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“No, love. No.” I grabbed her rigid body—rigid with raving desperation—and yanked her into my chest, my lips on her head. “You held. You held. No one was hurt. Cletus is dead. You didn’t hurt anyone. All the kids, all the babies are safe.”
She collapsed against me, her body going limp as she lost consciousness again.
It took me a long minute to breathe. To realize my tears were soaking her hair.
It took even longer for me to lay her listless body back down onto the bed.
She said my name.
She said it. I was still in there. In that beautiful, brilliant, indestructible mind of hers.
The only thing I really needed to know for my faith to be restored.
Her head back onto the pillow, I pulled the sheet up over her chest, arranging her arms so her hands rested over her belly. A sheet, no blankets. Even inert, her skin was hot under my touch.
Staring at her, I waited. Waited for her eyes to twitch. For another gasp of breath.
There was nothing. Just the steady rise and fall of her chest.
I grabbed the water on the bedside table and dipped a cloth into it to soak it, then wetted her lips, letting the water dribble into her mouth. No reaction.
Moving back to the low-slung modern leather chair that was at its best, uncomfortable, I collapsed backward and stretched my legs out, setting my feet up on the bed next to her thigh.
My head fell back onto the low rear of the chair and my eyes closed for the first time in three days. Closed against the tears that were welling thick in my eyes.
Only one thought pounding in my mind as sleep overtook me.
She said my name.
Chapter30
{ Damen }
When my eyes opened, it was dark all around me.
Only moonlight coming into the room through the wide windows that faced Mount Hymettus off in the distance, where a half moon hung just beyond the mountaintop.
My feet were no longer by Ada’s legs.
I blinked to make sure I was fully awake and not mistaken on where my feet were.
There was still a lump in the bed, but Ada had turned onto her side, faced away from me. Movement on her own.
That was progress.
My eyelashes still crusted from the salt of my tears, I wiped my eyes as I sat up, then moved to the edge of the bed.
She didn’t move. Asleep?
I set my hand on her upper arm.
“Don’t touch me.” Her reaction instant, she jerked her arm out from under my touch.
“Ada? Are you hurt?” My hand followed her arm, setting my fingers onto her elbow.
“Don’t touch me.” Another jerk away from my hand.
Don’t touch her? That was asking the waves not to crash. The sun not to shine. The constellations not to twinkle.
