Chapter 15
A nia dropped to her knees, completely ignoring her father, as she placed a hand on Sanders’ neck. His pulse was strong and steady.
He half opened his eyes, and his lips twitched, and he still had that pained smile on his face as he spoke. “Can’t say I expected that one.”
She felt the tears in her eyes. She glared at her father, who approached warily, his handgun out in front of him. “Is this what you do? You just fire to kill? It doesn’t matter that he might die?”
“He was taking you away. Obviously he kidnapped you,” he said in his fake, soothing tone.
She glared at him. “Obviously not,” she snapped. “I don’t want to be with you, and I wanted to leave. I’m not a prisoner with him. And I have no desire to be your prisoner again.” She glared at the two men beside her father. “You know perfectly well that he keeps me drugged and locked up and that I want absolutely nothing to do with him,” she cried out. “I’ve also got friends in other places, and they’ve put in formal protests for me,” she declared. “We’ll see how the Russian government appreciates you for embarrassing them over this.”
His eyebrows shot up. “What are you talking about?” he cried out. “You don’t have friends anywhere.”
“You mean, you tried to ensure I didn’t have friends anywhere, but you’re wrong. I do have friends. I have people who care about me and who will advocate on my behalf.”
Sanders grabbed her hand and squeezed it gently.
She looked down at him, the tears falling. Then she faced her father. “And you,” she began, “I hate you. I want nothing to do with you. Even if you do succeed in forcing me back into your illegal little prison, you will never hold me. If I don’t arrive in England on schedule, they will ensure that the Russian government hears all about it. It will be plastered all over social media. You will be embarrassed, and the Russian government will disavow having somebody like you in their employ. Not to mention these two goons,” she added, snarling at the two men who even now stared at her warily. “Do you not realize your careers are over? Do you not realize what he’s done and how many rules he’s broken to try and force me back into his little prison?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” her father stated.
“Really?”
“That last change of medication really twisted your mind.”
“What it did was allow me to see again,” she declared, glaring up at him.
There was absolutely no sign of Riff, and she didn’t understand that. That man could disappear fast, but she also had to hope that he would appear shortly. She wanted to stand up, yet she didn’t want to leave Sanders on the ground, bleeding.
“Besides, your little boyfriend here isn’t dead, but I can fix that.”
“I’m sure you would try,” she replied, staring at him. “You managed to make Mother’s life hell, and then you killed her, right? So, of course, you would like to make my life hell too, and kill me as well, when I don’t do you as you say, right? You have absolutely no goodness in your soul at all, but hear me now. You’ll have to kill me today, if that’s where this is going, where I’m repeating my mother’s life of abuse and death by the hand of her abuser. You can bet that this is being witnessed and shared on social media, and everyone will know about what you’ve done.”
He started to laugh. “Do you really think that anybody can see what we’re doing here? I’m not such a fool. Nobody has that ability. Not even you.”
“Ability?” she repeated, glaring at him. “Right. Back to your fantastical, crazy-ass notion that I have some psychic ability. I don’t even know where you got that from,” she cried out. “Who made my life such a nightmare by putting that in your head? Ever since you decided that was a thing, you thought that your daughter might get you some kudos, or notice in this world, with some physic skills. Tell me, Father . Would I have gone to school to become an accountant if I had any such skills? Where did you get such a crazy notion? You would have had better luck trying to get water from a stone. It doesn’t work.”
He stared at her warily. “Your mother told me that you had them.”
“She lied,” Ania snapped, her tone flat. Yet her heart sank, as, somewhere along the line, her mother had betrayed her, whether it was willingly, knowingly, or not. She shook her head. “And what did you do to her to get this false confession, Father ? Threaten her, threaten me, beat her up? What, Father ?”
He glared. “She mentioned something, and, when I questioned her about it, she didn’t know what to say, and she blurted out that you could talk to people in their heads. She told me that you had other abilities and that she didn’t even know what all you could do. All she wanted was to ensure that you were looked after,” he explained smoothly, “protected, because obviously you would be a danger to yourself and to others.”
Ania started to laugh at that. “You’re the one who’s a danger to everyone around you.” She snorted. “You lie, you cheat, you steal, and you kill… indiscriminately. You killed my mother. You killed my aunt. You’re the only danger around here. The government lets you do it, which is a sadness in the world where we exist, but that doesn’t mean it will always be so. You got away with making my mother’s life miserable, my life miserable, then taking my mother’s life,” she stated, glaring at him, never hearing him disagree. “But I am no longer alone. I am no longer someone for you to abuse simply because you can,” she snapped, then continued.
“Bully for you for picking on helpless females in this world, but this world is slowly waking up to who you really are and all the nasty crap you do,” she declared. “It will not last. Even now news outlets are getting these reports about everything you’ve done, everything you’ve tried to do, everything you’re responsible for doing,” she proclaimed with such a fury and a confident finality that even her father looked rattled for a second.
“After killing my mother, you took away my cell phone and my laptop and burned my journal, and you kept me drugged, trying to control me, trying to cut me off from the world.… I managed to use a tablet, got online, and began working through my grief, making friends all over the world. Throughout this last week, I’ve been posting all my latest adventures online. I have a global network of over one million followers, mostly women, who will see to it that my story is told. I also posted a photo of you and some of your goons, so the authorities arrest the right men.”
She sneered at his two goons, staring at her in worry. “You have no idea how far off the reservation my father has gone, have you? How he’s gone power-mad, taking government money for his own purposes. He will not survive this humiliation, this theft of Russian funds,” she stated, glaring at the two men standing beside her father. “As he goes down, so too will you.”
They looked over at her father, who stared at her with a fury that she’d never seen before. She stiffened, even as she called out telepathically to Terk and to her father’s tracker.
The tracker went quiet for a moment, and then he said, You’re walking a dangerous path .
I’m telling the truth. My father is a danger to anyone and everyone, but especially me.
Terk gave her an update. Help is on the way. I don’t know if you have any idea what’s been going on , he murmured. But you’re right about the social media aspect taking over. It’s all been released. Your father’s not big on social media, is he?
Neither is anybody else in Russia , she replied, but it’s more prevalent here than it is at home .
Once the police find out that he shot Sanders, that will be a whole different story as well.
No , it won’t, because my father will just get away with it, again and again and again. It has to stop now , she said, almost hysterical, shaking her head. I can’t have him hurting anybody else, not because of me .
She looked down at Sanders sadly and then spoke to her father. “What you did to this man and what you did to me can’t be allowed. There can never be more of this. It’s not right, and you’re not right. Something is wrong with you.” She straightened and faced him head-on. “Maybe you have a mental problem. I don’t know. Maybe the Russians need to do a full exam on your head and ensure that you get the same treatment I got,” she suggested, with a laugh.
“Wouldn’t that be ironic? To see you locked up and tested for the exact same things that I was put through. You are my father, as much as I don’t want to acknowledge it. Yet, if anybody would have these abilities that I supposedly do, do you have the genes too? You would be suspect. That’s brilliant. You should be tested and locked up,… exactly the same way I was.”
“Stop this now,” her father yelled, waving his gunhand. “Get away from him and get into the vehicle.”
“No. You’ll just make my life impossibly miserable, so you might as well kill me now.”
He raised his handgun, his fury twisting his features, as he muttered, “Don’t push it.”
“I’ve already pushed it,” she declared, steadily staring at him. “I’ve pushed all kinds of things these last few days, the last few months, but you know what I don’t regret pushing? I don’t regret pushing my way into the life of this man.” She pointed to Sanders. “Into the world that you destroyed when you kept him prisoner, locked up like an animal,” she cried out.
“And for what? For nothing. Just because you have some psychotic idea in your head that we have abilities, which you want to exploit for some godforsaken reason. Yet it’s all a delusion, a delusion in your head. You’re forcing us to play some macabre scenario here, dancing to your tune in order to create something that you can’t create.” She shook her head.
“I’m not doing it anymore. I don’t know what you did to my mother to even make her tell you such lies, but I know she must have been desperate. And that’s you, isn’t it? You’re the kind of person who beats up a sick old woman, so she’s desperate to tell you anything just to have you go away. She even threw her daughter to the wolves because she had no other option. What kind of a man does that make you?” she asked.
“Or you, or you,” she added, turning again to the two goons standing beside her father. “You’re all sick people, who have absolutely no care in the world for anybody else. You are only concerned about what people can give you. You rule through fear. You are a terrible man. Worse, you’re not a man at all.” She was beyond hysterical at this point.
With her hands clenched at her side, she glared at the man who had dictated so much of her world for so long. He’d always rebuffed hugs and affection, much more concerned about what anybody could do for him, what he could make them do. After living in fear for so long, Ania was tired of it. She was tired of running, tired of not having real food or sound sleep. She was tired of always being afraid. She was tired of people hurting her and hurting Sanders.
It wasn’t fair. She and Sanders hadn’t done anything wrong. They hadn’t hurt anybody, and yet here her father was, determined to hurt Sanders all over again, to hurt her all over again. No matter what they did, it just never seemed to make any difference. She straightened and took a step toward her father, feeling her fingers tighten into balls of fury that she couldn’t even begin to control, yet she had to. Otherwise her father would just have more ammunition for everything that he wanted to prove in terms of her being unstable, how she needed medication, how she needed to be back under his care.
“You ignore the fact that I’m an adult, that I have a right to life on my own,” she bellowed. “You ignore the fact that I don’t want anything to do with you, that you’re cruel and hurtful, and that everything you do is about power and control, with absolutely no sign of love or affection. You’ve got everybody else bamboozled into thinking that you care about me, and that it’s all about looking after me, when the reality is so much worse. As usual, it has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with you and your own ability to coerce others to do your will,” she snapped.
“You should be ashamed of yourself, but you aren’t. You don’t care. You believe your lies. But I do not. To think that you care, that you loved me or even loved my mother, is ridiculous. You don’t, and you never have, and you never will.” She took another step forward, feeling a certain satisfaction at seeing her father step back a little bit, as if afraid of her.
Maybe he was, and it gave her a sense of power that was almost addictive. In the back of her mind, she realized that very power was quite likely something that he felt every time he forced somebody to do something against their will, and she felt the same thing right now. But she wasn’t him, and she wasn’t like him at all, and never ever could be.
He was not worthy of even existing in this world right now, at least as far as she was concerned. She didn’t want to hear any arguments either way on either side.
But when Sanders crept into her mind, he told her, We all have to forgive, and the forgiveness starts with ourselves. I don’t want you to do something to your father that you will regret for the rest of your life. You alone will have to live with that, so be careful .
She stiffened, not liking the reminder, only to turn and face her father again. “You’re lucky other people are here now, people willing to help me have a real life, so I have a place to go where I can be myself and can exist without you and the chaos you wield. People who are kind, caring, and generous. People who want me for me, not because they have an agenda.”
Her father laughed. “Everybody has an agenda,” Then he sneered. “Above anything else, that shows me that you are still such a child and that you have zero understanding of how the world works.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not that at all. It’s you who has zero understanding of how the world works. You don’t have a clue what’s going on. Leaving you in your ignorant bliss is fine by me,” she muttered. “I just want you to leave me alone. What will it take for you to leave me alone?” she cried out passionately.
He shrugged. “You’re coming back with me, whether you like it or not. If you have any skills, we’ll find out,” he said, his tone cool. “I don’t particularly care what method we use to find out, but we’ll take your lover here back with you because you’ll behave yourself much better with him right beside you.” He made a hand motion toward the two men at his side. “Go get him.” Then he turned to Ania. “You stay put. I didn’t kill him, but I still can,” he warned, with a laugh, looking over at her, as his men walked to Sanders and reached down to pick him up.
She cried out, “No. You don’t get to take him.”
“Why not?” her father asked.
Furious at herself, furious at him, she stared at her father, not moving anything but her energy, and shoved that white-hot energy into her father’s brain. Then she let loose into his brain the scream of telepathic fury that she hadn’t been able to vocalize yet. He dropped to his knees, his face turning white, his hand going to his head, crying out in agony, as her scream continued to reverberate as loudly as it could, but only for him to hear, as she pushed all that energy she had available to her into his brain. And just as she realized that she was running out, more energy streamed through her fingers, through her head, and into his brain, as her psychic scream grew louder, longer, and harder in her father’s head.
He stared at her in shock.
Amid her screams still ongoing in his brain, she yelled in that storm, Goodbye, Father .
He rolled up his eyes.
She allowed one final blast of her telepathic scream, and he collapsed to the ground, unconscious. She finally moved, turning to look at the two goons. “Touch Sanders and you die.”
They both backed up and stared at her in shock.
She took a step toward them, and they both backed up even more, looking at each other, a flurry of Russian pouring from their mouths.
“What did you do to him?”
“What did you do to your father?”
“He’ll kill you now.”
Ania laughed. “Yeah, you’re hoping so. Otherwise he’ll come after you guys for failing him,” she noted. “Pick up my father, get him back into that vehicle, and take him home, where he belongs. Did he just stroke out? Did he finally go so crazy that he now can’t speak or stand? Whether he’ll be a blithering idiot after this or not, I don’t know. I don’t care. But, if you or anybody else ever comes back after me or Sanders again”—she motioned to Sanders, still on the tarmac—“you will not survive it.”
Such conviction filled her words, and, with the evidence of her own father, lying there, collapsed in front of her, that seemed enough to convince the goons. They quickly scooped up her father and backed away, shooting her hard looks.
One called out, “We could shoot you and kill you now.”
She smiled. “Then do it. Right now. Do it, but you better not miss.” she warned, walking toward them, faster and faster.
But then they screamed, racing for the car, shoving her father into the back seat, before hopping in and driving away.
She stood there and laughed. Even as they ripped past and looked at her in the rearview mirror, she lifted a hand and gave them the universal one-finger salute. Then she screamed after them, “Fuck you.”
Almost immediately the force and the fury drained from her soul, and she turned, racing back to Sanders. She dropped down to his side, her hand gently stroking his face. “Hey, I think we’re safe.”
His eyes opened, and he looked at her, his expression dazed. “I don’t know what you did, but, man, you gave me one hell of a headache.”
She winced. “Yeah, I really don’t know how to direct my telepathic rage,” she muttered. “I don’t know if I took some of your energy when I needed it or not. I wasn’t trying to.”
He squeezed her hand and said, “It’s all good.”
At the sound of slow clapping, she looked up to see Riff standing on the steps to the plane, with heavy artillery resting on the steps where he’d placed them next to each foot.
He lifted them. “I didn’t even get to play with these toys, thanks to you, but, damn, when you figure out what to do with your gifts, you figure it out in a big way,” he shared, with admiration. “I don’t think those goons will ever survive, and now they must live with the fact that they ran away from you, like squeaky little mice.”
She flashed him a big grin, feeling the success, almost euphoric, as she nodded. “I did good, didn’t I?”
He grinned, leaving his toys propped up against the plane, then walked over and gave her a big hug. “You did better than good. You did awesome.” He looked down at Sanders and added, “You, my friend, need to stop getting shot.”
Sanders slowly made his way to his knees, and then, with their help, he got up. “Damn, I’m tired of taking bullets. But, in this case, I don’t think they hit anything major.”
“How could they not? You dropped like a rock. I just knew you were dead,” Ania muttered.
“What else could I do? He shot me, and anything other than that would give me away.”
She frowned at him, not understanding a word of it.
“He did get me in the arm, and I let it bleed all over my chest, but I’m okay. It’ll take a bit to snap out of this one.”
Riff efficiently ripped apart Sanders’s shirt, took a serious look at the wound, and noted, “The bullet went through, and, though it’s damaged some muscle, it missed the bone from the looks of it.” He looked up to see how Sanders reacted and asked, “Do you want to see somebody here?”
But Sanders shook his head. “No, let’s bind this up and get the hell out of here,” he stated, not having any of it. “I mean, while I’m pretty sure they won’t come back again,… who knows how many goons Ania’s father had after us, and I don’t want to take a chance that someone didn’t get the latest memo,” he muttered.
“Not that I don’t want that too, but, Sanders, we gotta get you to a doctor,” Ania declared.
Sanders laughed. “Somehow I think I will be okay.”
Ania addressed Riff now. “What is he talking about? Has he gone crazy?”
Riff eyed Sanders, got another look at his wound, then nodded. “You’re some crazy healer, aren’t you? Wow. So maybe having the healing twins working on you transferred some of that mojo to you, or did you have this before?” Riff asked Sanders.
Sanders just shrugged, then winced. “You tell me. You guys are the experts. Yet it still hurts when I move.”
Riff snorted. “Then don’t move.”
Ania frowned at them both. “Sanders is a healer?” she asked Riff.
“Appears to be. We’ll still get him checked out.” And, with that, Riff headed toward the front of the plane and asked them, “You okay if I fly this thing?”
They both stared at him. Sanders asked, “Do you fly?”
“I do,” Riff confirmed. “I just wanted to know if either of you had any objection to flying with me.”
“And if we do?” she asked him. “Then what?” Still, she climbed the steps behind Riff, helping Sanders navigate them too.
He shrugged. “I guess I could always hop out of my head and let somebody else fly.”
“Oh God, no.” She stared at him in horror. “Please tell me that’s not a thing.”
He burst out laughing. “In that case, I’ll tell you that… it’s not a thing.” He entered the cabin and sat in the pilot’s chair.
But the smugness to his tone had her staring in shock. She looked over at Sanders. “Surely they can’t do that.”
He laughed. “At this point, I have no idea what any of us can do,” Sanders admitted. “Did you think you could drop your father to his knees, doing whatever you just did to him?”
“I’m not even sure what I did,” she conceded, her tone soft, as she sat down beside Sanders and strapped him in. She looked at the wound in his shoulder. “When he shot you, when I saw all that blood—” She shuddered. “I just couldn’t think anymore. Something else took over, and I went into overdrive. I went nuts a little bit, but in a good way.”
Sanders nodded. “And I understand that because that is also why I came back after you, before I had any business even traveling, much less trying to rescue anybody,” he shared, gently touching her cheek. “I couldn’t leave you for another minute longer than necessary in the same hell I had just escaped from. No matter the risk, I just couldn’t do that to you.”
She smiled mistily. “You sure we’re ready for whatever Terk’s got in store for us? It’s not as if we have the same skills.”
He chuckled. “Maybe we don’t have the same skills, but I think we’ve proven we have some.”
She looked over at him and smiled. “I guess that’s true, isn’t it?” she said in delight. “Maybe we aren’t quite as useless as we thought we were.”
“No, I don’t think we are,” he agreed. “We just needed the right circumstances to force it out in the open. In my case it was knowing you were hurt.”
“And, in mine, it was seeing you get shot,” she added, with a nod.
“I guess that means we care, huh ?”
She gave him a cheeky grin. “Although I won’t be the first one to say it.”
“You don’t have to be the first one. I’ll say it. I care. I care as much as I ever thought I could care about anyone. I honestly didn’t even think something like this was possible,” he murmured. “And, if we weren’t here in an airplane, with Riff flying, which could be kind of scary, considering the way he drives”—he gave an eye roll toward the front of the plane—“I would take you in my arms and show you just how much I care for you.”
She gazed at him, her lips quirking. “I’ll let you off the hook this time, but, when you’re healed,… you’ll have a job to do.”
“Yeah, and what’s that?” he asked, his eyes alight with laughter.
“You’ll show me, prove to me, over and over again, just how much you care about me.”
“Yeah? Will that involve a bed and some time alone by any chance?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows.
“Oh, I think it should,” she agreed, as she snuggled up against his good shoulder. “I really think it should.”
*
Sanders’s arm and shoulder hurt like a bitch, but having her curled up beside him made it bearable. It seemed like the plane ride took several hours, but he knew it wasn’t that long. He dozed, got up, and walked around a bit, then dozed some more, and when they finally landed in England, he couldn’t have been more relieved.
Slowly making his way out of the airplane, Riff walked down behind him and stated, “Now you’ll have to get that looked at by a real doctor. We’ll make sure it gets taken care of, what with your newbie healing skills at play here.”
“I won’t argue with that,” Sanders replied, “and, after that, I’ll need a few days alone to just chill for a bit.”
“Will you do that on your own, or will you come back to the castle to recuperate?” He turned and looked at Ania. “Do you want to go to Terk’s place first or spend a few days on your own?”
“Spend a few days,” she said, “not to mention the fact that I have no clothes without blood on them again, and I need to sleep for a week. We’ll hardly be in any shape to be social or even on our best behavior if we arrive looking like refugees,” she noted, with a laugh.
“That’s about what I expected,” Riff said. “In that case, let’s get Sanders checked out first, and, after that, we’ll get you into a hotel.”
And that’s what they did. It took a good six hours before they were alone, with Riff promising to check in the next morning. Now with food already ordered, Sanders walked in and gingerly sat down at the small dining table. “We still need clothes.”
“I know, but I figured, if you got a day’s rest, that would help.”
He nodded, but he still looked down at his clothing. “I’m covered in blood. I had a bag somewhere along the line, but I think we lost it.”
“I’m not sure about that. Riff dropped something by the door.” She quickly walked there and brought it back.
He smiled. “Okay, in that case, I should at least have a change of clothes,” he said, looking coy, “and, if the food will be a little bit,… I’ll go have a shower.”
“Do you think you should?” she asked, looking at his arm.
“Yes, I need to. I’m filthy, stinky, and covered in blood, so, yeah, a shower would be perfect.”
“I’ll run the water for you.” And she did, stepping in ahead of him and adjusting the temperature. “You need any help?”
He shook his head. “I should be fine.”
“I’ll need a shower after you, so don’t use all the hot water.”
“We’re in a hotel, so we shouldn’t run out of hot water that quickly,” he noted. “If I were in better shape, I would say, let’s save time and have shower together.”
She stopped and looked at him, one eyebrow up. “Not a bad idea anyway.”
“Why is that?” he asked, as he gingerly peeled off the rest of his tattered shirt.
“Because somebody needs to clean your back, and you can’t twist or move enough to get anywhere close on your own,” she stated, her hands on her hips, glaring at him.
He laughed. “I can try,” he said, with a smile. “I need a nice long hot shower. I haven’t been clean in weeks.”
“I know how you feel.” She yawned. “That’s how I feel about sleep.”
“You’ll get sleep, as soon as we get some food,” he promised. “We just need a couple more things to fall into place, like food and showers, and then we have two days to just chill.”
He continued to strip down and stepped into the hot shower, sucking back his breath as the water hit his shoulder. He leaned against the shower wall and let it soak in, knowing that she was right, and he could have used a hand with scrubbing, and he certainly wouldn’t trust his own body to that extent. But when the curtain was pulled back again and she stepped in, fully nude beside him, he looked at her in surprise.
She shrugged. “You know I’m right.” She picked up the bar of soap and got to work.
He hadn’t realized how much of his chest, back, and arm were covered with crusty dried blood, but it took her a good twenty minutes to get it all cleaned up. He was more than happy that she did. “Thank you. The painkillers are decent, but they won’t last forever, and I didn’t want them to give out in here.”
She just smiled and continued taking care of him, not with a completely neutral action, but definitely caring, yet he didn’t feel like a child when she did it either. Something to be said for having a woman looking after him that way.
By the time she was done, he said, “Now you turn around. I still have one good hand, and your back could use some attention.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
He nodded and proceeded to carefully and efficiently clean her back, and then turned her around. “I don’t trust myself to do the front though.”
She smiled, then kissed him on his cheek. “This would not be the place to do what’s on your mind anyway,” she pointed out, “not with your shoulder like it is.” She quickly shampooed her hair, then looked up at his and then added, “We should do your hair too, or you are sure to feel grody.”
By the time they were completely done, he felt wiped out again.
She nodded. “You look the way I feel,” she muttered. “We’re a hell of a pair.”
“The good news is, we’re not on any time frame anymore. We don’t have to run around and hide from people, so we can take as much time as we need.… We have all the time in the world.” And with a towel wrapped around his hips, he stepped out into the bedroom, just in time for a knock on the door. She froze at his side, and he smiled. “That is likely to be food service, but it could also be Riff.”
He walked up to the front door, checked, and sure enough it was food service. He allowed them to bring the cart in, while he kept a wary eye on the man’s actions.
As soon as he was gone, Ania stepped out of the bathroom. “And there’s coffee,” she cried out in delight, looking at the assortment arranged for them.
He laughed. “I did insist on coffee, even though we’ll sleep soon. I figured you would want a cup anyway.”
“Absolutely,” she murmured. She quickly poured cups for both of them and pushed the trolley closer to the table. They sat together, still wrapped up in towels, and devoured a hot meal, their first in days. She sat back with a sigh of satisfaction. “What is it about hot food and just that sense of security in knowing that you’ve got food and coffee in front of you, all to make everything feel like it’ll be okay again.”
“In this case, everything will be okay again,” he stated, with a smile. “So it’s good that you feel that way.” He picked up his coffee and moved over to the couch. “I’ll enjoy this coffee, then I’ll go crash. I have no more energy left in me. What about you?”
“Same,” she muttered. She shifted the towel, still wrapped around her, and noted, “I don’t even have clothes.”
“There are robes behind the bathroom door,” he noted.
“Are there?” she asked, looking at him. “You didn’t grab one?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t care about one and figured my shoulder would be better off without it.”
She looked down at her towel, shrugged, and sat down beside him. “It’s not as if we need to keep ourselves hidden at this point, I guess,” she murmured.
“No, you’re right,” he agreed. “I don’t know what beauty regimen you have, but, after all you’ve been through, you still glow with a wonderful light.”
She laughed. “That just sounds like a man in love.”
He froze, then he looked at her, his eyes wide. “It didn’t even occur to me before this, but I think you’re right.”
She stared at him in shock. “Oh, no. No, no, no. You don’t get to say that. Not right after what I just said. This is not how this works.”
He started to chuckle. “I’ve never been in love. So it’s never hit me before. It’s not as if I’ve had time to even assess any of this,” he murmured, feeling joy swelling in his heart as he stared at her. “But there had to be one hell of a reason why I felt so strongly about coming back and getting you right away,” he noted, with a cheeky grin. “I kept thinking there had to be a reason behind it all.”
She rolled her eyes. “What, because you love me?” she asked mockingly.
“It’s definitely because I cared about you, about us. The rest just seems to have fallen into place over this past crazy week.”
“It’s definitely been crazy,” she agreed. “I’ll give you that. As far as the other, if you really mean it, you can repeat it tomorrow, when I know you’re not under the influence of those drugs running through your system.”
He chuckled. “That’s a deal,” He looked down at his empty cup. “If we push that trolley back outside, we can order more food when we wake up again in the morning. Right now, I just need to crash.”
With a last bit of effort, he got up, loaded up the dishes, and pushed the trolley out into the hallway to be collected. Stepping back inside, he locked the door. “What about you?”
“I’m going to bed,” she murmured, already yawning.
He nodded and led the way to the bedroom. Pulling back the covers, he said, “Hope you’re okay with one bed.”
“I’m totally okay with one bed. I’m looking forward to it.” Then she curled up and pulled the covers around her.
As soon as he lay down on his good side, he pulled her up against his chest, being careful of her back then whispered, “This feels so damn right.”
“That’s because it is right,” she declared. “Ours was not a normal path in any way, shape, or form, but that’s okay because we ended up in the right place anyway.”
He kissed her gently. “I’ll see you in the morning.” Then he closed his eyes and crashed.