Toxic Game (GhostWalkers #15) - Christine Feehan Page 0,76

didn’t move. You didn’t flinch, not even to protect yourself. You kept your hands down. You just watched me with those eyes of yours and for a second, I felt like I was drowning. I knew then it was you.”

“That’s the most beautiful thing anyone’s ever said to me. I like that you knew.”

He stood up to gather the dishes and take them to the basin-type sink. He liked that she didn’t argue with him about his knowing. She just accepted it. He wasn’t even going to bring up Whitney and his inevitable pairing. Or the fact that he’d considered killing her right then.

“When I woke up and realized that you had given me mouth-to-mouth, I wanted to shake you. And yell at the top of my lungs how unfair life was. You know, a child’s reaction.”

She cleared the rest of the table while he washed the dishes. “I had the same childish reaction when you told me you were infected. At last I’d found someone I was truly interested in, and you were telling me you were going to die. That sucked.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.” Draden didn’t want to think about her leaving, but he was desperate for her to have a chance to live. He had to get her to agree to leave. He knew the others would get her to a hospital and do everything they could to make certain she lived. “If you were at a hospital, there’s a chance they could use your blood to develop a vaccine or a therapy to treat the virus. Joe could pick you up tomorrow and take you to a hospital.” He risked a look at her.

Shylah stood absolutely still, her face a mask of shock. Rejection. Anger. Hurt even. It was all there. She didn’t say a word. Instead she left him standing there at the kitchen sink and went straight out the door. She didn’t exactly slam it, but she closed it very, very firmly, just loud enough to make him wince.

Outside, light spilled through the canopy and lit up the entire morning. He stood at the window and watched her sink down onto the porch stairs. She seemed to be rocking herself back and forth for comfort. It was the first real sign he’d seen from her that she was close to a breaking point. One couldn’t see the results of a filovirus and the way they caused severe hemorrhagic fevers in humans and not be terrified. He wasn’t being stoic. He was as terrified as a man could get, but he had trained himself to stay ahead of fear. He ran. He was running now, killing as many of the MSS as possible to give himself purpose while the virus took effect.

Shylah had to be just as scared, maybe even more so. She didn’t want to be alone, not in a hospital surrounded by strangers, any more than he did. He didn’t want to go out feeling like a helpless, terrified lab experiment. He wanted to choose that moment when he lifted his hand and ended his suffering. Before he did that, he was determined to record every step of the disease’s progression, so Trap and the others could hopefully find a way to stop the virus from spreading across the world.

He dried his hands while he thought it all through. He didn’t want her to die. That was his hold-out hope, the one he needed to make it through this without breaking. Maybe she needed him. He hadn’t considered that she might need him. Another thing he hadn’t considered was that maybe being there for her was more important to him than what he needed. He had told her he would stop pushing her away and then he’d just done the same thing again.

He tossed the towel on the counter and went out to her. He didn’t say anything, he just sank down onto the stairs beside her, thighs touching. Reaching over, he took her hand and slowly, one by one, opened the fingers she had curled into a fist. He was grateful she didn’t pull away from him. He lifted her hand to his mouth and brushed a kiss there before pressing her palm to his heart.

They sat together for a few minutes in silence. He listened to the birds and insects. They were great sentries, the birds in the air and the insects on the ground. Loud, the insects nearly drowned out every other noise, but the birds rivaled them with