“It’s not your fault. She’s a grown woman. She makes her own decisions.”
“Looks like the time you spent bare-assed helped you get your Zen back. I thought it was gone forever.”
“Yeah, well, dealing with my parents for the last week tested it, that’s for sure. But I’m trying to find some new perspective.” I was trying. Slater didn’t need to know I hadn’t succeeded yet. “I appreciate you calling them when I got hurt, man. Even if they drove me crazy.”
“I didn’t call them. Mia did. I told you when you first woke up, but you were still pretty out of it.”
I pushed a hand through my hair, grasping for the memory. “Yeah, that’s right. Sorry. Between the concussion, the eye thing, being dehydrated, and all the other crap they said I had wrong with me, they pumped me full of so many drugs and electrolytes it’s amazing I don’t glow in the dark. I still feel like ass.”
“And aww, you have a stuffy dose.”
I had to laugh at his imitation of how I sounded. “She really called them?” Mia hid her uncertainty and anxiety behind bravado most of the time, but calling my folks out of the blue had to have been hard.
“She did. And she freaked out about getting to you after you were hurt. She held your head in the ring, man. Got your blood all over her and she wouldn’t wash it off.”
I nudged Vey from his sleeping position draped over my feet and swung my legs down so I could brace my elbows on my knees. I’d known I would have to see her soon, no matter how I tried to resist. Part of me had been relieved she hadn’t returned to the hospital, because that justified my desire to stay away. I didn’t mean to her what she’d come to mean to me in such a short amount of time. That was reality.
But what Slater had said skewed that reality, turning it just enough to change the view entirely.
“Then there was your jacket,” Slater continued. “She demanded I get it dry cleaned before I came to the hospital then she took off running toward Brooklyn Presbyterian. I seriously thought she’d run all the way to you. She was like a woman possessed. Or a woman in—”
“No. Don’t go there.” It might be a joke to Slater, but my suddenly racing heart wasn’t fooling around.
I could pretend all I wanted that I could turn off my emotions. When she wasn’t near me, I could rationalize this—whatever it was—being about her hot as hell body and the fact that I’d never met a woman even a fraction as fierce. We had definite chemistry. If I was conscious, I was thinking about fucking Mia. End of story.
But that didn’t explain the rest. I wanted to hold her after we were together. Would never grow tired of holding her. Hell, just holding her hand made me happier than I’d ever been, and that scared the shit out of me.
I wanted to battle her demons. No, fuck that. I wanted to kill them for her—and I was beginning to think I wouldn’t just stick to the ones in her mind. I’d kill for her in reality, maybe because no one else ever had. She’d been on her own for so long, and so had I.
Neither of us needed to be alone anymore.
Every cell of my body recognized her as mine. My Mia. And I didn’t care about timetables or common sense or why her, why now, when it hadn’t ever been anyone else. Even her horrific background bringing out some long dormant protective instinct inside me didn’t explain my feelings. Nothing did, other than the possibility that my gut and my heart were a hell of a lot smarter than my head.
I couldn’t wait any longer to see her. To look in her eyes and know for myself if what had happened on Friday had changed anything for us, or if it had just pushed us even further apart.
“I gotta go.” I shifted Vey back and rose unsteadily to my feet. Now the room was revolving. Just lovely. I was really enjoying all the new special effects from my busted eye.
“All right. Take it easy, man.”
I clicked off and scrolled through my dialed numbers, selecting one I’d called a little more than a week ago.
Three rings later, Kizzy picked up. “I thought you were dead.”
Her flat tone made me laugh. If I didn’t watch myself, I’d end up liking this chick. “So sorry to disappoint you.”
”I figured you had to be to let that little shined-up prick get the best of you. What the fuck’s your problem?” Then she made a sound like she’d snapped her fingers. “Ah, I got it, Foxy. Too much sex. You know you’re supposed to hold back before you fight.”
“Believe me, that’s not my problem.”
Apparently my dry tone amused her, because she barked out a laugh. “She makes you work for it, though now she might take pity on you. You got an eye patch?”
I glared at the silky black item I tugged out of my jeans pocket. “Yeah. Haven’t worn it yet. Looks fucking stupid.”
“Dude, you’ll be swimming in babes. Chicks love pirates.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. Gently, to avoid jostling my eye. “I’m a pirate if I put on an eye patch?”
“Nah, but we can pretend. Assuming the size of your sword is worth the fantasy. Hang on.”