Page 96

He let go then and backed up by a single step. Then he looked at me with those startling eyes of his and something moved at the corner of his mouth.

“It certainly wasn’t easy.” He said it almost pleasantly. “I underestimated you, little bird… Badly. But make no mistake, for it won’t be happening a second time.”

“I never asked you to find me,” I told him with a frown.

“No,” he agreed at once, which threw me. “You never asked me. But then I did tell you, did I not, that there is no version of this world where I would let you go.”

“You’re insane,” I gritted out making him grin down at me in that wholly unnerving way of his.

“Very probably, which is why there is a building full of people here who would agree with you, as I am told the paperwork is extensive,” he replied like this was a joke and it was on me.

“Why are you here?” My voice cracked down the middle of it and I hated the sound. “How are you even here? This is a hospital… you were in a maximum security…”

“Asking me that means you clearly underestimate my means, little nurse.” He said it gently, and that was worse. Because it wasn’t a boast but more like a correction, gently made, as though I had simply gotten the whole of him wrong.

“What… what are you going to do?” I stammered this time.

And this was when he changed, because he looked at me properly for the first time. Not at my face but at the rest of me, slowly, up and down, and not in the way men usually look at a woman.

More like he was taking stock.

“I am not going to hurt you, if that’s what you are asking,” he replied. Then his hands came down on my waist and stupidly, I didn’t stop him.

Instead, I just stood there in a treatment room in a maximum-security hospital, in a building full of people whose job it was to keep men like him away from women like me. But no, I let a murderer put his hands on my waist, and the only thing my whole traitorous body did about it was lean closer.

Two months.

Two fucking months of a shower stall running behind my eyes every night whether I wanted it there or not. Two months since his hands had been on me and now here I was, with them going back to the exact same place they had been back then. Which was precisely why my breath went out of me in a way I couldn’t disguise. Why I felt my own knees go weak, and I felt him feel it. It was why I hated us both equally in that moment. Him for making me feel this way and me for responding to it in a way I shouldn’t crave.

“You made me wait far too long, little bird.” There was something almost wounded in it. As though the waiting had been a thing I had done to him on purpose, and he wasn’t sure whether he had forgiven me for it or not. Then his thumbs moved along the front of my hipbones, and I felt his hands change. The span of them. The way they closed and found more room than they should have.

Everything in him went still.

“You have lost weight,” he stated firmly, and it was like a switch flipping in him. The kind you know better than to reach for twice.

“I… I…” I stammered again, this time unable to look at him any longer, as if his reaction was making me feel guilty, which was stupid.

“Look at me,” he demanded quietly, in a tone I couldn’t quite trust. Which was precisely why I looked up at him.

“You’ve lost weight, you have shadows under your eyes and there is nothing to you.” He paused long enough to shake his head before accusing,

“You haven’t been taking care of yourself.”

It wasn’t tender but almost angry. That’s what I couldn’t get my head around. It wasn’t just that he was concerned about me but more like he was displeased or disappointed in me. Something that pissed me off enough to snap,

“I’m fine… in fact, I have been absolutely fine without you.” For some reason this didn’t annoy him the way I hoped, as he smirked down at me.

“Then tell me, what has been keeping you awake?”

The question threw me off, which meant I wasn’t ready for it and because of that, I tensed.

I felt myself do it. I felt every muscle from my jaw to my knees give me away at once, and I watched him feel it happen under his hands before understanding washed over his features. Something I can only describe as pleasure.

“Ah,” he uttered softly. “So, you have been dreaming of me.”

“No… no, I haven’t,” I stuttered pointlessly.

“Anna.” Fuck but there it was… the first time he had said my name in two months, and I hated how much it affected me. Which was why I looked away. It was the only thing left to do with my face, so I turned it toward the wired window and the gray sky filling it. Something he didn’t allow for long as his two fingers and a thumb closed on my chin and turned me back to face him, tilting it up.