Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rayna
Flashes of blood, fear, and death swim in my vision. My heart pounds, and confusion only heightens how tense I feel. It’s like I can’t move, like I don’t even remember how. I’m frozen, ice filling my veins as a terrible chill shudders through me.
My body suddenly shakes, and my eyes snap open.
A nightmare, I realize immediately. I was asleep.
My torso flexes as I fly into a seated position, flinching at the face above my own. “Apollo?” I croak, eyes flicking around the dark room. “What the hell?”
My brain feels foggy, and a ghost of fright still remains. Trying to control my breathing makes me wonder if I was holding my breath or if my heart pounding took the air right out of me.
“You were having a nightmare. I woke you up.”
“Oh.” I blink, attempting to adjust in the mostly unlit room. “Sorry.”
“Sorry?” he echoes. “Sorry for having a nightmare?”
“For waking you up,” I correct.
“You weren’t that loud.” He nods over his shoulder to where Yordan is sound asleep. The machines he’s hooked up to are all dimly lit and beeping so quietly it’s almost undetectable, but steady. “I just hear everything.”
“That must suck,” I grumble, rubbing my eyes. “How do you ever sleep in a house full of people and babies?”
“My room is soundproofed.”
“Of course it is.” Swinging my legs off the bed, I push my feet into my slippers and stand up. “I need to walk it off.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“What?” I ask, confused. “Why? Just go back to bed, I feel bad enough already for waking you up. You don’t need to chauffeur me around the hospital too.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, did that sound like a question?”
“Fuck,” I mumble, pushing past him with a grimace. “He wakes up snarky, doesn’t even need time to load it.”
“Are you talking to yourself about me, in front of me?” Apollo chuckles, footsteps quietly following me out of the room.
Looking back at him as the door shuts, I take in his long sleeve silky-looking top and matching pants.
“Are you wearing the pajama equivalent of a satin suit to sleep?” I snark, yawning as I adjust to the brightness of the hallway.
I didn’t see him return to the room last night, but I did see a nurse bring in a bed for him on the opposite side of mine.
“Would you prefer I have opted for my typical nightwear?” He lifts a lazy brow. “I agreed to share a room with you and your teenage brother, I doubt you would appreciate me walking around in only boxers.”
“Ugh,” I grumble. “What is it with men and sleeping half-naked? Yordan is the same way.”
“Men typically run hotter than women at night,” he replies almost diplomatically. “With more muscle mass and a higher metabolic rate, we often generate more heat than a woman’s higher body fat percentage would.”
“Do you just scientifically call me fat and cold?”
His eyes widen, an utterly baffled look crossing his face. “That’s what you got from that?”
“Well, you’re not denying it. You know, you really shouldn’t bring up a woman’s weight. Or anyone’s weight, really. It’s not polite.”
“I assure you, micina, you are not fat. Nor would I imply otherwise, or even care if you were. Your weight is not something I find myself thinking about. If we’re being scientific, as you say, you know you look like you’re not starving and could bear children. Congratulations, can we move on?”
Rolling my eyes, I start to walk toward the end of the hall. I need to shake off the sickly feeling my nightmare left me with. “So not fat, just cold.”
He huffs, beginning to walk along my side. “And you accuse me of waking up with a snarky attitude.”
“We can both be snarky.” I shrug. I’m not stubborn enough to pretend that I don’t know I’m being ridiculous. I’m finding anything to argue with him about, and nitpicking his words is the easiest way to do that. “It’s just more annoying when you do it.”
Apollo is quiet for a moment. Blissfully quiet. Until… “Are you attempting to distract me from asking you about your nightmare, Rayna?”
“No,” I reply far too quickly. Far too defensively. “I didn’t think you’d care to ask, why would I try to distract you from it?”
“Was it Yordan?” he asks, voice soft.
“No.” I shake off his question.
“No,” he agrees. “If it was about Yordan, you wouldn’t have left the room. At least not without checking on him directly.”
“You think you know me so well,” I grumble. “You don’t know shit, Apollo. We’re not friends.”
“I’m hurt,” he drawls, sarcasm dripping from the words. “Was it me?”
My neck aches as I snap my gaze to him too fast. “What?”
“It was, wasn’t it? You apologized for waking me, and you tried to get away from me in the room. Did I hurt you or did you hurt me—in the dream?”
I swallow, looking away dismissively. “I’m not talking about this.”
“Did I die?” he wonders, refusing to drop it. “Protecting Yordan, maybe? Do you feel guilty that you were happy I took his place?”
Is this guy a fucking mind reader now?
“You’re grasping at straws, and you’re pissing me off.”
“You don’t look pissed, and trust me, I know what you look like when you want to rip my head off. You look exhausted, and sad.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’ll feel better if you talk about it.”
“I’ll feel better if you fuck off,” I retort.
Like he’s done squabbling with me, Apollo captures my hand and stops me from walking further. He slowly pushes me into a small corridor, backing me against a solid wall.
“Tell me,” he insists, voice going soft.
My throat goes tight. “Why do you even care?”
“All I ever do is care where you’re concerned, Rayna.” Tilting his head, he attempts to read my face. “You call me overbearing and now you’re surprised when I continue to be? Tell me what frightened you in your dream, and you’ll feel better when you go back to sleep.”
“You don’t have the right to my unconscious thoughts too,” I mumble, frowning. “Haven’t you invaded my life enough?”
He doesn’t hesitate to reply. “No.”
I don’t know whether he’s convinced me, or whether I’m too tired to continue to fight him on this. But either way, I give in.
“You died for Yordan.”
“So, I was right?”
“No,” I snap, teeth clenching. “You died for Yordan but there was no guilt for being happy about it.”
His jaw twitches, a smile that is more like a sneer shaping his lips. “Well, I wasn’t calling you cold before but—”
“I wasn’t happy at all,” I cut him off, eyebrows drawing down. “I was devastated. For Yordan—for your family. I was so relieved that my brother was unharmed, but that relief barely lasted a minute as I watched you bleed out. I was sad, Apollo. How’s that for cold?”
“No wonder you didn’t want to speak of it,” he says, voice slowly becoming softer again. “You’d miss me if I died, wouldn’t you, love?”
My heart gives a funny beat. “Don’t call me that.”
He moves in closer. “I don’t hear a denial.”
My eyes flick to his lips, and for a second, I consider it.
It might be nice, just to let go—for even a moment.
They look soft, soft and inviting. Silence stretches between us, and he almost looks like he’s considering the same thing as he peers down at me.
But the thought is fleeting. This is Apollo.
Overbearing, too cocky for his own good, never shown a hint of interest in me, Apollo.
Turning my head to the side, I exhale shakily, effectively breaking the tense moment.
“So, Yordan had to walk in for Leon to break your potential kiss, but when it’s me, you can do it all on your own?”
A cold shiver crawls up my spine at the sound of his voice. His question is delivered with a dark edge of frustration that I couldn’t have expected. He’s upset that I looked away?
“How do you know about that?” I murmur, looking down in shame.
“He told me,” he replies, his voice low and rumbling. “Something you should have done.”
My ears feel hot, thinking about Leon and Apollo talking about something so sensitive. I never expected the brothers to have a conversation about me, especially not about that night.
“Why?” I sniff dismissively. “Nothing happened.”
Apollo catches my chin, forcing me to look up. “But you wanted it to.”
“It was a moment.” I pull my head back, removing his touch but keeping our eye contact. “It’s not worth talking about.”
“A moment that needed to be interrupted to stop it,” he argues. “Why were you able to look away now, but not then?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t pretend to be oblivious, it doesn’t suit you.”
My eyes narrow, disliking the audacity in his tone. “You want to know why I didn’t look away from your brother?”
“Do enlighten me,” he insists with a menacing look.
Spurred on by his attitude, I have the sickest desire to make him regret asking. No one pushes my buttons like he does. No one.
“I couldn’t have pulled away from Leon if I tried,” I start, jutting my chin up. “He had to do it because if he didn’t, we would have kissed. It was magnetic, Apollo. You know why? Because even though Leon and I will never happen, we have something that you and I don’t. Chemistry.”
“Chemistry,” Apollo repeats, spitting out the word like it left a bad taste in his mouth.
“Yep,” I reply with a smug smile, loving that I’m getting under his skin. “An undeniable connection, surely you’ve heard of it? Leon is easy to connect to. He’s nice, and handsome, and he doesn’t make me question myself or—”
“Nice?” he interrupts, scoffing. “You think you have a connection with Leon because he’s nice to you, Rayna?”
I shrug, pretending to be uninterested in this conversation. “Why not? I like when he’s nice to me.”
Strong hands land on either side of my head, effectively caging me against the hallway wall. “You’re infuriating.”
“I don’t understand why we’re arguing anyway,” I tell him, swallowing down my nerves. “I looked away from your weirdo eye contact, nothing else. Why are we talking about kissing?”
“Playing dumb doesn’t look good on you.”
“Who says I care what you think looks good on me?” I purr patronizingly. “I’m simply saying this conversation is irrelevant. Because if you think we were going to kiss, you’re wrong.”
“Don’t push me, Rayna.”
I take a step forward, forcing him to take one back. His hands leave the wall, and I watch as he flexes them, like he can’t decide what to do with them next. He’s off kilter, and I’m eating it up.
“Because kissing requires chemistry.”
“Rayna,” he warns.
“Like I have with—”
“Don’t you dare say his fucking name.”
“And I doubt we have any chemistry at all. In fact, I know we don’t.”
My back hits the cold tile of the hospital wall in an instant, a gasp bursting past my lips.
Apollo chases it, catching the sound and swallowing it down as he crushes our mouths together in a searing kiss.
My stomach swoops with a burst of butterflies at our contact, and I want to deny how good it feels, but I can’t.
One hand around the side of my neck, and the other reaching down, Apollo wraps his arm around the back of my knee and lifts. He pulls me up with ease, directing me to wrap my legs around him.
A whimper vibrates in my throat and muffles into our kiss. My head spins as our bodies mold together, my legs surrounding his hips as his chest presses firmly against mine. I’ve never had a kiss like this, and I’m torn between fully melting into it, or resisting the urge to prove a point.
Pulling back, wet lips ghosting over mine, Apollo rumbles, “No chemistry, huh? How’s this for no chemistry?”
He doesn’t give me a chance to answer before he’s swallowing another whimper from my lips. Tongue tracing the shell of my mouth, he kisses me deeper and I can’t deny the way I begin to heat up.
My hands migrate from his shoulders to the back of his head, twirling into the short hair at his nape. I tug on what I can, desperate for any scrap of control I can capture.
Too consumed to stop, my hips roll without permission, grinding against Apollo’s pelvis. His hard…hard—
Abruptly, my feet are put back on the ground, legs wobbling under my own weight. My eyes fly open, feeling like a cold bucket of water has just been thrown over me.
“W-what?” I ask, looking up at the heavily breathing man above me.
“That one was free,” he rumbles, using his thumb to wipe moisture from his bottom lip. “You don’t get another one until you stop pretending.”
I flinch. “What are you talking about?”
“Figure it out,” Apollo replies, stepping back. “You’re a smart girl, micina, I believe in you.”
He leaves me panting with bruised lips and the memory of our kiss playing on a heated loop. Fingers ghosting over my bottom lip, I shake my head. Pretending, he said.
He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.