Especially his sympathetic expression.
“You need to rest.” He eases me back down on the pillow for the millionth time, his tone infuriatingly even. As if I’m a child and he’s my parent.
“I’ll go insane if I rest for another minute.” I can feel the insanity creeping in at the borders of my body. It’s a buzzing in my elbows and my shoulders and down by my hips. “I mean it.”
He sighs, dropping into the seat next to the cot. Most times when I wake up, he’s there. He’s always there.
“Your body needs more time.”
“And then what? When this is gone, will I still be trapped here in the church?” I gesture to the wound at my side, the movement causing a twinge of pain through the skin and muscle. I don’t allow my face to react. The sports bra was a fun development in the wound-healing process. I go shirtless now, with no bandages, so my skin can knit itself back together in the open air.
The wound itself looks small now. Only an inch and a half of red scar tissue. Ironically it hurts now more than ever. On the inside, it feels like knives. I ignore the sharp points and keep looking into Elijah’s eyes. He’s going to answer me, damn it.
He shifts in his chair. “No.”
“You’re lying to me. We’re stuck here, aren’t we? Because of me. Because I shot him.” For the rest of my life, I’ll remember the sensation of recoil. It was different than when Elijah taught me to shoot. The bullet seemed to weigh more, even hanging in the air, even separate from me.
“Don’t worry about that right now.”
My heart beats harder, forcing more blood through my veins. My head throbs along with my wounded side. It takes a real effort not to grind my teeth together until they crack. How can he be so consistently calm about all of this? I’m ready to shed my skin like a snake and disappear into a puff of smoke, and there Elijah sits, watching me with concern in his eyes. I hate it.
“I did it to free you. So you could finally be rid of him.”
He looks away. “And you succeeded.”
“Except now I’m wanted for murder.”
“No one knows what happened in that apartment.”
“The men with him definitely know what happened. They shot me.”
“You don’t need to worry about them anymore.”
I’m not worried, precisely. It’s more like I’m in eternal agony. I know I’m losing perspective, but it doesn’t feel like I’ll ever really heal. If I live ten more years, or twenty, there will still be this terrible pain in my side. It’s as if I really was a mermaid who turned into a human. Now I forever have to walk the sandy shore, unsteady and excluded, in this new form.
He’s giving me that patient look again.
“You should be angry,” I say, venom in my voice. I’m the one angry—at circumstances, at the pain. And some of that anger transfers to the only other human I’ve seen in weeks. “You should be furious at me for pulling the trigger. For killing a man.”
“I’ve killed more men than you will ever know.”
“For killing that man. Your mentor. Your commanding officer.”
“He was a bastard. I once watched him order a man under his command to eat peanuts, knowing he was allergic to them. One. Two. Three. He ate them until he went into shock. He died, Holly. That’s who you stopped. Someone who killed for the joy of it.”
That makes me shiver. The colonel wasn’t a good man, but hearing that story makes him more real. As if his ghost haunts this old church now, malevolent and cold. “You shouldn’t make excuses for me. It’s because of me that you’re hiding right now.”
He runs a hand over his face, and I see a crack in the facade. He’s exhausted, and I know I’m to blame for that. He’s hurting, only his wounds don’t bleed like mine. “What do you want me to say? That I’m glad he’s dead? I am. That you shouldn’t have killed him? No, that was my fucking job. I failed you.”
“Hate me,” I say, and he’s already shaking his head before the words are out.
“You were protecting me. No one has ever done that before. Even my brothers—I don’t blame them. They saved themselves the only way they knew how, but they didn’t save me. No, I did that the day I killed my own father. No one has ever protected me before you.”
I force myself upright—yes, finally—and Elijah puts up his hands to stop me. I throw all of my frustration into my glare, and he stops, putting his hands back into his lap. I hate that even more than I hate his calm, his composure. Fighting him would be better than this. I’d fight him right now if he tried to stop me again. Even if it meant tearing open the wound. Damn it, I wish he would, but of course he doesn’t give me the satisfaction. Only a patient look.
“I’m tired of this.” There’s a broken edge to my voice that I also hate. So much hate and pain that I’m drowning in it. It tastes metallic on my tongue. “Of you taking care of me. Of being an invalid. Of having you take care of me like a goddamn martyr.”
His green eyes turn dark, the color of moss in a forest. “I’m a shit caregiver. I know that.”
“It’s exactly the opposite. You’re perfect. Too damned perfect. I want you to rail at me. Yell, scream, tell me you’re sick and tired of feeding me chicken broth, because I’m damn sure tired of eating it.” I’m too loud, the rising voice too much for my overtaxed body, but I don’t care. I don’t care. I can’t care any longer.
Elijah’s lip quirks. “You want Chinese takeout?”
“Yes. But I can’t have it. We’d be found out.” I know this like I know he’ll come in here at the first sign I’ve tried to move. I know this like I know the edge of guilt in his eyes that never leaves. It’s there when I wake up, and there when I fall asleep, just like the relentless pain.
“I can maybe sneak a dumpling or two.” It’s a joke. A gentle joke for the woman who’s slowly going insane in the basement of a church. Elijah runs a soothing hand over my arm, a gentle pressure reminding me—yet again—that I need to rest.
He lets the silence settle over us like a blanket. I could kill him for being so perfect. I could kill him and kiss him and fight him if he’d just let me.
All my anger seeps into the ceiling and taunts me from up there, as useless as I am. I’m reduced to a hand on my arm. It’s not the kind of touch I crave from Elijah. It’s so neutral and bloodless that I don’t recognize it at all, never mind that it’s the way he’s been touching me for days.
I don’t know this man. This perfect, steady man who never shows me anything but competent concern. He’s been like some kind of caring robot, never flinching at my pain or at the blood, never losing his patience.
What happened to the beast who bared his teeth behind bars?
I’ve been trapped in this cell with the prince instead. A stranger.
CHAPTER SIX
Elijah
She’s pushing me.
Holly doesn’t lay back down. She tips her head back and glares at the ceiling.
That’s good.
Because I can’t let her see. I can’t let her see how close they are to the surface—my guilt, my shame. The violence that sits at my core. It wouldn’t take much to bring them out into the open. It never has taken much, and they’re like monsters now. They chew at the marrow of my bones and threaten to burst out of my flesh.