“I’m sorry.”
I stiffened at the sound of his voice, fingers curling a little tighter around the book in my hand. There were times when I cursed his knack for finding me and this was one of those times.
“I really don’t want to talk to you right now.”
“Kira—”
“No, seriously.” I shoved the book back onto the shelf. “You only stood me up and my cousin either thinks you’re a jerk of epic proportions or that you’re some kind of figment of his way too lonely cousin’s imagination. No big deal. I just need some space.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“You don’t get to tell me—” I spun toward him and froze, heart stutter-stepping. “Oh my god. What happened to your face?”
Teague looked away, as if that would hide the black eye and the split lip that I’d already spotted. I reached for him, fingers trembling as they brushed against his lip just shy of the cut. His shoulders slumped and he shook his head slightly.
“It’s why I wasn’t there. I’m sorry, Kira, I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“Never mind that. What happened to your face, Teague?” His face was a mess of bruises to match the shiner and the lip. I was already starting to imagine the bruises I was likely to find beneath his shirt. The anger I’d been nursing had dulled as I realized that he’d been through some kind of hell and that had kept him from making it to dinner.
I should have worried. Instead I wasted time being angry. Dammit. His hand covered mine, our fingers tangling as he drew our hands away from his face.
“Not here,” he murmured. “Someone picked a fight with me. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Until we get you home, anyway,” I said.
“It’s not—”
“Serious? It looks serious enough.” I reached up to touch his swollen cheek and he recoiled, hissing in pain. “Have you been to the ER?”
“I’m not going to the ER.”
“Teague—”
“I’m not going to the ER.” He was using his stubborn tone, the one that told me he wasn’t going to listen no matter how hard I pressed—not to me, not about this. All I could do was sigh and shake my head.
“Was Phelan there?” I asked.
Teague shook his head. “No. He doesn’t know anything about this and neither of us are going to tell him, either.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it and sighed. “What’s there to tell? I don’t know anything.”
“I’ll tell you everything,” he whispered a second before his lips brushed mine. “Just not here.”
“Then I’m taking you home,” I said, hands stroking his face and hair gently. “My place if you’re that worried about Phelan finding out what happened. It’s closer anyway.”
He looked like he wanted to protest but he just closed his eyes instead and nodded slightly. “All right. Home it is.”
I took him by the hand and abandoned the stacks for the gray light of a late autumn afternoon. There was a chill in the air that hadn’t been there when I’d left my apartment that morning, but we’d be all right between the library, the bus, and my apartment.
“Don’t you have—”
“Professor Daniels will understand if I’m not there.”
“Kira.”
I stopped, twisting toward him on the sidewalk. “Teague…let me do this. I know how far I can push.”
“You’ve only known me for a couple months,” he said, his voice choked. “I don’t want you to destroy your life.”
“I’ve known you my whole life,” I whispered. “I know you’re worth it. Come on.”
He shuddered, but followed me. I tried to turn away fast enough so I wouldn’t see the pain in his eyes, but I failed. It was there, huge and real and utterly undeniable.
“I never meant for any of this,” he said as we hurried toward the bus stop. “I never knew this would happen.”
“That I would dream of a past life almost every night for as long as I could remember? No, of course you wouldn’t want that. No one would want that for someone they loved.” I stopped, twisting back toward him. He ran smack into me like we had on the day we’d met. “I know that you love me, Teague, and that’s enough for now. You don’t have to give me everything—you don’t have to tell me all of your secrets. I know that you have them because she knew that you had them. I know keeping them isn’t personal. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” he said, fingers squeezing mine. “I put her through too much and I had to abandon her when she still needed me. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Are you planning on doing that to me?”
“No, but I didn’t plan on doing it to her, either.”
“Things are different,” I told him. “We have choices—I have to assume we’ve got choices, more choices than you had then. We’ll be okay.”
He looked down, huddling in his lightweight jacket. I exhaled a quiet sigh, holding his hand a little tighter.
We got on the bus, leaning against each other in a seat near the exit doors. His eyes fell closed and he breathed shallowly, as if his ribs hurt. I wove my fingers through his, squeezing.
What did you get into, Teague? Do I even want to know?
He’d promised to tell me, though.
“I actually wanted to meet him,” he said quietly. “I was kind of looking forward to it. I was terrified of it, but I was looking forward to it.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not that angry.”
“Liar.”
I cracked a smile and kissed his cheek gently, the one that wasn’t swollen or bruised. He sighed, quiet as the bus hummed along the streets of the city, making its way toward the neighborhood where I lived. He wasn’t asleep—I could tell that much—but he was on the edge of it. I’d be lucky if he stayed awake long enough to tell me what had actually happened to him when he was supposed to be meeting me.
So I wouldn’t get to know right away. I’d just have to be patient.
Story of my life.
The bus finally stopped near my apartment and we got off, Teague’s steps slow and careful as I tucked myself under his arm to support him. He hissed softly as he settled his arm across my shoulders.
“Bloody ribs,” he growled under his breath. I suppressed the urge to sigh and shake my head at him.
It was bad this time. How do I know it’s not going to be worse next time?
What if he didn’t make it home next time?
I didn’t want to think about it—not at all.
“Can you make it as far as my apartment?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what we’d do if he said no, but I’d figure something out.
He nodded, though, solving that problem. It was only a hundred yards or so from the bus stop anyway. Teague leaned on me, shivering slightly in the chill of the autumn afternoon.
“Colder out here than I thought it would be,” he murmured.
“Yeah,” I agreed softly. I opened the wooden gate that separated the small front yard of my building from the sidewalk and headed up to the porch, digging around in my pocket for my keys. “It’s all right. There are plenty of blankets upstairs. We just have to make it that far.”
He snorted softly, straightening as I unlocked the front door and drew him into the vestibule.
“Good thing we didn’t try for yours,” I said as I guided him to the stairs.
“At least my building has an elevator.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s also ten minutes further away and you’re fading a lot faster than that.”
He made a quiet sound and leaned on me as we headed up the two flights to my third floor apartment, my arm around his waist and his across my shoulders.
“You know that I shouldn’t forgive you, right?”
“I’m well aware of that,” he said quietly. “I’d be a little shocked if you did.”
I sighed and unlocked my front door. “I love you,” I said. “Staying angry at you wouldn’t be good for either one of us. The couch or my bed?”
“The bed would be more comfortable, but I don’t think I’m going to make it farther than your couch.”
I settled him on my couch with a blanket and helped him take off his shoes. Teague’s eyes slid closed and he tilted his head back with a soft groan.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. As if the words would erase what had happened, as if I was still angry.
Maybe I was. Maybe it didn’t matter. I reached down and smoothed his hair back from his face. He opened his eyes and stared at me.
“Forgive me?”
I nodded, my throat too tight to speak. I swallowed hard. It wasn’t worth being angry. “I’m going to put some hot water on,” I said quietly. “Do you want anything?”
“Whatever you’re making,” he said, closing his eyes again. “Don’t call Phelan.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I said as I walked into my kitchen. “You asked me not to.”
“I know.” He sighed. “But you’re worried, and when I start making you worried like this, you tend to call him whether I want you to or not.”
I should have been offended. I should have yelled at him, completely lost my temper and told him to mind his own business and I’d worry as I wanted to and I’d call his cousin if I damn well wanted to. I didn’t. He was right—I did tend to call Phelan in situations like this. That tended to feel like the right thing to do.
Today, it didn’t.
“Just rest,” I told him. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He nodded, sinking deeper into my couch’s cushions as he eased onto his side, one arm hugged protectively against his ribcage. I stared at him for a long moment before I turned and slipped into the kitchen, biting my lip and feeling like my heart had become a ball of lead in my chest.
I slumped against the counter, a sob bubbling up, one I kept trapped behind my teeth. I couldn’t. I couldn’t break down, not now. He needed me—and I needed him, beyond logic and beyond caring.
But I couldn’t call Phelan, not this time, and he wouldn’t go to a hospital. This was something that he and I would have to handle alone.
I put some water on to boil. I made some tea. I threw towels and blankets in the dryer to get good and hot and went hunting for my heating pad in the big junk drawer in the kitchen. Peeking out into my living room, I could see that he was dozing, maybe sleeping. My heart ached as I looked at him.
I’m sorry, Teague. I wish I wasn’t angry.
God, did I love him.
The dryer beeped and I pulled the blankets and towels out. Teague stirred on my couch, then quieted again as I headed into the living room with the blankets and my heating pad. I sat down on my coffee table, reaching for the hem of his shirt.
He shuddered and opened his eyes as I peeled his shirt up, exposing his black-and-blue torso. “What are you doing?” he asked, words slurring slightly.
“Shh,” I hushed gently as I spread the heating pad over his side, dialing the heat up as high as I dared. He moaned quietly, sagging into the cushions, and let me roll his shirt back down again.
“How did you know?” he asked as I covered him with the blankets I’d taken out of the dryer.
“When I’m sore, all I want is to be warm. You’re way more than sore.” I kissed his cheek. His hand found mine, fingers tangling.
“There were too many of them,” he whispered. “I knew that, but they caught me off-guard, got me surrounded. They started in on me and I tried to fight back. I did. But I knew there were too many. I didn’t have a prayer. I was on the ground and I—I thought of you, Kira. I thought about you waiting for me, maybe worried, maybe getting mad. I couldn’t leave you, couldn’t abandon you like that. I just snapped. The next thing I remember was being in the shower at home and the water was running cold over me.”
I stared at him, my throat so tight I couldn’t speak. I bit my lip and swallowed hard, moving from my perch on the coffee table to beside him on the couch, his belly pressed against my lower back. His arm curled around me and he shivered.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you, too.” I stared at him, eyes stinging with tears I didn’t want to let lose. If I started to cry, he’d want to comfort me, and he didn’t need to be doing that right now. I stretched out beside him on the couch, our foreheads touching as he pressed himself back against the cushions, his arms around me and drawing me closer to his chest.
“I can’t stand the thought of losing you,” he admitted, eyes shining. “Of disappointing you. I’m so sorry, Kira. I should have been there last night.”
“Hush,” I told him softly, pressing a kiss against his lips with gentle, insistent pressure. “There will be other opportunities to subject you to my cousin and you to him.”
Teague managed to laugh, but the sound ended in a cough and a groan. He squeezed his eyes shut, slumping against the cushions. I ran my hand down his arm lightly.
“You don’t want to go to the ER because you don’t want to have to explain,” I said. “They’d ask and you don’t want to have to make something up.”
“Or tell the truth,” he said, then sighed. “It’s always either one or the other and neither is a good choice at this point.”
I had to agree with him there. Either way, the extent of his injuries would make the emergency room personnel want to get the police involved and getting the police involved was the last thing we needed—especially considering they’d be more hinderance than help.
“I’m still worried about you,” I whispered.
“I know.” He stared at me for a few seconds, searching for something in my gaze that I hope he found. “But I’m not going anywhere, Kira. I promise.”
I nodded, throat growing tight again. I needed that promise to be one he could keep, but I was starting to doubt he had as much control over that as he thought he did. Maybe he was lying to himself, or in denial, or simply didn’t realize the magnitude of what he was facing.
Then again, did I have any idea what, exactly, he was facing—what we were facing? I didn’t, not in the ways I should.
In the end, would it really matter?
I didn’t know the answer to that question, either.
