Chapter 15
Told Me Not To
My body feels like I’ve been run over by a truck and my eyelids feel weighted down by sandbags, like the kind the city puts down to keep flood waters from filling the roads—really big heavy ones. I struggle to open my eyes and have to blink away the grit and sleep.
When I do, I see Rhys sitting in a chair next to my bed. He leans forward with his hands dropped between his knees and his head is bent down.
He looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders and, as a powerful king, I guess he really does. Worse, I think I’ve added to it. Oopsies. He must feel me watching him because he raises his head and his gaze locks with mine, stealing the breath from my lungs.
He looks ravaged.
I open my mouth to speak, and he clenches his jaw tight. Silently, he shakes his head slightly telling me not to speak, not yet.
“Why?” he asks.
I don’t answer, not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t know how.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Oh, he wants to know why I didn’t tell him about my allergy. That feels like a loaded question. It feels like he is looking for some nefarious answer, but there isn’t one. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t already made up his mind. We’re complicated like that.
“You don’t trust me.” He looks… sad.
I hate that. I don’t want to make him sad but he’s right, I don’t really trust him. I mean, I trust him more than anyone else in this country.
“It’s—” I start but have to clear my throat and then start over again. “It’s not that. Trust is not something I’m solid on right now with everything going on but that’s not why I never said anything.”
“Why would you not mention a life threatening allergy to bees?” he asks quietly.
“Because they told me not to.”
“Who? Who told you not to tell? Because that information could have been dealt with privately, but now everyone knows and Leo is beside himself on how to keep you safe,” he says so quietly it scares me a little.
“My uncles… I mean, Paul and Fran. They knew,” I explain.
“I had no idea before my parents died so if they knew, they never shared with me. But I was young and got stung on a school field trip. Paul and Fran were beside themselves. Afterward, I switched schools, and they told me to never tell but keep an EpiPen hidden on me at all times, I guess I just stuck to that plan, until I couldn’t. ”
“That’s insane,” he says, running his hand through his hair. “You could have died.”
“I didn’t.”
“But you could have,” he says.
“Then we’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
“That is not fucking funny.”
“If I don’t laugh about it, what else am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe tell me about a life threatening allergy to fucking bees so that I can learn to use the fucking pen right and make sure you don’t bloody die on me,” he snarls.
“I didn’t.”
“That’s grand because you’re no’ fucking going to for a very long time,” he says drolly.
“Okay,” I agree because what else am I supposed to do? “Can I have some water?”
“Of course you can have some bloody water,” he snaps.
I know he’s not really mad at me, he’s mad that I had another mishap. Maybe I trust him more than I thought I did…
He grabs a glass from the bedside and holds the straw up to my lips so that I can sip from it. He does it so gently, being careful not to hurt me more, and my heart melts just a little bit more.
Dammit.
When he’s like this, where he wants to take care of me and protect me like I’m everything to him—or at least I could be, if only I let him—I could easily get attached. More so than I already am. It’s an addicting feeling to be pulled into his orbit like this.
We settle into a weird silence, and I don’t hate it, though I also kind of want to be alone with my thoughts for a while.
Rhys sits there, clutching my hand in both of his while he watches me. To anyone else, it would be unnerving, but I guess I’m used to how intense he can be. Enough that before I know it, I fall asleep. And when I wake up, reality sets back in.
One of these days, it’ll all be just a dream…