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I narrowed my eyes so I could focus on him better. Slowly, his face, his strong jaw, gentle mouth, and wild blond hair that had been tossed out of its usual spikes all materialized around his eyes. The corners of his mouth were tight, lines were seemingly permanently carved into his brow, and dark circles underscored those eyes. I swallowed hard, imagining what hell he must have been through tonight. “You saved my life. Again.” I sighed sadly and twined my fingers in his, tightening my grip on him. “And once again, I have no way to possibly repay you.”
He smiled sadly. “And once again, it’s not something I ask payment for.”
I returned the half-smile, then looked down at our clasped hands, answering his question before he could ask it. “It was my foster-father again. Jonathan Aaron. You can get him on attempted murder, right?”
Frost hesitated, then answered, “Yes. I called it in and the BPD is at your apartment now. If he wasn’t wearing gloves, his prints will be all over the place. I made a mess of the scene to get you out of there and the knife is gone, but hopefully they can still get prints off the broken lamp. The doorknob.”
I met his gaze and saw the understanding immediately. When I said my next words, I felt as though he already knew what they would be. “I need to get him away from my foster-mom.”
His eyes flashed momentarily, like a blade in sunlight. “And I need to get him away from you. We’ll get him. Don’t worry.”
For a long time, I just stared at him, studying the way he was looking at me, measuring the tightness of every muscle in his face. Finally, I gave up and whispered, “Why are you looking at me like that? I don’t understand it.”
His eyes locked on mine, his brow creasing, an immeasurable sadness in every level of his countenance. When he spoke, it was an epiphany, an unending pity, and an eternal misery that greeted me. “You were telling the truth, weren’t you? You’ve never been cared for before.”
I blinked and realized that I was on the verge of tears again. I swallowed them back and fought once more for control. After a long minute of internal battle, I gasped, “I don’t understand you, Frost. I just don’t see it.”
I tightened my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at him, so that I could hide behind my eyelids and make shutting him out a little easier, but I was not immune to his other hand folding around mine as well, his fingertips softly stroking my wrist. When he spoke, I felt the soft fluttering of his breath on my forearm and realized that he’d bent his head forward. “Poe. If you had found me dying, had brought me here successfully to save me…what would you be feeling?” I didn’t answer because the words weren’t in my vocabulary to describe it. He went on after a beat of waiting anyway. “So you see? That’s what I feel. It’s not so foreign.”
“No.” I shook my head slightly. “It’s not the same. You and I are very different people, Frost.”
He shifted slightly, then asked me quietly, “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. You just don’t want to admit it.”
Frost sighed and softly touched my cheek. I flinched but didn’t move away, letting the warmth of his hand fill me. “Poe, look at me. Please.” I hesitated, but opened my eyes reluctantly at the price of being sucked into and trapped immediately in his gaze. “You are not worthless,” he said firmly, with that same undying honesty that I had seen in him before.
I blinked to try and fight the tears. I was crying all the time lately, it seemed. “No, maybe not worthless,” I returned. “But I am worth less.”
His mouth tightened slightly and he looked down at my hand clasped tightly in both of his. “If only you knew…”
“Knew what?”
He let his head remain hung slightly, looking up again with only those impossibly molten blue eyes. “What I see.”
----
He left me that morning with a copy ofJane Eyreand the promise that he would be back that afternoon as soon as he got done at the precinct. It sounded ridiculous, but I believed him. I didn’t have to understand his motives to know that they existed and that he would return.
What was even more shocking was that after he left, one of the nurses asked me how long we’d been together. I grimaced and answered, “No, we’re not together. We just met a few days ago.”
“Oh,” she intoned. She did not look like that cleared anything up, though, still blushing and displaying a small smile as she bustled around me, checking machines, tubes, and, God help me, needles. “That may be true, dear, but I’ve been around awhile and I can recognize a man who’s got eyes for a gal. And sweetie,” here she looked to me seriously, a twinkle in her eye, “That boy didn’t take his eyes off you all night.”
I frowned deeply, attempting to sit upright in concern. “What? You mean he didn’t sleep?”
She chuckled and pushed me back down in the hospital bed. “Not a wink, hun. And may I say that the way you’re lookin’ at me right now reminds me of the way he looked while you were out cold. It’s a few hours lost of sleep, hun. He’ll live.”
When she turned away, I grimaced in irritation and disbelief. No. This whole circumstance was ridiculous. I was not that worried about him. It was just foolish of him to lose so much sleep over me, especially knowing he had to be fresh for work today. It was completely irrational and nonsensical on his part and I refused to make anything presumptuous out of it. As for Frost having feelings for me, he was no doubt hoping I would survive and wanted to be helpful. No doubt he was also hoping I would pull through, being someone who could testify against a maniac. The nurse was just fabricating emotions and stories where they simply didn’t exist and couldn’t be expected to exist. I wasn’t about to put stock in her ‘expertise’.
And yet, as the day wore on, I found that I could not stop the invasion of those brilliant blue eyes into my mind. Mr. Rochester even had blue eyes in my head.
----
The doctors and nurses all agreed that I was incredibly lucky. I too busy being upset about my abusive foster-father attacking me in my own apartment and the entire stressful situation with Frost to see much luck in it. But it was true that the knife had avoided all my organs and, while my entire torso still felt like I had been drawn and quartered, thanks to sheer dumb luck I was alive. It had taken a lot of stitching and it would take a lot of pain medications, but little would really change. The violent muscle spasms that would be a side-effect of the wound were nothing new to me. Unfortunately, they’d likely be worse now and I had a short line of grotesque stitches in my side reminiscent ofFrankenstein. Then again, who was I to complain? I had looked much worse before.
Frost returned around five o’clock. He had showered and dressed in non-bloodied clothes but remained pale as a ghost with dark circles ringing his eyes. When he smiled slightly and collapsed into the plastic chair beside me that he had left that morning, he asked in a weak voice, “How are you doing?”
I nodded and returned the small smile. “Much better. The nurses are all in shock. They think it was an act of God that none of my organs were hit. You’d think he’d have worked harder to kill me.”
