Chapter 21 Sound of Space #2
“Those aren’t for pain,” she says, halting my movement. At my narrowed gaze, she says, “Beta-blockers and amiodarone to slow my heart rate and keep it stable. Nitroglycerin for emergencies. When blood flows…wrong.”
I lower my hand, then drive it through my hair, rage clawing at my scalp.
“It’s happened before,” she continues, “and it can again, Orion. Sometimes a valve leaflet catches. It’s manageable, but… Nothing could’ve changed the outcome.”
Changed the outcome.
Her shallow cough threads my spine taut. Anger lashes hot across my skin. Everything in me wants to tear the room apart for a pulse-ox. Call in a trauma bay. Demand a chest film, an ECG—all the actions a sane man takes to prove he hasn’t broken the woman he loves.
“We should get you—” I stop, jaw hinged tight. “A doctor. Just in case.”
“No hospital. Please.” A tremor fractures her plea. “I just need to get warm. Stabilized. Let the medicine work. There’s nothing more that can be done, anyway.”
I start to grab the med kit from the lab and stop cold, muscles locking. The thought of her out of my sight for even a fraction of an arrhythmic heartbeat is a cavernous pit of fear opening beneath me. My fingers stutter an anxious one, one, two, three, five, one against my thigh.
I know precisely how long she was under. Exactly how long I lost her. I counted every terrifying second.
I hate that it makes me feel useless. I loathe even more that I question her.
What I want to demand is trapped behind the knot in my throat. And if I look straight into her starry eyes, there will be no holding it back. Every answer I want from her, every confession I owe her, is suspended like the silence between two notes.
Instead, I listen to the rattling sound of her breaths, uselessly counting each rise and fall.
How the hell do I demand anything from her when there’s no way to explain this place without damning myself further. Admitting that I’ve imagined what crushing her heart would feel like. Obsessed over tasting her last breath as it trembled against my lips.
I blink hard, forcing the intrusive thought down deep as I attempt to bury my rage. Bowing my head, I turn to leave.
“How did you know, Orion.” Her whispered question is laced with the same fearful apprehension constricting my chest.
The knot thickens into an ache at the base of my throat. Keeping my back to her, I release a tense breath. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
I lift my head, staring into the shadowed depths of the room across from me.
“I’ve known since the night I carried you from that rock,” I say, letting that single truth hang in the gathering steam.
Then, swallowing the anguish, I turn and meet her imploring eyes with fierce conviction.
“I’ve known, and I’ve been fighting a fucking rising tide of desperation not to lose you. ”
Something guarded and uncertain flickers behind her eyes. “You’ve known this whole time.”
“Yes,” I admit, utterly miserable.
Her swallow slips along her throat. “How?”
A harsh, incredulous breath escapes me. She wants to know how I knew she’d nearly drown in the rip current. How I knew her body would wash ashore, that her heart would stop beneath the shadow of the solar eclipse.
How I knew the exact moment to pull her from the sea, breathe life back into her lungs, restart the faltering rhythm of her heart—defying the goddamn universe itself to bring her back.
Yet the hows are all too impossible to unravel in this singular thread of time, and such a confession would demand an equal measure of truth from her in return—a demand that reflects so vehemently in my fierce stare it forces her lashes to lower, dropping her gaze.
That fleeting glimpse of shame washing over her face with the trailing beads of water scores the length of me. My chest ignites as I take one determined step toward her.
Her fingers cling tighter to her soaked blouse. “I don’t know what to say—”
Her words have barely left her lips before I’m inside the shower and towering over her, leaving only a sliver of charged space between our bodies. The violent fury I’ve struggled to restrain erupts before I can cage it.
“Collins. Fuck.” My hand slams against the humid tiles above her head, the harsh sound of my breath filling the tight confines.
She doesn’t recoil, eyes fixed on the droplets of water cascading down my bare chest, refusing to meet the anguish burning through my gaze.
My hand curls into a fist along the wall, knuckles splitting chafed skin.
My breath comes hard and shallow. I close my eyes, voice ravaged by the fear still tearing me apart.
“What I knew or even how is irrelevant at this point. What I thought I could control…” I trail off with a bitter, gruff laugh as I fight back the loathing. “You knew.”
The accusation breaks between us. Anger and agony clash within me, shredding my hard-fought composure. “You knew what you’d risk. Why the fuck would you do that, angel?”
She swallows, reflexively bringing her hand to the center of her chest as she buries a wince. The same guarded action I’ve watched her do countless times, and it carves through me like a rusted blade.
“Right. Because you handled that so well. Not terrifying me at all with your cryptic, insane ramble.” Her voice shakes, rising. “Jesus, Orion. What did you expect me to do? Just wait there—cuffed to your telescope—for you to come back, and then…what?”
I drag a hand down my face, wiping away water and regret in one stroke. Furious at all the ways I’ve failed her. “You’re right,” I say roughly, feeling just as desperate as I did in that moment. “I handled that poorly.”
Her breathless laugh is brittle. “You think?” A beat of tense silence follows before she looks up, searching my face. “What the hell even happened? Was it some residual setback from the other night on the beach—?”
“No.” I shake my head, dropping my hand.
“But you were afraid you’d harm me.”
The way she whispers it, the fearful tremble she’s trying to conceal, is another brutal punch to my gut. “I never wanted to—”
“But you were scared you might.” There’s a hitch to her voice, just audible above the raining water. “Are you still afraid you will now?”
A groan tears loose from my throat. “No. You do not get to steal my anger right now.” My eyes descend to her chest, the air in my lungs leaden as I take hold of the wet fabric and wrench it apart, revealing the surgical scar.
My gaze catalogues other, fainter scars along her ribs. The one brutal mark above her left breast. And I’m a fucking sick bastard, I know, unashamed as I hungrily rake my gaze over her breasts, her body, a torturous mix of turmoil and arousal flooding my bloodstream.
I swallow hard, forcing my gaze to meet hers. “You should’ve told me about this, Collins.”
Every ragged breath she takes carves deeper into my chest wall. Even in the dim light, the shiny scars winding her body are visible. Some surgical, some not. Evidence she’s been hurt—sadistically.
And the knowledge that I ever allowed this void within me to harbor even a shadow of desire to cause her harm twists my gut.
Yet I know, standing before her now—furious, helpless—I would’ve flung myself from the highest fucking cliff to my death first.
“If I had told you, would that have changed anything?” She pulls in a taut breath, preparing to lash back further, but her ire fades just as quickly when she reads my eyes. “Orion, I couldn’t—”
“Tell me now,” I demand.
She glances away, pressing her back against the tiles.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s in the past,” she says, the edge draining from her tone.
“I can’t live in fear. Isn’t that what you once told me?
Oh, and that I want the fight.” She shakes her head slowly, a cold laugh slipping free.
“You have no idea how much fight I do not have left.”
Her words hit like a blow to my abdomen, winding me. I see it now, veiled beneath the suffused gold, within those deep, dark lanes—the darkness behind the stars in her eyes. All she’s hidden in that void. The truth of her pain shatters through me, decimating.
“Nothing matters anymore,” she says on a broken whisper, gathering her soaked blouse closed as though she can shield herself from me, and a rising wave of fury licks my bones. “Not after what I’ve done.”
Leo.
Her dejection is as thick as the steamy vapor enclosing us, and I wish—of all the memories lost—that this was the one I could fucking banish from her mind.
She took a life. And where I’ve taken many, she believes she took an innocent one.
The torment claws at her, the guilt threatening to drag her under.
Yet it doesn’t matter if she took one life or a hundred. If she came to the misty ends of the world to take mine, I’d let her—if it could erase even an ounce of that pain from her eyes.
I will not let her drown in this.
The instant I saw Leo grab her arm, time folded, and suddenly it was Prescott’s hand gripping her in the colonnade.
And just as I witnessed her anger rise during that moment, I watched it swell into a tidal wave on the pier.
I wasn’t supposed to observe, yet I couldn’t look away as I watched her fury brew, the umbrella clutched tight.
Watched the reactive flame ignite—right before she swung it as a weapon.
Now, her heartache flares as bright as the gold threading her slate irises, and it god damn terrifies me—that this could be where I could lose her. Not to the ocean. Not to a lost heartbeat. But here, dragged under by her grief and guilt. A void that consumes everything.
These are the treacherous, dark waters where she could slip beyond my reach.
Tenderly, I claim her waist, tethering myself to her. I hold her tight, refusing to let her drift away. If she needs someone to take her wrath, someone to punish to keep her fighting, breathing—
I decide I can give her this.
I can take it. All of it. The pain, the fury. The fear crashing through her like the cold, dark tide.