Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Shylah stood absolutely still, her face a mask of shock. Rejection. Anger. Hurt even. It was all there. She didn’t say a word. Instead she left him standing there at the kitchen sink and went straight out the door. She didn’t exactly slam it, but she closed it very, very firmly, just loud enough to make him wince.
Outside, light spilled through the canopy and lit up the entire morning. He stood at the window and watched her sink down onto the porch stairs. She seemed to be rocking herself back and forth for comfort. It was the first real sign he’d seen from her that she was close to a breaking point. One couldn’t see the results of a filovirus and the way they caused severe hemorrhagic fevers in humans and not be terrified. He wasn’t being stoic. He was as terrified as a man could get, but he had trained himself to stay ahead of fear. He ran. He was running now, killing as many of the MSS as possible to give himself purpose while the virus took effect.
Shylah had to be just as scared, maybe even more so. She didn’t want to be alone, not in a hospital surrounded by strangers, any more than he did. He didn’t want to go out feeling like a helpless, terrified lab experiment. He wanted to choose that moment when he lifted his hand and ended his suffering. Before he did that, he was determined to record every step of the disease’s progression, so Trap and the others could hopefully find a way to stop the virus from spreading across the world.
He dried his hands while he thought it all through. He didn’t want her to die. That was his hold-out hope, the one he needed to make it through this without breaking. Maybe she needed him. He hadn’t considered that she might need him. Another thing he hadn’t considered was that maybe being there for her was more important to him than what he needed. He had told her he would stop pushing her away and then he’d just done the same thing again.
He tossed the towel on the counter and went out to her. He didn’t say anything, he just sank down onto the stairs beside her, thighs touching. Reaching over, he took her hand and slowly, one by one, opened the fingers she had curled into a fist. He was grateful she didn’t pull away from him. He lifted her hand to his mouth and brushed a kiss there before pressing her palm to his heart.
They sat together for a few minutes in silence. He listened to the birds and insects. They were great sentries, the birds in the air and the insects on the ground. Loud, the insects nearly drowned out every other noise, but the birds rivaled them with their cacophony of sounds. Some were melodious, but all too often, one sounded off on a particularly jarring note. Still, he liked to hear them.
“I’m sorry, Shylah. It won’t happen again.” He brought her hand to his mouth again, pressing kisses to the center of her palm. “It’s important to me that they find a way to save you. I think I became a little obsessive about it and I didn’t stop to think how it could look to you. I’m not rejecting you. Just the opposite. You mean something huge to me. Huge. I can’t think about much of anything else but keeping you alive.”
She was silent, staring out into the trees, her long lashes drawing his attention. Her profile was as beautiful as when he was staring straight at her. Up close he could see the dusting of gold across her nose. He loved those little freckles and he’d stared at them so much he knew the exact position of every single one of them.
“I’ve been preparing to die for a long time, Draden. I was always going to choose a time and let go on my own terms. There was no escaping from Whitney, not without dying a nasty death. He let us all know that. It was get killed in combat, and I’m not capable of aiding that along, or die of a virus. I knew he was having those individual strains created to target us. We always knew we weren’t worth anything to him or anyone else there.”
Everything male in him reacted to that. His entire body rebelled at the idea. He wanted to get physical, punch something, break necks. Kick the shit out of someone. She was worth so much—the world—and yet she hadn’t been given that. “Baby.” He tried. How did one tell her? Emotion rose to choke him, and he had to turn his head away. Whitney was the most fucked-up being he’d ever encountered, and he’d met his share of vile individuals.