Dirty Little Secrets (Dirty Little #1)(24)
“Oh,” I reply, feeling like I’m on the verge of tears. My emotions are all over the place, and they feel absolutely unstoppable.
“It’s going to be okay.”
Caleb is really good at this whole soothing me in crisis thing. I decide that he’s the person that I want to have around for any other kind of emergency I might have in my life. Emergency. Shit - I just remembered that my insurance card was in my bag, along with my ID.
“My wallet’s gone, too. I don’t know my insurance information,” I say, hysteria creeping back into my voice.
“I took care of everything, you don’t have to worry about it.”
I’m going to have to figure out how much all of this is costing and pay him back. I’m determined to do that once I get my life in order, no matter how long it takes.
“Is there anyone you want me to call?” he asks. “Your parents? A friend?”
The soft, gentle way he’s talking to me makes me want to drift off to sleep again. It’s so relaxing that I think I might not even need whatever medication the nurse has gone to get for me.
“My parents are dead,” I tell him, unable to stop myself. I definitely don’t want him calling Marcus. “So there’s no one.” It hurts to realize exactly how true that is. “Will you stay with me?”
He grips my hand tightly, and says, “Of course I will.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, fully dressed in the clothes I had been wearing the night I was robbed. Caleb had been kind enough to have them cleaned, but wearing them still feels wrong. I’m being discharged today, after two days of observation. My brain activity is fine, and the swelling on my face is going down. I’m getting better, despite the fact that the bruises on my cheek and eye are blooming an angry, deep purple.
I feel oddly detached from everything at the moment. Caleb is standing across from me, listening intently to the nurse as she describes my care instructions to him. It’s funny that I’ve spent the past month or so on the run from an actual hitman, but a common street criminal was able to bring me down first. Luckily I had a stash of cash and a credit card in my pocket, and I still have my burner phone that I can contact Marcus on, but my computer…god, my computer is gone.
Thankfully, the hard drive will overwrite itself if anyone other than me tries to sign in on it, and I do have backups of all my programs stored safely in the cloud. There’s just the small issue of not having enough cash to replace the machine that I had. I could charge the parts, sure, but do I risk putting a transaction with my name on it out there for Privya to find? I could take a train to Connecticut or something, and take out a cash advance there. But then I’d risk him knowing where in the country I am, and…maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe I’m worrying for nothing.
“Miss Briggs?” I hear the nurse say.
I shake head, pulling myself out of my thoughts. The nurse is looking at me patiently, with a faint smile. Caleb is looking at me like he’s not sure I should be allowed to leave this hospital.
“Yes?” I say, distractedly.
“You need to come back immediately if you experience any of the symptoms on this sheet,” the nurse replies, pointing to a piece of paper that Caleb is holding in his hands. “Understood?”
I nod.
“You’re going to be staying with Mister Simmons?” she asks, nodding at Caleb.
“She is.” Caleb gives me a look that’s nearly a glare, just daring me to say otherwise. He insisted on me staying with him while I recuperated, and I fought him on it. It’s too soon, it’s too much, but at the same time…where else am I going to go? I’m low on funds, and my prospects are looking pretty bleak right now. It was a superficial fight. I want to stay with him, and, as much as I hate it, I need to stay with him.
“All right,” the nurse says, as an orderly shows up with a wheelchair.
“Is this really necessary?” I ask.
Caleb gives me that look again, the one that’s just daring me to put up a fight. The nurse quickly tells me that it’s hospital policy, and that if I want to get out of this place, I’m going to have to do it in a wheelchair.
If it’s my only means of escaping? I’ll happily let someone take me for a ride.
“You’re going to have your hands full with this one,” the nurse tells Caleb.
Caleb looks at me fondly, like there isn’t anything in the world that he would change about me, and it makes a warm rush of some unnamed emotion flow through me. He walks ahead to get an elevator for us, and as she pushes me through the door and down the hallway, the nurse leans down and whispers in my ear. “You’ve got a good one here, honey. You better hold onto him.”
I know Caleb is going to have some questions for me that I’m not going to want to answer. I wonder how long I’ll be hanging on to him after that.
* * * * *
Caleb and I are quiet on our way back to his apartment, but he holds my hand in the back of the town car as we ride along the busy streets of Manhattan. When we arrive at his building, I follow him inside. It feels strange being here like this, since I’m not here for a visit, I’m here to stay for however long I need or want to, or until I wear out my welcome. I feel naked without my bag, and for as much as Caleb used to tease me about it, he hasn’t breathed a word of it since the short conversation we had after I woke up in the hospital room, where I told him that it was all that I had. Maybe he thinks I don’t remember telling him that, but either way, I’m grateful to not have to answer questions about that statement right now.