Chapter 69 69
Kaelen's POV:
"The bruise," I said, mostly to have something to say. "On your temple. I got most of it last night but there's still some discoloration. Can I...?"
She opened her eyes. Looked at me for a long second. Then nodded.
I let go of her right hand and raised mine to her face. Slow. Giving her time to change her mind, to flinch, to say no.
She didn't.
My fingers touched her temple, right at the edge of her hairline where the bruise had faded from dark purple to a sickly yellow-green. The healing warmth concentrated there, focused, and I felt the damaged tissue responding, the bruise dissolving under my touch.
She closed her eyes again.
My thumb was on her cheekbone. My fingers were in her hair, the tangled mess of it, and I could feel her pulse under the pad of my thumb, fast, faster than resting. My own heart was doing something similar, this jackhammer rhythm that she could probably feel through our connected skin.
Her face was right there. Right there, inches from mine, her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted and the morning light from the window catching the gold flecks in her lashes. I could feel her breath on my wrist, warm and unsteady.
The bond opened between us like a door someone had been leaning against and finally let go. Her emotions flooded into me, or mine into her, or both at once. Fear and relief and grief and longing and anger and underneath all of it, underneath the walls and the hurt and the weeks of silence, something that felt exactly like what I felt for her. The same shape, the same weight, the same desperate terrified thing that wouldn't die no matter how hard she tried to kill it.
She felt it too. I knew because her breath caught, this tiny hitch in her throat, and her hand came up and closed around my wrist. Not pulling me away. Just holding on. Her fingers pressing into the spot where my pulse was hammering.
We stayed like that. My hand on her face, her hand on my wrist, the healing warmth flowing between us and the bond wide open and both of us breathing too fast and neither of us moving because moving meant either closer or away and both options were terrifying.
I wanted to kiss her so badly my teeth ached with it.
I didn't.
"The bruise is gone," I said. My voice sounded wrecked. Didn't even sound like me.
She opened her eyes. They were wet, not crying, just wet, the kind of thing that happens when you hold your breath too long and your body forgets what to do.
"Thank you," she said. Her voice was rough too. Her fingers were still on my wrist.
I should've pulled away then. The bruise was healed, the formal justification was done. I should've let go, stood up, said something normal about getting water or checking on Marcus, anything to break whatever was happening in this room because it was too much, too fast, too soon.
I didn't pull away.
"The rest of the healing," I said. "For the drug. I should keep... we should keep going. If you want."
"Okay."
I lowered my hand from her face. Took both her hands again. The warmth resumed, steadier now, and she leaned back against the headboard and closed her eyes and I sat there holding her hands on a bed in a safe house in the middle of nowhere while the cardinal outside screamed its three-note song at the empty November sky.
Her grip loosened after about twenty minutes. Her breathing slowed. She'd fallen asleep, her head tipped sideways against the pillow, her fingers still loosely wrapped around mine.
I didn't let go.
Kept the healing flowing, slow and steady, feeling the cold spots in her system warming back up one by one. Her color was better already, the blue tinge gone from her lips, her skin less paper-white. Whatever the drug was doing, it was losing.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I fished it out with one hand, keeping the other in Annabeth's.
Marcus: "Perimeter clear. No Order activity. They're either regrouping or they got the message."
I typed back one-handed: "She's sleeping. Healing seems to be working."
Marcus: "Good. Keep going."
Then, a few seconds later: "And eat something. There's canned soup in the cabinet."
Canned soup. In the cabinet of a safe house with a cracked bathroom mirror and a dented coffee pot and a mattress that smelled like dust. This was what our lives were now.
Annabeth made a sound in her sleep. Not a word, just a small noise in the back of her throat, and her fingers tightened around mine. Reflexive, unconscious. Like even asleep, some part of her knew I was there and didn't want me to leave.
Or maybe I was reading too much into it. Probably was. Definitely was.
I looked at our hands, hers and mine tangled together on the blanket, and thought about all the times I'd held these hands before. Back when everything was simpler, before I ruined it, before the lie about Marcus turned us into this, two people who loved each other and couldn't figure out how to be in the same room without bleeding.
But she'd said okay. Twice. Had held out her hands and let me take them and closed her eyes and said it felt like sitting in the sun.
That had to mean something.
So I kept holding on.