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He caught her before she went down. Got his arm under her knees and lifted her; her head dropped against his shoulder, and a sound came out of her that he never wanted to hear again.

Her living quarters were in the same building as his. He walked, holding her weight easily. Her hands had fisted in the front of his shirt, and she was holding on with a grip that said the world had tilted sideways and he was the only thing still vertical.

He could feel her shaking against his chest, her breath coming fast and shallow. He could feel the curve of her back under his forearm.

It had been four years since he’d held a woman like this. Since he’d been close to a woman in any way.

Four years of keeping his distance, holding the line, telling himself that the discipline was worth the cost. And now Cassandra Leuenberger was in his arms and trembling against his chest and he could feel every inch of her and the only thing that mattered was getting her safe.

Everything else could wait. Everything else would have to wait.

He made it to their building, and she managed to get out her room number. He shouldered her door open and carried her inside.

Their units were the same, one bedroom, small living room, tiny kitchen. He lowered her onto the bed, and the care he took doing it told him more about where he was with this woman than anything he’d let himself think over the past few days.

She curled on her side immediately. Knees drawn up, hands pressed over her eyes.

“Cassie.” He crouched beside the bed. “Tell me what you need.”

“Meds.” The word came out cracked and thin. “Nightstand.”

He found the pharmacy bag on the nightstand. A prescription bottle inside, her name on the label. Sumatriptan. He didn’t know what it was. He shook out a pill, filled a glass of water from the bathroom. Helped her sit up enough to swallow it and she was back down, curled tight, breathing like each inhale cost her.

He pulled the chair from the desk over to the bed and sat down.

He didn’t know what had just happened. He didn’t know why her eyes had done what they did or why a crowded room had broken her or what the medication was for.

And he very definitely didn’t know why the woman who’d been making him laugh about coffee twenty minutes ago was now curled in a ball pressing her hands against her skull.

But he knew he wasn’t leaving.

Chapter 10

The first thing Cassandra registered was the light.

Not bright. Just the gray edges of early morning pressing through curtains she didn’t remember closing. Her head was heavy and her mouth tasted wrong. She blinked at the ceiling and tried to remember where she was.

The Rogue compound. Her quarters. She was in bed, still in her clothes, shoes off, and she didn’t remember removing them. The pillow was damp under her cheek. Her right temple ached with the dull, spent throb that meant the worst of the pain had already passed. Her body felt like it had been wrung out and put back together wrong.

She shifted onto her back. Her muscles protested, stiff and sore in places that didn’t make sense.

Shit. She hadn’t been able to walk. She remembered that. Ryder had carried her.

She turned her head.

There he was.

He was sitting in the desk chair, pulled next to the bed. His legs were stretched out, his head tipped back against the wall. His eyes were open. He hadn’t slept. She could see it in the lines around his mouth and the weight in his posture. He’d been sitting in that chair all night.

Everything came back. The café. The crowd. Her brain firing out of control. Her legs giving out on the path and Ryder’s arms catching her.

Being carried. Her face against his shoulder. The sound she’d made when he lifted her.

The mortification hit so hard her eyes burned. He’d seen it. All of it. The thing she’d hidden from everyone her entire life, including Fallon, and this man had watched every humiliating second of it.

And he was still here.

“Hey.” His voice was quiet. “How are you feeling?”