Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lennon
“Watch out for the light.”
My body reacts to the echo of Seraphine’s words before my brain can, and I jerk backward, but not fast enough. The car clips my thigh hard enough to spin me off balance, and I go down with a startled cry, pain tearing through my side as I hit the ground.
My tumbler skids across the road with a hollow, metallic clang as tires scream, but the rain continues to pound down as I lie there, breath knocked out of me.
This feels so familiar, but I know I’m not dreaming.
It hurts too much.
For a few disorienting seconds, my body takes over completely.
Pain becomes a checklist.
Can I breathe? Yes.
Can I move my fingers? Mostly.
Am I bleeding enough to be scared? Don’t know yet.
I vaguely register a car door slamming, followed by fast footsteps.
“No… no, no, no,” a deep voice pleads, the words tripping over each other. “Fuck, I shouldn’t have driven. I shouldn’t…”
A body blocks the rain, then drops down beside me. I try to look, but pain ripples through my temple, and I groan, squeezing my eyes closed.
“Oh my God.” His voice catches. “You’re alive.”
I crack one eye open, but the rain and the pain blur everything, turning the world into nothing more than streaks of gray and light.
“Barely,” I rasp.
His laugh sounds strangled. “Wait. Don’t move. I’ll call an ambulance.”
“No… wait.” I force myself upright with a hiss, dragging my legs under me and cradling my palm against my body. Everything protests, but nothing feels wrong-wrong. “Please don’t. I’m fine.”
“I just ran you over. You’re not fine,” he protests. “I should have killed you.”
“Could,” I correct groggily, examining my palm. The scrape burns, similar to the way my temple is screaming, and my thigh is already throbbing, but I’m alive. “It’s just some scrapes and maybe some bruises.”
If Seraphine hadn’t scared the shit out of me earlier, I might not be sitting here arguing.
The thought sends a shudder through me, even colder than the rain.
When he doesn’t respond, I start to worry that he doesn’t believe me. I look up at him, gasping when I find him crouched close enough that I can see rain beading on his glasses and skin, clinging to dark curls. His face is stricken and unfairly beautiful.
Deep brown skin, strong jaw, and neatly groomed stubble with some gray streaks. When I meet his eyes, his full lips part on an answering gasp.
God, his eyes. They’re almost black in this light.
“Found you,” he breathes out on a whisper, reaching toward my temple.
I don’t even have time to process that before his fingers brush my skin and pain sparks across my head, white-hot.
“Ow!”
He jerks his hand back but keeps it hovering uselessly in the air. “Sorry. I… I didn’t mean… are you… can you stand?”
“I think so.”
He rises smoothly and offers his hand, waiting for me to accept his help.
After only a moment’s hesitation, I do, but pain pounds in time with my heartbeats as he pulls me to my feet, and the world tilts.
He keeps me from falling over, though, his big palm comforting around my hand that isn’t scraped raw.
I look down at our joined hands, watching the rain drip off them, then back up to him. Those dark eyes are already on me, searching my face, and it feels somehow more intimate than a stranger checking for injuries.
Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought.
“Your temple’s scraped up pretty badly.” He reaches out again, and I brace for the shooting pain, but this time, he cups my cheek. The warmth of his palm makes me realize how cold I am, and as if on cue, I start trembling, and my teeth clack hard enough that it startles me.
His brow furrows. “You said no ambulance.”
“Yes,” I manage between shudders. “No ambulance.”
It’s really not that bad, and honestly, I’ve spent enough time in hospitals for a lifetime. I know the smell of them, the lights, the hard chairs. I’m not going back inside one if I can help it.
He studies me for another second, like he’s weighing the cost of believing me, then nods once. “Do you want me to call someone else?”
Mom.
The thought flashes through me only a split-second before reality, and it hits me even harder than his car just did. I breathe through the pain, all the layers of it, and shrug. “There’s nobody left to care.”
Saying it out loud feels uglier than thinking it. I’ve turned my loneliness into a fact instead of fear.
His hand twitches against my face, and his frown impossibly deepens.
“My apartment is only a ten-minute walk from here,” I rush to add, because suddenly the idea of needing him feels worse than the pain.
“I’m not letting you walk like this.”
The way he says it makes arguing feel childish.
His hand slides from my face to my shoulder, and he steers me toward his car, which is still idling in the middle of the street a few feet down. “You need to sit.”
He opens the passenger door and guides me inside.
I know I should protest. Something about possible stranger danger, but between the pain and cold, the thought is pushed away.
My thigh throbs in protest when I slide into the comfortable seat, but then warm air hits me, and I sag back against the leather with a shaky breath.
The handsome stranger closes the door, and I watch him jog back into the rain in the rearview mirror to gather my things from the road.
Water beads down on him as he scoops everything up, and when he’s collected the wet mess, he loads it into the back, then slides into the driver’s seat, rain dripping from his hair onto the leather.
His glasses are fogged when he turns toward me, and for some reason, that makes me smile. He pulls them off and uses his cardigan to dry them off carefully.
The car smells good, like roasted espresso and leather. Rain clings to it all, mingling with damp fabric and cold air, but somehow it works.
Letting my gaze wander over the interior of the very nice car that just tried to kill me, my eyes catch the Mercedes emblem on the steering wheel, then drift back to him—his chinos, the green cardigan with worn patches on the elbows.
Is he a teacher? A professor?
Do they get paid that well?
He startles me when he leans across me to reach my seat belt, and his knuckles brush my stomach by accident when he clicks it in for me. It’s a fleeting graze through damp fabric, but I gasp anyway, making him still instantly, eyes flicking to my face.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, already pulling back.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, feeling how my cheeks turn warm.
“You sure you’re all right?” He’s giving me that searching look again as if he’s trying to catch me mid-lie.
“I’m fine,” I reaffirm, as another wave of burning pain rolls through my palm, making me flex my fingers. “Maybe you could tell me where the nearest pharmacy is. I need some antiseptic to clean this.”
“I have a fully stocked first-aid kit at home.” He nods to himself, then starts the car.
At home?
“That’s kind, but—”
“I have some medical training,” he cuts in, gentle but final, already pulling away from the curb. “And I know what shock looks like. Humor me.”
I open my mouth to argue. Sitting in his car to get out of the rain is one thing. Letting a stranger take care of me is another.
I do not go home with men I don’t know.
I barely went home with the ones I did, if I’m being honest.
The car moves, and rain smears the windshield into silver ribbons. I keep my eyes on the road ahead, then let them flick to his hands on the steering wheel—steady, sure, not a tremor in sight.
There’s nothing left of the man who tripped over his words a few minutes ago.
This version is controlled, and focused, almost clinical.
It’s like he slammed a door on himself and stepped through it.
Am I getting kidnapped?
My heart starts to pound for an entirely different reason.
Another wave of pain rolls through my thigh, and my teeth chatter hard enough that I bite down on my tongue.
The fight drains from my limbs all at once, leaving a bone-deep exhaustion that makes everything feel heavier.
I lean back despite myself, eyes on the road blurring past, trying to remember the turns we’ve taken while internally cursing everything.
My ability to say no to cute things, that stupid crosswalk, my umbrella still sitting useless in Boston, the sky itself, and literally every decision that led me here.
Is this how I die today after all?
The thought settles deep as the silence stretches, rain pattering steadily against the roof like a metronome, and I turn to take him in on instinct.
As if sensing the weight of my stare, he shifts his gaze to me, letting it linger a beat too long.
His dark eyes search my face as if he’s cataloging every detail before the corner of his mouth pulls down in the smallest smile.
It’s barely there, the faintest downward curve, but something in my chest tingles at the sight.
I startle enough at the foreign feeling that my eyes probably go wide, because his smile vanishes instantly, replaced by that careful focus again.
“Is the shock wearing off?” His gaze drops to my hands, then lifts back to my face, already assessing. “Are you hurting more now?”
“No, I’m just…” I trail off, looking down at myself. My sweater is soaked through, clinging to me, and my nipples peak beneath the fabric. My skirt is damp, and my stockings are cold and sticky against my skin. “I… I guess I’m cold.”
“Sorry.” He reaches over, fingers brushing the console as he turns up the heat and clicks on the seat warmer for me. “I should have thought about that.”
The warmth seeps in immediately, straight into my bones. My shoulders loosen, and my breath stutters out as the stiffness starts to melt. “Thank you. That… feels nice.”
“Good.” He nods once, eyes back on the road.
I take a moment to assess myself again, the pain sharpening now that warmth is settling in, my thigh throbbing more insistently, my palm stinging more.
When I glance up, his eyes flick to me for only a second, but the intensity in that look makes my breath catch before his focus is back on the road again.
My head hurts, but it’s not a concussion.
I’ll be fine.
As long as he didn’t save me to kill me in another way.