Chapter 192: ~You Don't Get to Do This~

Aria's POV

I woke up a little disoriented to the dull throb in my ankle and lingering heat under my skin. The room was quiet save for the soft hum of machines and the faint sound of someone breathing nearby.

I swallowed and my throat felt raw, my mouth tasted somewhat bitter. Also my body felt heavy and tired. I fought against the exhaustion and tried lifting my hands to rub at my eyes but that's when I felt someone's grip tighten around it. Tingles immediately shot up the spot and my eyes flew open.

I turned my head against the pillow to find Darius sitting in the chair next to my bed. He had his head tipped back at an angle that looked deeply uncomfortable, his hand holding my wrist exactly the way I remembered from the haze of my dreams. Except it hadn't been a dream at all.

Watching him there made the bond stir up in my chest. He hadn't changed since the last time I saw him so that meant he had stayed with me the entire night.

My chest tightened but not in a good way. I hated that he was touching me and hated that he stayed. It felt like he was relying on the effects of the bond to get what he wanted. And it was working because more than once now, I've truly wondered what all this was all about and it wasn't fair.

So I pulled my wrist free sharply, and the movement jolted him awake instantly, his eyes flying open, confused for half a second before they landed on me and softened into something like relief.

“You are awake,” he said, voice rough from sleep. “How do you feel…?”

The concern in his voice made something in me snap so I finally spoke up. "Could you please leave?" The words came out low and hard, cutting straight through whatever he'd been about to say.

He blinked, clearly caught off guard by the tone I used. "Aria…”

I sat up slowly, ignoring the pull in my ankle and the way the room tilted for a moment. The sheet slipped down my arms but I did not bother fixing it. All I could think about was the anger building inside me. “You do not get to do this.”

“I just wanted to make sure you were…"

“I don't care what you wanted to do so just leave. No one asked you to stay." My voice came out sharper than I intended it to but I didn't care, as everything I'd wanted to say before finally found a crack to spill through. "And quite frankly you didn't have any right to.”

"You needed attention last night," he said, sitting up straighter, like logic might fix this. "I wasn't going to just leave you here alone."

"You don't get to decide that." I pushed myself up against the pillows, ignoring the way my head spun with the movement. "You don't get to swoop in now, playing the devoted mate, sitting by my bed all night like some kind of penance, and thinking that erases anything."

"That's not what I was trying to do," he said, and to his credit, he didn't raise his voice, didn't argue the way I half expected him to.

"Like I already said, I don't care what you were trying to do." My hands curled into the blanket at my sides, knuckles white. “The last time I really needed you, the last time I was at my most vulnerable, you looked at me like I was lying. You let me lose everything alone in a cell you put me in. And now you think doing this while I was too sick to know better makes up for that?”

"Aria." His voice cracked slightly on my name, and a flash of hurt crossed his expression before he could mask it. I saw it clearly and I had wanted my words to cause pain but somehow it made me feel a whole lot worse. "I know I can't fix that. I know there's nothing I can say that makes any of it okay but…”

"Then leave," I said, my voice shaking now despite myself. "Prove you actually understand that by walking out that door right now."

For a long moment he didn't move, his eyes searching my face like he was looking for some sign that I didn't mean it. I held his gaze and didn't give him one.

He stood slowly, the chair scraping against the floor, and without another word he turned and walked out, the door clicking shut softly behind him.

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and forced myself to breathe, trying to convince myself that the tightness in my chest was satisfaction and not regret.

That was when I saw it. The bowl sitting on the small table beside my bed, a damp towel draped over the rim exactly where he must have set it down at some point during the night.

My whole body went rigid.

I stared at that bowl for a long moment, my anger from a minute ago sitting strangely at odds with the image right in front of me, proof of hours spent tending to me. I didn't know how to feel about that.

The frustration curled up tighter within me with slight guilt threading in but I ignored it because nothing could possibly undo everything he'd done.