She also didn’t know the depths of that pain and her torture were not even close to being plumbed until he made her admit she loved him.
God, it was too humiliating to even contemplate.
She admitted she loved him!
Which, because evidently she was weak, weak, weak, was all she could contemplate while lying in bed that morning.
“I’m sure Callum and I will be fine,” she lied again to Regan who gave her a look like she knew Sonia was lying but she let it go.
She stayed while Sonia ate and then gave Sonia pain pills because the stitches at her back were, by then, killing her and the pills made Sonia drowsy.
Therefore, Sonia slept.
She woke in Callum’s arms.
Or, more precisely, with her head and hand resting on his stomach, his shoulders were against the headboard, his long legs stretched out straight in front of him and his arm was around her shoulders with his fingers drawing lazy circles on her skin.
“You awake, honey?” he asked.
She clenched her jaw at the empty endearment.
“Yes,” she answered.
“How are you feeling?”
Like garbage, through and through, she thought but did not say out loud.
“It hurts.” And that wasn’t a lie. It was just an understatement.
“Poor baby,” he murmured and he was lucky she was wounded or she’d have attacked even though he could rip her to shreds with his claws and his teeth.
“Regan said you had a nice visit,” he told her.
“We did,” Sonia affirmed.
His hand squeezed her shoulder with approval.
She again fought the urge to tear her stitches out of her back by attacking him.
“Do you feel like moving around?” he asked. “I’ll help you in the bath.”
She did not think so.
“Are you telling me I stink?” she snapped irately.
He chuckled before he said (false) fondly, “You never stink, my little one.”
She’d had enough and therefore started to pull away from him saying, “I should move around. I don’t want to get stiff.”
She didn’t get very far before his hands went under her arms and he pulled her gently up to rest on his chest with their faces close.
She put her hands on his chest and pushed back but his arm slid around her lower waist and he held her still.
When she stopped moving, his other hand went behind her head, grasping her hair in one big fist, pulling it over her shoulder and twisting it again and again until it formed a long twine. Then he wrapped it around his palm at the side of her neck.
He watched his hand doing this as if enthralled.
“Callum,” she called and reminded him, “I was going to move around.”