Chapter Fourteen
IS HE SLEEPING?
I can’t say for sure because he’s sitting up against a tree and not lying down on a sleeping bag like me.
His back is leaning into the trunk with one leg drawn up and his face dipped low.
So much so that his chin touches his chest. A softly breathing chest, I should add.
I watch it go up and down for a few moments in the dying embers of the fire.
Then I watch his arms. They’re folded across his chest, and they’re locked so tight that I can see the hills of his biceps.
He appears more like someone keeping watch than someone in a deep slumber.
Plus, I don’t think he ever sleeps, as impossible as that sounds. But then, I watch as one of his arms goes slack and falls to his thigh. Followed by a low release of breath. And my heart starts pounding because he’s asleep after all.
This is my chance.
My own slumber that I’d given in to while waiting for him to go to sleep is washed away, and I’m ready to go.
Slowly, I unzip the sleeping bag and sit up.
My eyes are on his face, looking for any movement, any indication that he heard me.
But he keeps sleeping. Letting out a small thankful breath, I climb out of the bag.
He’s only a few paces away from me and I can see the knife handle sticking out of the boot on his bent leg.
Tiptoeing, I make my way toward his sleeping form and crouch by his boot. I reach out with my hand, and slowly, very slowly, I slide the knife out. Once I have it, I take a step back, and then, out of nowhere, the hand that was sitting limp on his thigh strikes.
Like a rattlesnake, lying in wait, his fingers coil around my wrist and squeeze so hard that a gasp and a squeal escape me.
At my sound of pain, he snaps his eyes up.
His dark gaze is alert and his features are sharp, and I realize that he was lying in wait.
He probably wasn’t asleep at all; he knew I was coming for him the whole time, and like a wild, dangerous animal, he lured me in.
Like always.
“Not so fast,” he murmurs, his voice hardly sleep-ruffled and just as alert as the rest of him.
God.
What a fucking monster. I was wrong to think the Graysons are anything but evil and criminal. And I feel so foolish for thinking it that I go manic.
I absolutely lose my fucking shit.
I launch myself at him and crash-butt my shoulder into his chest. He’s momentarily shocked at my sudden burst of energy, and I’m able to knock him back, his spine hitting the tree.
He curses at the impact as his fingers loosen around my wrist, and I’m up on my feet in a flash with the knife.
I’m already spinning on my heels when he wraps those wretched fingers of his around my ankles and takes me down.
I scream as I fall to the ground, my elbows and forearms taking the brunt of it all, along with my knees.
I think I even have cut skin in places, but I can’t be sure and I don’t even care right now.
Because right now, as my skin smarts and possibly bleeds, I feel him on top of me. His wildly breathing chest pressed to my shuddering back. Starting to feel suffocated, I struggle harder under him. Despite giving it my all, though, he manages to flip me over.
And our eyes lock in the darkness.
His, fiery and angry; and mine, probably just the same except there may be a hint of panic too.
For a second, less than a second even, it feels like our chests move in tandem.
His swells up when mine swells down, and mine goes up when his goes down.
It feels like our breaths, like our eyes, are tangled together.
But then I feel his fingers wrapping around my wrist, the one holding the knife, and the moment breaks.
I start thrashing under him, and he bears down on me.
“Let me go,” I bite out with heaving breaths, and then I keep chanting it like a prayer.
Let me go let me go let me go letmego.
“Calm the fuck down,” he tells me, all the while tightening his hold on me like a vise, suffocating me with his muscles and bones. “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
I headbutt him at this.
Hard.
Just to show I don’t care what happens to me as long as he gets hurt. I cry out at the impact and see stars, and he curses again, this time loudly, as his hold on me loosens and I twist my hand with the knife free. And then I swing it down, and holy God, holy fucking God, I hit something.
Something like muscles and bones.
And everything stops. My head stops spinning. My vision comes back, and the first thing I see is blood.
Dripping on me.
Granted, it’s only a few drops, but they plop on the center of my heaving chest, warm and thick.
Before scattering every which way. Sliding along my collarbone, seeping into the bodice of my dress; sluicing up to the triangle of my throat.
I watch for a few seconds, hypnotized, but then gather enough wherewithal to look for where it’s coming from.
Him.
It’s coming from his chest, higher up on it, just under the globe of his left shoulder. Where his knife is lodged, and dear Lord, my fingers are still wrapped around the handle.
Did I do that?
I did that, didn’t I? I stabbed him. I stabbed my husband.
I gasp, finally letting go of the knife, my sweaty fingers grabbing his bicep. “I… You… Are you… Oh God, did I kill you?”
I clap my other hand—the non-knife-wielding hand—onto my mouth at my own horrific words as I look up at him. Only to find him staring at my trembling chest. At his blood, the trails of it all over my skin.
“Not yet,” he grunts in reply.
Then he goes for the knife. A flash of tightness passes through his face as he heaves himself up a little and dislodges it from his body. His frame jerks and he grunts at the action. Throwing the knife away, he comes back down, pressing the length of his body against mine.
My eyes skitter to his wound and my hand on his bicep flies over to cover it for some reason. “I’ve never…” I press on the spot, feeling the blood ooze, making my fingers sticky, and he grunts. “I’ve never s-stabbed anyone before.”
“Clearly,” he bites out.
I press on it harder, making him wince over me. “S-shouldn’t we do something?”
“Like what?”
“To stop the bleeding.”
“That why you’re tryin’ to jam your fingers into my wound?”
I ease up on the pressure and jerk my gaze back to him. “I-I wasn’t. I was just… I was trying to keep the pressure. I’m s-so sorry.”
He breathes through his nose, his chest shuddering over mine. “Yeah, are you?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“No?”
“No.”
“What were you gonna do with my knife then”—he grunts again—“swat butterflies in the meadow?”
“I’d never swat a…” I begin hysterically but think better of it. “I just… I wanted to protect myself.”
Another wave of pain flashes through his face, tightening his features and shuddering his chest. “Against me.”
I swallow. “And w-wild animals. You said there were bears and w-wolves and—”
“And you thought a pocketknife would help you fight bears and wolves.” He growls low; this time the tightening on his features is anger rather than pain.
“You were going to do it.”
“There’s a difference between you and me.”
That gets my back up, and I instantly regret any remorse about stabbing him. He deserved that. And more, I decide, as I say in disbelief, “Oh my God, so you’re a sexist too?”
“I am whatever the fuck I am when it comes to knowin’ that a mere girl like you doesn’t stand a chance against a wild animal with—” He pauses here, his words slowing down, probably to scare me. “A. Fuckin’. Knife.”
I grit my teeth. “The knife was the only option I had.”
“The other option, as always before you fuck everything up to where someone ends up getting stabbed, is to just stay. The fuck. Put.”
I dig my fingers into his wounded flesh again, making him jerk and wince, probably spilling more of his blood. Before I lean up and state, “Or the other other option is you don’t use me for revenge like I’m some object and let me the fuck go.”
He emits a wordless growl in response, which I think is the result of me pressing on his wound again.
Despite everything, guilt stings me, but I don’t ease up on the pressure.
No matter how much blood I seem to be getting on my fingers.
He needs to learn his lesson. He needs to hurt. Shame on me for wavering.
Frustrated, I ask, “You weren’t really sleeping, were you?”
His nostrils flare again with a large, painful breath. “Just nodded off for a second.”
“You never sleep.”
He grunts his agreement.
I frown. “When was the last time you slept?”
“In my cell.”
I gasp. “So you… You haven’t slept in a week?”
His jaw clenches for a second. “Quit lookin’ at me like I’m a freak.”
My eyes go wide. “No, I wasn’t. I—”
An expression passes through his features that bunches his brow and makes his cheekbones seem even darker and flushed in the dying embers.
“I can’t seem to fall asleep, all right?
Not on the outside. Where everything’s so fuckin’ open.
There’s so much fuckin’ air and sky and goddamn people that I’m choking with it all. The only time…”
I flick my eyes back and forth between his. “The only time what?”
His brow bunches deeper and that flush on his cheekbones grows. And for a few seconds, all he does is look down at me with irritation bordering on anger. Then, “The only time I seem to drift off is when I”—he takes in a sharp, angry breath—“when I’m able to smell you.”
“What?”
His jaw moves as if he’s trying to grind his words into dust. “Your scent.”
“W-what about it?”
“It’s thicker,” he grunts, the words ripped out of his chest almost. “When you sleep. You also seem to toss and turn. A lot. Spillin’ your hair everywhere.
Sometimes I can smell you from across the room and I”—he pushes out another breath—“I can sleep for a bit, thinkin’ about those fuckin’ buttercups. ”