Chapter 12 #2
I stood up to get more ibuprofen, but the room tilted.
I stumbled, catching myself on the dresser. My vision swam. Black spots danced in front of my eyes.
Exhaustion, my brain supplied. * dehydration. Stress.*
I tried to walk to the bathroom. My legs didn't work.
I collapsed.
I hit the floor hard, knocking over a lamp. The bulb shattered. Darkness swallowed the room.
I lay on the carpet, shivering. I was freezing cold, then burning hot. My heart was racing—tachycardia. Panic attack. Burnout.
I couldn't breathe. My chest felt like it was being crushed by a hydraulic press.
Help, I thought.
But who?
Jax was out. The team was asleep. Vane would bench me if he saw me like this.
I reached for my phone. The screen was cracked, but it still worked.
My fingers hovered over the contacts.
Dad. No, he was dead.
Vane. No.
Reed. Definitely not.
There was only one person. The only person who had ever seen me weak and didn't look away.
I knew I shouldn't. I knew I had told her it was just biology. I knew I had broken her heart.
But I was dying. It felt like I was dying.
I typed the message. My fingers were numb.
Dante: I can't breathe.
I hit send. And then I passed out.
I woke up to the smell of vanilla.
It was the first thing I registered. Before the pain, before the cold, before the shame. Vanilla and rain.
"Dante? Dante, can you hear me?"
A hand was on my face. Slapping my cheek gently.
I groaned, prying my eyes open.
Arabella was there.
She was kneeling on the floor beside me. She looked terrified. She was wearing her pajamas with a coat thrown over them, boots on the wrong feet. She must have run.
"You came," I croaked.
"Of course I came, you idiot," she sobbed, brushing the hair off my sweaty forehead. "You texted me you couldn't breathe. I thought you were in anaphylactic shock."
I tried to sit up. The room spun.
"Don't move," she ordered, pushing me back down. "I checked your pulse. It's racing, but it's steady. You're not dying. You're having a panic attack mixed with extreme exhaustion."
"Machine broke," I whispered.
"Yeah," she said, her voice shaking. "The machine broke. Because you're not a machine, Dante."
She pulled a water bottle from her bag. She lifted my head into her lap, cradling me against her soft thighs. She held the bottle to my lips.
"Drink."
I drank. The water was cool and clean. It washed away the metallic taste of fear.
"I'm sorry," I whispered when she pulled the bottle away.
"Shut up," she said. She was crying now. Silent tears streaming down her face. "Don't you dare apologize. Not after what you said in the gym."
"I lied," I rasped. "I lied, Ara. I had to."
"Why?" she demanded, stroking my hair. "Why do you have to be this... this martyr? Why do you think you have to suffer to be worthy of the jersey?"
"Because if I'm not suffering, I'm dangerous," I confessed. "If I'm happy... I lose my edge. If I lose my edge, I become my father."
"That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard," she said fiercely.
She leaned down, her face inches from mine.
"Your father didn't hurt people because he was happy, Dante. He hurt people because he was sick. And selfish. You are neither of those things."
She grabbed my hand and placed it on her heart.
"You push me away to protect me. You punish yourself to protect the team. You are so busy protecting everyone else that you're killing yourself."
"I have to succeed," I said, a tear leaking from my eye. "I have to make it to the League. To redeem the name."
"You will," she said firmly. "But you're not going to do it alone. You're not going to do it by starving yourself of everything that makes you human."
"You make me human," I admitted.
"Then let me," she pleaded. "Let me be the anchor. Let me carry some of the weight. You don't have to be the Alpha with me. You can just be tired."
"I'm so tired," I wept. The dam finally broke. The great Dante Moretti, the Iron Captain, curled into a ball in the lap of a human girl and cried.
She held me. She rocked me back and forth. She hummed a soft, wordless tune that vibrated in her chest and settled the wolf down.
She stayed.
For hours.
Eventually, the panic subsided. The exhaustion took over, but it was a heavy, peaceful sleepiness, not the jagged edge of burnout.
She helped me into bed. She took off my boots. She stripped off my sweaty shirt and wiped my face with a cool cloth.
She climbed in beside me.
"You should go," I mumbled, my eyes heavy. "Your dad..."
"Screw my dad," she whispered. "He's not here. I am."
She wrapped her arms around me, her small body spooning against my back. She was a furnace of warmth and comfort.
"I've got you," she promised into the darkness. "Sleep, Dante. I've got you."
And for the first time in a week, the machine shut down. And the man slept.
But even as I drifted off, a dark thought lingered in the back of my mind.
Reed had said stay away. Vane had said no distractions.
I had just failed both of them.
Arabella was the only thing keeping me alive. But she was also the target on my back. And by letting her back in, I had just put her directly in the line of fire.