Chapter Nine – Kayla #4
“I don’t know what kind of people you’re used to dealing with, but not everyone out there is a bad person.
I wouldn’t want anyone to slowly kill themselves, but you—there’s something about you that makes me want to take care of you.
” Hayden leans a little closer to me, and his voice drops so much I can barely hear it, “I want to protect you.”
My heart is in my throat. I want to lean into him, to close my eyes and surrender myself to his words—to breathe him in, even—but when I inhale, I don’t smell a thing, and that uncomfortable tightness in my throat only makes me think about the reality of the situation.
He can never protect me. I’m not someone worth protecting, anyway.
So I pull my hand out from under his, and thankfully he takes the hint and lifts his hand off my lap, not letting it linger for longer than it already has.
I avert my eyes without saying a word, and this causes him to stand and put some distance between us.
I hear him putting away things in the first aid kit, and I hate how my body responds by intrinsically wanting him to come back.
This is getting complicated fast, and I’m afraid I don’t know how to deal with it. I’ve never had these feelings before, let alone for two different guys at the same time.
The things I’m feeling now? Even starved, with a light head and pain shooting up my body from recently-pulled out glass shards, I can’t quite shake any of them. What is wrong with me?
Bradford returns, and I’m too busy wrestling with my inner demons to pay too much attention to him… that is, until he approaches me and lays what he found near me, over the edge of the tub.
Athletic shorts that I honestly could not picture him in, even if it’d save my life.
I go to pick up the shorts, raising my eyebrows at them before I turn my head and glance up at him. He moved to stand a few feet away, and he now keeps his gaze averted from my bare legs.
“Thank you,” I whisper, slow to slip them on before I work to stand. My legs are a little wobbly, and I have to lean on the tub’s edge to stay upright. My stomach chooses right then to growl.
Hayden then tells Bradford my secret: “She skipped lunch. She’s lightheaded. She should eat and rest.” The way he says it, he doesn’t sound like he’s talking to his employer. No, he sounds as if he’s speaking to an equal.
My cheeks flush as Bradford turns those dark eyes to me. Though he stares at me, he speaks to the other man in the room: “Take her to the room across the hall. I’ll clean the kitchen and fix up something for her.” He turns away from us and leaves, a man on a mission.
Hayden closes the first aid box and tosses a knowing look my way. I frown at him. “Thanks. You didn’t have to tell him that.”
“Actually, I did.” He tosses a glance out the bathroom, into the hall, probably to make sure Bradford is really gone, before he returns to me and offers me a hand.
“I was concerned at first he’d hurt you, but…
I don’t get that vibe off him. Beneath that mask he wears, he does seem worried about you. ”
So I’m not the only one who noticed that mask. Huh.
But what sticks out to me the most isn’t the statement about the mask, it’s what he said after it.
He seems worried about me. It doesn’t want to compute in my head.
Hayden has to be pulling that out of his ass, because in no way, shape, or form would someone like Bradford Bentley actually give a crap about me, a nobody.
I don’t say anything, but my eyes do fall to his outstretched hand. I’m currently leaning against the tub for support. My legs are still a little weak after the shock of the fall and the glass shards that I landed on when I fell.
The last thing I want to do is take that hand, and it must be written on my face, because he says, “If you don’t take my hand and lean on me, I’m going to pick you up again and carry you there. Which one would you rather endure?”
Either way, it’d be embarrassing all over again. Like I’m admitting to us both that I need the help. But, as much as I don’t want to say it, I guess I do need the help, so I decide that leaning on him would be better than having him carry me like a baby.
I reach for his hand and let him pull me onto my feet. He wraps an arm around my shoulders and I lean against his side as we start walking.
It’s a slow, slow process, one that could have been made so much quicker if I would have let him carry me. My legs shake each step of the way, but his body by my side is like a third leg, the strongest of the bunch. Step by step we move across the hall, to a bedroom, where he helps me onto the bed.
The man even fluffs the pillows behind me, like I’m in a hospital and just had surgery or something. It’s a weirdly thoughtful gesture that makes me feel all tingly inside.
“There,” he says. “Now, do you need anything else? Water? I can grab you whatever you want.”
“I guess some water,” I mumble. “Oh, and my phone. It’s in my pants.”
Hayden gives me a smile. He doesn’t seem upset at me pulling away earlier, which is good. I think. “All right. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.” He grins harder. “That was a joke.”
“Funny,” I say, though it sounds like I definitely don’t find the man funny. Maybe, in another situation, I would have laughed, but here and now? Not exactly the time.
He goes and gets my phone first, bringing it to me, and then his next mission is the water.
I lean back on the pillow and check my email—never know when Mr. Bentley is going to send something my way.
I’ve been emailing him a list of things his son does at the end of every day.
So far, I haven’t called him to give him the bi-weekly reports he wanted.
Seems to me, the emails should be more than enough.
Unfortunately, it seems my luck has run totally dry today, because when I refresh my email, something pops up from Mr. Bentley himself.
He wants me to meet with him tonight, downtown.
Great.