Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
If someone had taken a fucking knife and sliced open my chest, it would have hurt less than hearing her say that.
I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “I won’t let that happen.”
She looked down at my hand holding hers. “That wasn’t the first time they’d killed someone.”
She had heard it all.
“No, it wasn’t.”
When she finally lifted her eyes back to mine, she gave me a weak smile. “And you’re the boss.”
Thirty-Two
Madeline
Blaise looked like he hadn’t slept in days. He was looking at me like he would do anything I asked. There was pain and relief in his eyes. It wasn’t clear, everything that had happened, but pieces were coming to me as I looked at him.
“I’m going to let the nurse know you’re awake and get the doctor here,” he said.
“Sax?” I asked, remembering he had been there. Outside the restroom.
“He’s fine physically. Mentally though, he’s beating himself up. There was another door to the restroom. It went into an employee entrance. He didn’t know you had been taken or hurt until he waited eight minutes, then went in after you. You were gone, but he saw the blood. He called me immediately.”
I sighed in relief. He was okay. I hadn’t been the cause of him getting hurt.
He let my hand go and pulled out his phone. I listened to him tell someone I was awake and that Carmichael needed to get back. Once he was done, he put his phone away and reached for my hand again.
“My head doesn’t hurt like it did,” I told him. There was still a throbbing, but it was nothing compared to what it had been.
“You’re on pain meds,” he replied with a small grin that didn’t meet his eyes.
“They’re good ones,” I told him, and this time, he laughed. I liked hearing him laugh.
“It wasn’t a coincidence was it?” I asked him, realizing that his fear had been for a reason.
He hadn’t simply wanted me to be careful. He’d known something.
“What?” he asked me.
“When I was lying there, tied up, in pain, I thought it was odd.” I paused and swallowed. My mouth was dry.
Blaise moved and held a straw up to my mouth. “Small sips,” he told me.
I wanted to suck it all down, but I did as he’d said. When I was finished, he took the cup and set it back beside the bed.
“You thought it was odd that I’d been worried for your safety and someone had taken you,” he finished for me, understanding what I had been saying. “No. That wasn’t a coincidence. I kept things from you. Things I didn’t think I could tell you yet. And my fear was that I’d lose you if you knew before …” He paused and took a deep breath. “Before I could get you to fall in love with me. I thought you’d leave. I doubt I will ever forgive myself for that. If you’d known then, this wouldn’t have happened.”
I was listening to him, but the words fall in love with me were the ones that kept replaying in my head. We hadn’t talked about love. There hadn’t been enough time for that, had there?
“You want me to love you?” I asked him.
“If you love me, then you won’t leave me,” he said.
I didn’t think that was a good reason to want someone’s love, but I didn’t know how to say that. There wasn’t time to either because the doctor and nurse both entered the room.
“There’s our patient,” the doctor said with a friendly smile. He had white hair and a short white beard. “How do you feel?” he asked me.
“Good,” I replied.
“Where does it hurt?” he asked and began to check my head.
While he examined me, Blaise stood on the other side of the bed with his arms crossed over his chest, watching. I kept looking over at him and getting distracted. I knew he was going to tell me things I wasn’t going to like. I knew now that the power I’d thought the Hugheses had wasn’t exactly the power people were referring to. Blaise was dangerous. But he was mine.
When faced with death, you realized what was most important to you. He was all I had thought about. The only thing on this earth that I didn’t want to leave. That must be love. After all, he was my home now. After losing my dad and brother, I’d thought I’d never have one again. That wasn’t the case.
“Blaise, do you mind stepping out of the room?” the doctor asked.
My eyes flew from the doctor to Blaise. Why did he have to leave? I didn’t know these people. I wasn’t ready to be left alone with them.
“No,” he replied.
“She’s having a hard time answering my questions with you in here. She is, uh, distracted,” the doctor told him.