Chapter 28
—Kasey—
It had grown dark outside and visiting hours were over. Reed hadn’t come back, and my chest refused to stop aching. I didn’t know what we used to be like together, but now that I’d calmed down, I wanted to talk things through. Before my head was too clouded, too conflicted.
I sighed hard and rearranged the crisp hospital blankets over my sore chest. The bruising had peaked and was now beginning to turn green. My engorged breasts were finally easing, and I’d noticed that my headaches were lessening in intensity.
My hand lowered under the covers to where the five-inch sewn seam permanently scarred my body. The drain and catheter had been removed a couple of days ago, and I’d been a little shocked while watching the nurse replace the dressings. No wonder my lower abdomen twinged with sharp pain when I moved too quickly or stretched too far.
“Kase,” came a whisper.
My heart lurched as my eyes immediately cut to the door.
“Kasey,” he called again.
“Yeah?”
“It’s me.”
“Reed?” I hissed back despite knowing it was.
“Yeah.”
I pressed a hand over my thumping heart, internally prepping to pick up where we left off this afternoon.
“Come in.”
“I’m not allowed. It’s out of visiting hours.”
“For fuck’s sake, get your ass in here,” I hissed, growing impatient.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The boyish grin on his face had my already erratic pulse skipping. I quashed that feeling before I could overthink it.
“Don’t grin like that.”
“Sorry,” he murmured—still grinning—before planting a kiss on my cheek.
He didn’t get comfortable in the chair like he normally did, and a pang of trepidation knotted under my ribs. Instead of reaching for my hand and stroking my knuckles, he gripped the hospital blanket.
“I can’t stay long, but I wanted to see you before I head home. I need to apologize for earlier. It wasn’t what I was expecting and—”
“Reed,” I cut him off. “I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that I’d be staying. And for being rude.”
As soon as his fingers interlaced with mine, the turbulence within me calmed. Reed’s easy expression grew earnest.
“I don’t want you to take Posie away from me.”
Tears unexpectedly clouded my vision. I blinked them away as best I could to save my pride. “I don’t want to take her.”
“I don’t want you to leave either, Kase.”
Despite my head having forgotten how much Reed supposedly meant to me, a yearning ached in my soul.
“I’m going,” I whispered.
Reed let out a sharp exhale and hung his head briefly. When his chin lifted, his broken gaze met mine from under his brows.
“Give me all the reasons, Kase. Every single reason you can think of why we can’t be together, and I’ll give you a million more as to why you’re wrong. It’s you ’n me, babe. You, me, and Posie.”
My mouth worked open and closed. The raw emotion took me aback. I got lost in Reed’s intense dark-brown eyes as they burned with intent.
The muscles in his chiseled jaw coiled and relaxed as he ground his teeth. His vehemence pinned me to the bed without so much as a hair of contact, yet I felt him all over me. His scent, his determination, his stare… It all stripped me bare and demanded we address the hardest questions head-on.
“Even just one, babe. One legitimate reason why.”
My mouth dried as I desperately searched for words that would be meaningful enough. “I don’t know you,” I eventually murmured.
“Bullshit,” he barked. “Try again.”
I rose in the bed, propping myself forward with my hands to come nose to nose with the most intense and frustrating guy I’d met this side of my accident.
“Fine. I know you enough to know that you’re a pain in the ass and can’t take no for an answer.”
He nudged forward, causing me to ease back a fraction to look at him without going cross-eyed. “And I know you well enough to know that you fucking love being told no. It lights a fire in your belly. It gives you the intensity of the fight that you crave. Thrive off, even. You don’t like being told no, and frankly, it’s one helluva turn-on.”
Heat rose up my cheeks as I spluttered at his audacity. “That’s purely one-sided, I can assure you.”
Reed’s scorching gaze dropped down my body. I forced myself not to squirm under his brazen attempt to unnerve me as my breasts began to tingle.
“You’re lying,” he whispered.
“I am not!”
Much to my horror, I felt my body release. I froze, not daring to bring attention to the wetness I felt spreading across my T-shirt fabric.
Reed’s eyes flicked to my chest, then did a double take. His jaw dropped, and his eyes widened. “You’re… leaking.”
World swallow me whole. I wanted to cry, to be angry. Instead, I looked down and plucked at my shirt in utter mortification. “Oh my god. Gross!”
Reed leaned closer. So close, I caught a whiff of the scented hair gel holding his dark hair in its stylish cut.
“Is that milk?” he asked, awe coloring his tone.
I shoved him away with one arm while covering my chest with the other. “This is embarrassing.”
He loomed in again. “It’s not. It’s fascinating.”
“Reed! I’m literally milking, and you’re being creepy. Back off.”
My outburst straightened his back, and he rubbed at the back of his neck, coughing a little. “Oh. Sorry. I’m just a little intrigued is all. Let me get you something—”
He rushed for the bathroom, and I heard reams of toilet paper being frantically pulled off the roll. Seconds later, he emerged in a plume of white tissue.
“Here, this should be enough.”
I snorted and accepted the offering, but dabbing my chest was a futile effort to dry the leakage. “I’m going to need to change.”
Without pause, Reed bent to search through the bag of clothes Mom had brought in. “What do you need?”
While I hated feeling helpless, I readily accepted his help since there was no nurse around. “A shirt and bra, please.”
A shirt got tossed beside me. As Reed kept digging for a bra, Sylvie came back in and halted. Her hands slammed onto her hips.
“Reed Gatlin, what in God’s name are you doing in here at this time of night?”
I swear Reed’s spine almost snapped from him whipping upright. He immediately raised his hands, complete with my bra dangling from his fingertips.
“I swear I was just helping. She needs to change,” he rushed to explain.
Sylvie rounded my bed and shooed him from the space. “Out.”
“But—”
“Don’t make me toss you out,” she sassed.
Reed snorted and gave a smirk that made my pulse flutter. “I’d like to see you try.”
Sylvie was short and stout, and exactly the amount of badass you’d expect from such a nurse.
The tease cracked her hardened expression, and she plucked my bra from Reed’s grasp. “Oh, off with you already.”
He quick-hopped out of her reach, then paused at the end of my bed. A smirk cocked one side of his gorgeous face as he slowly raised one hand. For a second, I thought he was going to wave. Instead, he brazenly flipped me off.
I gasped, then choked on a shocked laugh. Flipping someone off during a goodbye was something I’d do. In fact, I always did it to Simone.
My eyes narrowed as I fought against the amusement. “It’s rude to flip people off. Especially when saying goodbye.”
Reed’s smirk split into a shit-eating grin. “I learned from the best, babe.”
“Out!” Sylvie exclaimed, lighting a fire under Reed’s ass.
I held my bruised ribs and laughed as hard as I dared as he bolted from the room, only now beginning to understand how and why the old me had fallen for him in the first place.
Sylvie giggled while helping me change. “That man is smitten over you, hon. Oh to be on the receiving end of his affection.”
While innocent, the comment pulled the buoyancy from my heart. It dropped without warning when I reminded myself that I wasn’t staying in Idaho.