realising how stupid they sounded. He’d just brawled with his best friend, my lover, and from the sounds of it, he’d been lucky to walk away.
He didn’t take offence, though. He smirked, and thatfucking dimple in his cheek was enough to make a woman orgasm just by looking at it. He had that playful twinkle back in his bright blue eyes, almost like the fight with Dornan had woken him up or something. Given him some motivation to make a move.
‘You think this is bad?’ he said, spinning his coffee cup around and around. ‘You should see the other guy.’
I sat back in my side of the booth, raised one eyebrow. ‘Oh, yeah?’
‘I’m pretty sure his nose is broken,’ he said.
I smiled wryly, thinking about how it was about time somebody knocked some sense into Dornan, even as my chest tightened at the thought of him being hurt. Old habits died hard. He’d hurt me so much, I should’ve been numb to his suffering. And yet I found myself hoping that he was all right.Did he need me?
On a practical level, I was also thinking about whether he was at my apartment right now, wondering where I was, waiting for me to patch him up. Then again, he was impatient. If he arrived and I wasn’t there, he’d call me. My phone had lain on the table beside my breakfast the entire time, silent.
‘You must have been mad,’ I said, ‘to break his nose.’
John’s playful expression dropped away.
‘What?’ I asked.
