A Deep and Dark December(89)
Graham suddenly appeared in the doorway. He exhaled hard when his gaze found Erin.
Cerie went to him. “Thank you for saving Erin.” She patted him on the arm. “You’re a good man, Graham.”
*
Graham watched Cerie leave, not knowing what to say, his chest still tight and heaving with the panic that he had to get to Erin. Now.
“My dad,” Erin said.
Graham tried to focus on what Erin was saying, pretending he didn’t see how pale and small she looked in her hospital bed. Would he ever stop seeing the image of her bleeding into the dirt? “I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “What?”
“I’m all right. On the mend.” She lifted a hand, the wires that hooked her to machines moving with the action. “I’m sorry if whatever thought my dad put into your head made you think otherwise.”
He realized he still wasn’t quite used to abilities or powers or whatever the hell they were. Maybe because he’d been suddenly handed a membership into a club he’d hardly known existed until a couple of months ago, and one he really didn’t want to belong to. “He’s not very happy with me.”
“He’ll get over it and come around. How are you?”
“Me?”
Nobody had asked him that so he didn’t have a ready answer. Or any kind of answer at all. He lifted his shoulders and hoped she didn’t see how badly he wanted to go to her, wrap his arms around her, and bury his face in the softness of her. She was the one thing that could ground him in the here and now, but he couldn’t even walk all the way into the room with her. He stood just inside the doorway, feeling hopeless and so f*cking useless, wondering why he couldn’t have taken the bullets instead of her.
“I’m sorry about your father.”
He flinched at her sympathy. He should be the one expressing some kind of sentiment. But what was the pat response for all the wrong Ham had inflicted? What were the words you used to smooth over the way your own father had tortured the woman you love day and night? How do you make up for using your ability to take away her free will? And what in the hell do you say to get her to look at you the way she used to?
“Come here,” she beckoned softly.
Stuck in a strange, torturous limbo, he couldn’t get his feet to move toward her and he couldn’t leave. He’d felt nothing before, but now—here with her—he felt everything. His skin prickled hot and he resisted the overwhelming urge to scratch and scratch until he flayed the skin he was in and shed it for a new one that he could stand to live in.
“Graham.”
She said his name in the way she used to, pulling on the string that bound them together. Except he couldn’t feel the tug the way he did before, as though the line had become frayed and was dangerously close to snapping.
“It hurts,” he blurted out.
“I know it does.” She held her one good arm out to him and he wanted nothing more than to go to her, but he wasn’t sure of what was real anymore, what was for him and what he generated without meaning to. “Come here,” she offered again.
He shook his head.
“Please.” She moved her fingers, inviting him in.
“No. You don’t get it. You don’t know.”
“I know what it’s like to lose a parent.”
“I can’t.”
“Graham—”
“No! Stop it. You just don’t know.”
“I want to help you. I—”
“Don’t you get it? It’s you. It hurts to be with you.”
She dropped her hand, her lips parting, her face growing even paler. He saw the tears forming in her eyes, but she didn’t understand. He couldn’t stand to be in the same room with her. It physically hurt to be near her.
And he knew it would be f*cking agony to live without her.
“Come here,” Erin said slow and even, the hard edge of anger sliding through her words. “Or I’m climbing out of this bed and coming to you.”
To prove it, she flicked her covers off and started to lower her legs over the side of the bed. He was by her side in two seconds, tucking her feet back under the blankets and smoothing it down around her. She grabbed his wrist with her good hand and pulled. He had to brace himself on both sides of her hips or tumble down on top of her.
“Sit down,” she ordered.
He sat. But only because she still had a grip on his wrist. And she’d been shot…and maybe because he wanted to be near her so badly he couldn’t help himself.
“Lean closer so I don’t have to strain myself looking up at you.”
He did as she ordered, bending toward her. “Are you—”
She grabbed the back of his head and cut him off with a kiss. There was no time to react. One moment he was feeling sorry for himself, feeling guilty for her getting shot, feeling as though he didn’t have the right to a place in her life, and the next he was swamped with a yearning so strong all other thought and emotion was swept away. It was just him and her and this kiss that went on and on.
She finally broke it, easing back in the bed. He found himself following her and was pulled into a one-armed hug so fierce it knocked some of the wind out of him. It wasn’t her strength that surprised him, it was the way she fisted the back of his shirt, gripping him hard as though he was going to float away. Or run away.