The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #13)(150)

This issue with Layla was not going to break him.

Forcing his feet forward, he went into the bathroom and turned the shower on. The blood the whore had given him was providing him with a physical strength he had not felt since …

No, he couldn’t think of Layla anymore.

He had to shut her out. Shut his emotions down.

It was like a death, he told himself. And Fates knew he was all too familiar with and accomplished in that most definitive currency.

Stepping under the cold spray, he picked up the soap to begin to wash his skin—but then he stopped himself.

No, he needed to keep the stank on his flesh.

The purpose of this shower was solely to wake him out of the post-feeding lethargy that was fuzzing up his brain. After this, he was going to go address his soldiers.

It was time to refocus and renew their efforts in the war.

And resume the natural course of his life.





FIFTY-NINE


Trez replugged into the world on a buzzy, trippy high that was the only arguably positive thing about having a migraine: Following the great storm of pain and nausea, there was always a floaty, post-agony period when you were so f*cking grateful not to have an invisible ax buried in half your gray matter anymore that you just wanted to hug the world.

Opening his eyes, he blinked a couple of times and looked at the open door to the bathroom. Where was—

“Are you awake?”

At the sound of Selena’s voice behind him, he shoved his torso up off the mattress and cranked around. “Hey.”

She was over on the chaise longue, reading from a Kindle, the glow from the screen casting her features in soft light.

“How are you feeling?” She put the thing aside and came over.

“Better.” Kinda. Now he was worried about her again. “How are you?”

Had anything changed while he’d been out of it? How long had he—

“No, nothing’s changed. And you’ve been out for about eight hours.”

Ah, so he’d spoken all that.

He took her hand and tried to be subtle about the way he tested how she gripped his palm back, how she sat down on the mattress beside him.

“Is there any particular reason you won’t look me in the eye?” he asked.

“Are you hungry?”

“No, especially not when you’re dodging that question.”

He was being way too direct, but social pleasantries and bullshitting were not his core competencies on a good night.

“I, ah, I went to see Doc Jane.”

Now his blood ran cold as ice. “Why?”

“I just wanted to check in with her.”

“And?”

“She did some tests and…”

At that point, his hearing punched its time card and went on break. “I’m sorry, say that again?”

Maybe if she repeated the words, things would somehow sink in through the alarm bells that were DEFCON 1’ing it in his skull.

“…when we’re ready to see her.”

Trez sat all the way up. Rubbed his face. Looked over at her—while she stared at the carpet. “Go down to the clinic, you mean?”

“And meet with them both. Manny will be there, too.”

“Okay. Yeah.” He glanced at the bathroom. “I need a shower first.”

“There’s no hurry.”

Right, that was not how he felt at all. Pushing himself around her, he got off the bed and padded into the loo, where he turned on the water, used the toilet, and got under the spray. Fast hands with the shampoo and the soap and he didn’t bother shaving.

Out. Drying off. Heading back into the bedroom with a towel around his waist.

She was still sitting where she had been.

As he passed by at a near run to the walk-in closet, her hand snapped out and grabbed onto his wrist.

When she finally looked up at him, her stare was rock-steady, but intense enough to burn a hole through the back of his head. And for some reason, the combination terrified him.

“I need to talk to you first,” she said.

Closing his eyes briefly, Trez sank down to his knees in front of her, and in the back of his mind, he thought, No, no, I don’t want to hear it. Whatever this is, I don’t want—

Her hands, those beautiful hands, reached up to his face and traced his brows, his cheeks, his jaw. As one of her thumbs brushed over his lower lip, he kissed it.

“Luchas lost it tonight.”

Trez frowned and shook his head. “I’m sorry—what?”

“Down at the clinic. He just … lost it. They took part of his leg to save him—I think he’s going to live. But he isn’t happy about it.”

“Oh. Okay. Yeah.”

Even though it was cruel, all he could think was, So what?

“He wanted to die. He was so angry that they didn’t let him.”

What does this have to do with us, he screamed in his head. Who gives a shit—

“I don’t want to go,” she said. “I don’t want to leave you. On some level, I don’t even know how to—I mean, when my time comes, I literally can’t imagine it.”

Trez swallowed through a throat that was tight as a vise.

Before he could respond, she whispered, “I’m terrified.”