Chapter 38 Eliana
ELIANA
ten·der·iz·e: /mēt ?tend??rīz?/: verb
Seven minutes after he told me he’d be here in ten, he pulls up.
I’m still plopped on my ass on the cold concrete, cataloging my injuries in order of How bad is this gonna hurt in the shower, when Bastian’s Range Rover doesn’t so much park as abandon itself at the curb. There’s a screech of tires. The driver’s door flies open before the engine cuts.
Then he’s running.
I’ve never seen him run before, but I’m not surprised that he does it well. Huge, graceful strides that chew up ground until he’s here.
He drops to his knees in front of me hard enough that it has to hurt, though his face shows no sign of it. “Let me see.”
I hold out my palms. They’re scratched up, embedded with grit, stinging like I’ve been stuck with a cattle prod. Not bleeding too much, but they look worse than they feel.
Bastian’s hands shake when he takes mine.
I blink. Why would he care enough for that to be happening? I’m nothing to him. A fun little distraction at best; an employee who’s never quite understand the limits of her role at worst. But to make him shake? Tremble? He doesn’t care about me like that. He can’t.
But right now, there’s no denying that I can see his fingers tremble as he turns my palms over. I can see the individual muscles jumping in his jaw.
“It’s not that bad—”
“Your knee.” He’s not listening to me. His eyes are wild, scanning me like he’s looking for something worse, something catastrophic I might be hiding for reasons unknown.
I extend my leg. My leggings are ripped, the fabric torn in a jagged line. Underneath, my knee is already puffy and beginning to purple. It throbs in time with my heartbeat.
Bastian curses under his breath. His hand hovers, as if he’s afraid he might hurt me more. When those fingers finally do make contact, they’re light as a feather, more tender than I ever thought possible.
“Can you stand?”
“I… I don’t know. I can try.”
He rises, and then his hands are on me again—one gripping mine, one arm banding around my waist, solid and sure and just a bit too tight. Like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he doesn’t hold on hard enough.
When I put weight on my injured knee, the pain flares hot and brutally sharp. I can’t quite stop the small whimper that escapes.
Bastian’s entire body goes rigid. “Okay. Okay, no.”
I don’t even see him move. I’m just aware of a sudden whoosh, the world does a quarter-turn, and then Bastian is cradling me to his chest, one arm under my knees, the other around my back.
“Wait— Bastian—”
“No.” He turns and carries me to the car. “You’re not walking on that.”
“I’m fine—”
“You’re not fine. You’re hurt.” His voice cracks on the last word, and when I look up, there’s something raw in his eyes that I’ve never seen before.
Fear.
Actual fear.
I’m suddenly fearful, too—but only on behalf of every sidewalk that’s ever wronged me. Bastian’s scowl makes it seem like he’s gonna come back here with a sledgehammer and beat that section of concrete to absolute dust for the unforgivable crime of skinning my knees.
“What if you hurt yourself, though?” I can’t help protesting.
“The only thing hurting me right now,” he snarls, “is seeing you hurt.”
He reaches the car and somehow manages to open the passenger door without putting me down, then settles me into the seat with a gentleness that doesn’t match the tension vibrating through his entire body.
But even when I’m seated, his hands continue to linger—one on my shoulder, one hovering near my injured knee—like he’s not quite ready to let go.
“Stay,” he orders, which might be funny if he didn’t look so wrecked.
Where does he think I’m going to go? Better question: Where are we about to go?
Because as he starts to drive, it doesn’t take long to see that he’s headed in the exact opposite direction of my house.
“Hey, uh, Bastian…” I swallow. “… Any clues on where we’re going?”
His jaw hasn’t unclenched since he lifted me into the car. I think it’ll take the jaws of life to get that thing open again. I want to crack a joke about his overprotective streak, but I’m a little short on comedic instincts at the moment. My knee really does hurt like hell.
“My house,” he says.
I blanche. “Oh, no. Oh, no, really, that’s not necessary.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Bastian, I just scraped my knee. I’m not dying.”
“You’re hurt, I have a first aid kit at my place, and it’s closer than yours. We’re going there.”
I’m not quite sure why I’m having this miniature internal freakout, but it is definitely well underway.
Bastian’s house. His actual, real-life, personal living space.
The place where he sleeps in those twelve-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets he loves so dearly.
I’ll get to finally confirm my coffin suspicions.
I’ll get to see if it’s gum or toothpaste that’s responsible for the wintergreen smell that haunts my dreams. Maybe I’ll even—
Oh, God, I’m spiraling.
“I can just go home and slap a Band-Aid on it,” I try again. “Really, it’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.” He screeches through a turn hard enough to rock us onto two tires. I grip the door handle and try not to scream. “You need proper care. Ice. Antiseptic. Someone to make sure you’re actually okay.”
“I have ice at home. And Neosporin. Probably. Maybe.”
He scowls. “When’s the last time you checked the expiration date on that Neosporin?”
“That’s not a fair question.”
“That’s what I thought.” He returns his attention to the road. “It’s decided. We’re going to my place.”
More thoughts of the overwhelming intimacy continue to crop up in my head. I’m picturing Bastian padding around in gray sweatpants. I’m picturing Bastian making coffee in the morning, sleepy-eyed, bed-headed.
Then my brain takes a hard left turn into more dangerous territory: Bastian in his bed, shirtless, sheets tangled around his waist, hair mussed from sleep, reaching for—
Nope. Nopity, nope, nope.
I press my scraped palms against my thighs. It stings, but I welcome the distraction.
I don’t know how to explain it, that going to his house feels like crossing some invisible line we can’t uncross. That seeing where he lives, how he lives, will make this—whatever this is—feel real in a way that’s terrifying.
Because right now, it’s still containable. Still something I can frame as temporary insanity brought on by impending blindness and really good orgasms.
But if I see his home? If I see the mundane, everyday parts of Bastian Hale’s life?
That changes things.
“I just…” I swallow hard. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“You’re not intruding. I invited you.”
“You ordered me, actually.”
He glances at me. “I want you there, Eliana. Let me take care of you. Please.”
That last word—please—coming from Bastian Hale’s mouth might be the most shocking thing that’s happened today, and I literally fell on my face in public.
I exhale slowly. “Okay.” I rest my head against the window as we zoom into the ritzy part of Chicago. “But if I find evidence that my serial killer suspicions were on point, I’m calling Yasmin to come rescue me.”
A few minutes later, Bastian parks beneath a gleaming high-rise. The black glass facade reflects the overcast sky. Before I can protest, he’s at my door, arms sliding under me again.
“I can walk,” I lie as my knee silently screams, No, you certainly cannot.
“You’ll do as you’re told,” he growls.
The elevator ride to the penthouse smells like his cologne and my shame. His heartbeat thuds against my ear where my cheek presses to his chest.
The doors slide open directly into the penthouse, and just like that, another line in the sand is crossed.
Safe to say it’s not what I expected. I’d imagined something sterile and modern. Chrome and concrete and sharp angles, like his office but with a bed. And black, obviously. Lots of black.
Instead, I’m looking at warmth.
The living room stretches out before us. Chic brick walls draped with ivy plants. Huge windows offering a jaw-dropping view of the Chicago skyline. The furniture is lived-in leather, soft and broken-in, arranged around a fireplace that looks actually used.
Bookshelves line one wall, crammed with cookbooks and novels with cracked spines. There’s a throw blanket draped over the back of the couch, rumpled like someone actually uses it.
The kitchen gleams to my left—professional-grade everything, obviously, but there’s a coffee mug in the sink and a dish towel hanging crooked from the oven handle.
“Oh,” I whisper. “Full of surprises, I see.”
“Did you think I lived in a bloodstained torture chamber?”
“I hadn’t quite ruled it out yet.” I grin weakly at him.
I’m a little woozy, I notice. I might’ve cracked my head against a root when I fell.
He carries me to the couch and sets me down gingerly. Then he disappears into what I assume is a bathroom down the hall, returning a moment later with a first aid kit that looks like it could handle a zombie apocalypse.
“This is overkill,” I protest as he kneels in front of me again.
“Hush.” He opens the kit and pulls out antiseptic wipes, gauze, medical tape.
He cleans my palms first, dabbing away grit and blood. Every time I wince, his jaw tightens.
“Sorry,” he mutters.
“You’re not the one who made me fall.”
“No, but I should’ve—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head.
Should’ve what? Been there? Caught me? Wrapped me in bubble wrap and locked me away in the highest room of the tallest tower so no one but him could ever touch me again?
That doesn’t sound so bad, actually.
He moves to my knee next, carefully rolling up my torn leggings. The skin is already mottled purple and swollen. He presses an ice pack against it, and I hiss through my teeth.
“I know,” he murmurs. “I know it hurts.”
I watch him work, this man who once pinned me against the wall of a walk-in freezer for embarrassing him, now treating my scraped knee like it’s a mortal wound.
And I wonder which of us he’s really trying to fix: me or himself?
Neither of us speak as Bastian finishes with the wipes and the Neosporin and wraps gauze around my hands. He bandages my knee with an ice pack and props it up on a pillow, stretched out in front of me.
But even when he’s done, he stays. He’s kneeling between my knees like he did at the movie theater, and one look in his eyes is all I need to see to know that he’s remembering that, too.
“Better?” he asks.
“Getting there.”
He still doesn’t move away. His hand is on my thigh, warm and heavy and there, and I’m suddenly very aware that we’re alone in his penthouse with no movie screen behind us and no sunrise to distract us and absolutely nothing to stop whatever happens next from happening.
He’s so tall that, even kneeling, he’s almost at eye level.
I look at his eyes, and even though the world is darkening at the edges, with him right here, I can see everything I care to see.
Sharp jaw. Crooked nose. One blond curl dangling over his forehead.
His lips are full and utterly kissable. It’d be so easy. If he just— if I just— then we could—
“This is a terrible idea,” I whisper.
“The worst,” he agrees, but his hand goes higher up my thigh. “I no longer give a fuck.”
Then he surges forward and claims my mouth.
My hands fly up to his shoulders as his go to my hips, bracketing me against the couch. The angle is awkward until he crawls up my body and covers me.
I open for him. His tongue sweeps against mine, and I taste that wintergreen again. I missed it so damn bad.
He groans into my mouth. His hand splays wide on my waist, fingertips brushing the strip of exposed skin where my sweatshirt has ridden up.
This is it, I think to myself. No obstacles, no excuses, just the final step before I truly fall into the deep end and never, ever come up for air again.
He’s going to take off my clothes and I’m going to take off his, and honestly, isn’t it kind of fitting that I’m bleeding and broken as it happens?
I’ll feel his body on mine, feel myself offer myself up to him, and all the will-they-won’t-they tension that’s plagued me since the moment my life changed forever in that empty office will disappear.
There’s no telling what it’ll leave behind—only that it will feel so, so good to finally stop enduring and finally start living.
So take it, Bastian—take me—take me away from this and bring me to the brink of—
Then I hear a key in the lock.
The front door swings open.
And a lanky-haired boy in a wheelchair rolls through, takes one look at us tangled together on the couch, and stops dead in his tracks.
“Well,” he says, voice dripping with teenage sarcasm, “this is awkward.”