by Skye Warren
Another one wasn’t coming.
And even if it did, that wasn’t a relationship.
“Yes,” I whispered, because this was what I should do. I should go to school and get a regular job. I should date a nice boy and marry him. That would give me the family I longed for, the connection I still desperately wanted.
“I think we’d have a good time, and I wouldn’t expect—Oh.” Sloan looked surprised. Then sheepish.
Guilt gnawed me inside, that I’d made him beg. That I instantly regretted saying yes.
Why couldn’t I want him?
He rallied quickly. “Tomorrow night?”
That was fast. But maybe for the best, like ripping off a Band-Aid. I just didn’t want to think about what wound the Band-Aid had been protecting, the wound I’d just exposed. “Tomorrow night.”
We rode the elevator to my floor, and I waved goodbye without looking back. Tomorrow night I’d deal with what I’d agreed to. I’d deal with having a bad time—or having a good time. I wasn’t sure which one I dreaded most.
For now I headed to my dorm room while he continued in the elevator up to his. I crossed the long hallway over dark carpet, questionable stains barely visible under the dim, flickering light.
Inside my room I leaned back against the door, shutting my eyes.
What was I thinking saying yes?
But I already knew the answer. I was lonely. Had always been lonely, if I was being honest. I pulled my sociology textbook from my backpack and started studying, reading about all the ways people connected with each other, my nose pressed to the glass of human experience.
Chapter Ten
I WOKE UP on the little two-cushion couch, disoriented. My textbook was open, one page creased from where my arm had rested. I didn’t remember falling asleep.
What had woken me up?
That seemed important, but I didn’t hear anything. I checked my phone to find a new e-mail about a study group and a text message from Sloan confirming our date. That hadn’t been a dream, then.
Looking forward to it, I texted back, not quite holding in a wince.
I stood and stretched. My attention went to the collection of Chicago postcards tacked to my bulletin board. Each had a different touristy design—the skyline at sunset or the lit-up Navy Pier. Each was blank aside from my name and address.
I studied the nondescript block letters, somehow both aggressive and contained. What had inspired him to send these?
What made him stop?
It was dark outside, grown late, and I hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Somewhere out there, Philip was probably dining with crystal and expensive wine. Meanwhile I’d probably order a pizza with one of those coupons by the door.
A low sound raised the hair on my neck.
Oh God, I’m not alone.
My gaze swept over the small dorm room. From here I could see the tiny bedroom area and the kitchenette. I could see almost the entire space. Empty.
Maybe it was just one of my neighbors getting busy and—
The sound came again, louder. A shiver ran through me. It was coming from outside the room, but not from either side. It was coming from the door.
I crept over and looked out the peephole. An empty hallway bulged in the distorted lens.
Now I was doubting myself. Had I actually heard something? Maybe it had come from the dorm room across the hall. When I first moved here, it had been shortly after my “ordeal,” as my adoptive mother called it. I had jumped at every sound, both real and imagined, more traumatized by my brush with danger than I’d wanted to admit.
My gaze snapped to my phone.
I could call my adoptive mother right now, but I knew she wouldn’t want to be bothered. I could call the building management, but I knew what would happen. The same thing that had happened last time I called them. They’d send my floor advisor to check on me. If there was anything scary in this hallway, she’d have to face it first.
And if there wasn’t anything scary, if it was my imagination again, the PTSD I didn’t want to acknowledge, well then everyone would know how fucked up I was inside.
No, I had to be overreacting. This was nothing. There was no one in the hallway. And even if there was, it would be some drunk guy, passed out on the wrong floor.
I’m a normal college student, I reminded myself. I’m not afraid of anything.
Both of those things were lies, I was neither normal nor brave, but at least I could send a drunk frat boy on his way.
I opened the door a crack. Nothing.
Relief filled me, and I opened the door wider.
A body slid inside, slumped over without the door to support him. A short scream escaped me before I caught myself.
He was wearing a three-piece suit stained with blood, his expression slack, eyes glassy with pain and delirium. Philip.
Oh God, he was hurt. Really badly hurt if he couldn’t stand up. Horribly hurt if he’d ever have come to me of all people. I didn’t have time to process the shock of it, of seeing him again. I had to get him out of sight. If he’d been injured like this, someone was after him. Someone would want to finish the job.
“Come inside,” I whispered urgently, pulling his arm.
All that earned me was a weak groan.
Panic beat in my chest. Was he losing consciousness? Was he dying?
I managed to sling his heavy arm over my shoulders, staggering under even that much weight. Christ. Awake he was pure packed power. Half-conscious and injured, he was like a pile of steel bars—unmovable and unwieldy.
“I’ll never forgive you if you die on my doorstep,” I said.
Something like a grunt escaped him—it might have been a laugh. Either way, he surged up, tapping into some deep well of energy or survival instinct. His effort and all my strength pushed us through the doorway and into my dorm room. It had seemed small before. Now it seemed tiny as we bumped into walls and staggered to the bed.
I wanted to lay him down gently, careful with his wounds, but in the end we both fell under his weight, tangled on the bed in a heap of exhausted limbs. With a coarse shove I managed to get him on his back so I could shut the door.
The hallway was just as empty as when I’d found him. There was a little smear of blood on the doorjamb. It turned a mottled brown when I wiped it with my shirt.
That would have to be good enough for now.
I just hoped no one had followed him. I just hoped no one found him.
And I really hoped no one found me.
Chapter Eleven
I HAD IMAGINED so many ways that I would meet Philip again. A chance encounter in a coffee shop. Or more romantic, he might seek me out, impressed and enthralled by the young woman I’d grown into. Having him half-dead outside my door was never what I’d pictured. The reality disturbed and confused me—but most of all it spurred me into action.
I dug around the bottom of the small kitchen cabinet until I came up with a dusty first-aid kit. I’d thrown it into my shopping cart during a trip to Target, alongside the blue daisy comforter set on my bed and the sunshine yellow bath mat in the bathroom.
There were bandages and ointment packets and a very long pair of tweezers. Shit.
Philip hadn’t moved from where I’d dropped him on the bed. I knelt at his side. “Philip?”
He didn’t stir.
“Philip, I really need your help with this.” My voice was shaking. I wanted to be cool and confident in a time of crisis, but I was coming apart here. It felt surreal to even see him again, much less be responsible for keeping him alive.
He let out a low sound. A groan? Was he in pain?
Of course he was in pain, and the expired acetaminophen in this pack wasn’t going to help.
I clasped his hand and shivered at how cold it felt. “Philip, can you hear me at all? Because I’m…I’m afraid. I don’t want you to die and if you’re seriously hurt, I need to call 911.”
If I were a different girl, a more normal girl, I would have already called.
But I knew that if Philip had come here, he didn’t want to go to the hospital. He would only have come here to stay off the grid.
He might not have been safe in the hospital—unconscious and unable to defend himself if someone came looking. He didn’t trust cops, and after my experience three summers ago, neither did I.
Still, I couldn’t let him die. If he was this bad, he needed a doctor—maybe a surgeon. I’d rather they saved his life than watch him bleed out on my bed. My hands were already groping at my cell phone where it had fallen on the floor.
I was shaky, but at least there were only three numbers to dial. Nine, then one, then—
Something firm and rough squeezed my wrist, and the phone sprang from my hand. I gasped a little at the pain and surprise of it. My gaze rose to meet dark eyes, still hazy with delirium, but determined too. “No doctors,” he said, his voice thready.
“I don’t know how to help you,” I whispered.
His hand tightened on my arm. “No.”
I wanted to call anyway, to find some help, someone who knew what they were doing. Normally he could overpower me, but in this state he couldn’t. Three years ago I’d been helpless, and now I was right back where I started. Call 9-1-1.
“Half-dead and you’re still bossy,” I murmured instead, reluctant agreement.
His eyes shut in relief—or maybe just pain—and his hand fell away. God, what did I just promise? I had brought an injured man inside my dorm room and agreed to harbor him.
What if he was on the run, hiding from the authorities? I already knew he was a criminal.
But instead of picking the phone back up, I went to work on his suit jacket, slipping the buttons apart, pushing the fabric aside, revealing a bright red stain over his ribs. Panic beat in my chest, but I forced it back.
I was the only one here to help him now. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing but I had to try.
It was hard as hell to take his jacket off, and I bit my lip against the fear that I was hurting him worse. He barely made a sound, but his skin was pale as I shifted him to remove the vest.
The buttons of his shirt seemed like intricate puzzles to my bloodstained, clumsy fingers. Eventually I pulled the fabric aside—and then he did make a sound, a rough grunt that told of infinite pain as the fabric parted from his open wound.
Red. That was all I could see, a mass of red with hints of darkness that I assumed were flesh.
My stomach turned over. I had never been great with blood—or with violence in general. It was part of why I was getting my degree in sociology, so I could help people avoid violence.
I tore open little packets of antiseptic wipes to reveal white squares, no bigger than wet wipes. The pungent smell filled my nostrils, and I sneezed.
A sound came from the bed, and I looked over, already afraid of what I’d see. More pain? More blood? Except his eyes were open again, and the corner of his lips turned up. Not quite a grimace. Not quite a smile either…
He was laughing at me.
Suddenly it struck me as funny too, in a horribly morbid way. Here I was prepared to play nurse to this dangerous man, wholly unqualified, and sneezing at the smell of rubbing alcohol. I laughed hard enough that tears sprang to my eyes, though I couldn’t be entirely sure if they were from amusement or anxiety.
He laughed too, until he groaned and held his side. “Fuck,” he muttered.
That spurred me into action, and for some reason I was a little more steady as I pressed the wipes over his skin. They turned red instantly, immediately soaked with his blood. But they were tougher than they looked, and soon his skin started to appear beneath the wreckage.
By the time I’d cleaned him up, I could see a distinct wound about two inches long. It was thin, and even my untrained eye could tell where it came from.
“Someone stabbed you,” I murmured, hands clenched tight around a mass of red wipes.
It shocked me to see him like this, vulnerable and so damn human. I had known he was wounded as soon as I opened the door, but there was still a part of me that remembered him from three years ago—larger than life and impossibly powerful. The sight of him laid low made something clench in my chest.
He didn’t answer, and I realized his eyes were closed again. He had passed out.
The tears now couldn’t be blamed on laughter anymore. I wasn’t laughing; I was crying. At being helpless, at being scared. All over again.
The first-aid kit didn’t have a needle or anything like that, which was probably for the best. I was likely to do more damage with it than actually help. Instead I used the healing cream and butterfly bandages to hold the wound closed.
Then I pulled his shirt off—which was harder than the suit jacket somehow. It also opened up his wound again so that fresh blood spilled down his side and onto my sheet. It would soak into the mattress too, the same mattress that so many students before me had slept on. They had worried and dreamed on this mattress. They’d gotten high and gotten laid, but I was pretty sure none of them had ever bled out from a knife wound.
There was a first time for everything.
By the time I’d cleaned his wound again, it was pitch-black outside, and I was exhausted. The lines around his mouth showed how much pain he was in, even while he was unconscious.
I took off his black leather shoes and thin black socks. He looked more vulnerable without them.
The comforter with daisies only covered to his waist, leaving his wound open to heal in the stuffy air. His abs were firm even in sleep, ridges leading to a broad chest covered in ink. It was too dark to see the design clearly, but it was broad and bold—like the man himself.
And he was wearing something. A necklace? No. I looked closer. A ring on a chain, a plain platinum bad with no markings. What did it mean? Who did it belong to? I immediately thought of Shelly, because they’d had a thing. Purely financial, to hear her tell it—but it had always been clear to me, even back then, that there was a connection between them, that the reluctant affection cut both ways. Though this ring looked too plain for Shelly, for anything he might have gifted her. He would have given her diamonds and pearls, the weight and perfection equal to her obligation.
Even unconscious, he looked powerful. Invincible. An illusion.
There were smears of dried blood on my hands and forearms that proved that wrong.
A quick shower drenched me to the bone. At least I had my own bathroom instead of a communal one. Then I curled up a sweater as a makeshift pillow and lay down beside the bed.
The sofa would have been more comfortable, even if it was tiny, but I couldn’t bear to be that far away from him. His hand hung over the edge, and I held it as sleep claimed me, hard and fierce.
Chapter Twelve
A SOUND JARRED me from sleep, something low and resonant, an animal sound of ferocity. The hair was raised on the back of my neck. My eyes snapped open in the dark. Blackness sharpened into shadows, into waves.
The metal tang of blood came back to me first, its echo still hanging in the air.
Memory hit me with a sudden, sharp ache—of finding Philip when I’d thought I’d never see him again.
He was here now, and he was hurting. The sound he made was an animal cornered, a wolf backed into a canyon crevice, snapping and snarling in his final moments. It was the sound of defeat. It was the sound of a man who would never back down, who would fight to the death.
Right now he was fighting in his sleep, head tossing, hands clenched around nothing.
It was still dark outside, still night.
The bandages I had put over his wounds were no replacement for stitches—and he had already ripped them off the way he was moving. I put a hand on his arm to calm him.
“Philip,” I whispered. “Wake up.”
He tossed again, a guttural sound filling the air. A shiver ran over my skin, and I didn’t know if the neighbors would hear him. Didn’t know if they’d call the floor advisor to check on me. Maybe even the police.
“Phi
lip.” The urgency in my voice was real. “It’s me. Ella.”
I shook his shoulder, hoping I didn’t make his injury worse.
A hand clamped around my wrist. Then I was falling, twisting, landing breathlessly on his chest with an oomph. “Oh God,” I muttered. “Oh no. Did I hurt you? Are you okay?”
Of course he wasn’t okay. My entire body had just fallen on top of him when he had a gaping wound.
“Ella.” The word was grated out, rocks sliding against each other, a rumble in the hard body beneath me. I pressed up, trying to back off him—but his hands held me down. They did more than that. They shifted me, adjusted me so that my legs slung on either side of him.
“Let me go. You’re going to hurt yourself. You’re going to—” Bleed. He was going to bleed. He was probably already bleeding, dying on my dorm-room bed. My eyes pricked with a surge of emotion. “You need to rest.”
“Like that,” he said so low that it took me a minute to understand. He was hard everywhere—the chest beneath my palms, the hands around my arms. The hips that pushed my legs wide as I straddled him. He was so hard that only when I took a deep breath did I feel the ridge, thick and hot, beneath his slacks.
“Now?” I said, more from shock than refusal. He was losing blood. He was weak from injury.
Except he didn’t feel weak, throbbing beneath me. He felt strong, virile. He felt powerful despite his injury. Or maybe because of it, as if the cut in his skin had broken through his careful, civilized veneer. This was the real man underneath, the one with his large hands on my hips, rocking me against his erection.
There was something animalistic about the way he moved, something instinctive about the way he used me. The cut on his side must have hurt him. It must have been agony. And we didn’t have any painkillers—we only had this, the slide of my body over his cock, the stroke stroke stroke until he groaned with pleasure.
The sound touched something deep inside me, and I twisted my hips to ease the ache. Except the movement, the friction only made it worse. Soon I was moving to the rhythm he gave me.