You touched me with great restraint and showed me things that enraptured me—but beneath the flush of passion that I felt, I knew. . . .”
“You’re not in love with me, either, Layla. You just aren’t. You felt a lot of physical shit, and that made you think it was emotional. The trouble is, body needs a hell of a lot less than the soul does to connect.”
She placed her free hand over her heart. “The sting is there.”
“Because you’ve had a crush on me. That’ll fade. Especially when you meet the right guy.”
God, check his shit out. From slut to camp counselor in a week. Next up: a guest stint on The-fucking-View.
He extended his forearm. “Take my vein so you can stay longer on this side and figure out what it is that you want from life—not what you’re supposed to be or do, but what you want. I’ll even help you if I can. God knows I’m well-versed in being lost.”
There was a long moment. And then her green eyes shifted to his. “Blaylock . . . knows not what he is missing.”
Qhuinn shook his head grimly. “Oh, he’s very aware of it. it. Trust me.”
Cleanup was not a cinch.
As Jane rolled a bucket and mop out from the housekeeping closet, she ran through the reordering that was going to be necessary to get her supplies back where they needed to be: They’d used up a hundred packages of gauze; her needle-to-thread ratio was a joke; they were straight out of wrap bandages. . . .
Opening the door to the exam room with her butt, she swung the pail around using the mop head and then took a breather. There was blood everywhere on the floor, and also down the walls. Wads of red-stained white gauze were the Freddy Krueger equiv of dust bunnies. Three biohazard bags were full to the point of needing an antacid for the bloating.
And a paaaartridge in a pear treeeeeeeeeeee . . .
Confronting the aftermath, she realized that if Manny hadn’t been with her, they might have lost one of the Brothers. Rhage, for instance, could have bled out. Or Tohr—because what had looked like a simple shoulder injury had turned out to be oh, so much more.
Manny had ended up having to operate on him. After he’d finished doing surgery on Vishous.
Closing her eyes, she propped her heavy head against the pointy top of the mop. As a ghost, she didn’t become exhausted the way she’d used to: no aches or pains, no dragging sense like someone had tied barbells to both her ankles. Now it was her psyche that grew weary, to the point where she had to shut her lids and see and do absolutely nothing—like her brain’s circuit board needed to be turned off and cooled down.
And she did sleep then. And dreamed.
Or . . . as probably would be the case today . . . not. Insomnia was still an issue from time to time—
“You’re going to need to broom it first.”
Snapping her head up, she tried to smile for Manny. “I think you’re right.”
“How about you let me take care of this.”
No. Way. She was not in a hurry to go lock herself in the other recovery room and stare at the ceiling. Besides, Manny had to feel as tired as she did.
“How long has it been since you ate last?” she asked him.
“What time is it?”
She glanced at her watch. “One o’clock.”
“In the afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“About twelve hours or so.” He seemed surprised at that.
She reached for the phone on the desk. “I’ll call Fritz.”
“Listen, you don’t have to—”
“You must be about to fall over.”
“Actually, I feel great.”
Wasn’t that just like a man. Unless . . . Well, hell, he did look energized instead of drained.
Whatever. She was still feeding him.
The ordering didn’t take longer than a minute, and Fritz was thrilled by the request. Usually after Last Meal, the butler and his staff retired for a brief rest before the daily cleaning started, but they would much rather have been working.
“Where’s the housekeeping closet?” Manny asked.
“Out in the hall. To your left.”
While she filled the bucket with Lysol and water, he found a broom, came back and took care of business.
While they worked side by side, all she could think about was Vishous. During the rush of treating the Brothers, there had been so much to concentrate on, but now, sweeping the mop’s sloppy dreads back and forth over the tiled floor, it was as if all