Tame his Beast - Claire C. Riley Page 0,47

bottom of my bed, quickly reading it while I continued to stare at her.

“Get it off, me Belle,” I said slowly, “or I’ll do it myself.”

She finished reading and looked over at me, giving me a small nod. Placing the clipboard back down, she came to my side. “Okay, let me go get Doctor Collins—”

“No, I want you to do it,” I interrupted.

“Beast, you need a doctor to do this.”

“No,” I insisted, holding my gaze steady on hers. “I need you, Belle. Just you.”

It was weak and pathetic, yet it didn’t matter, because the only person that I trusted to see me vulnerable and fucked up like this was her. Because, despite not wanting her to, I really believed that she saw me. She still looked uncertain, my words not having much of an effect on her.

“Belle,” I asked, no bullshit to my tone for once. “Just take it off.”

Chapter Sixteen

~ Beast ~

She swallowed nervously, thinking it over, and then nodded again. “Okay, sit further up so I can get to the back.”

I sat up and she came around to my left, leaning in so close that I could smell her. Not her perfume or detergent, but her. Her scent was sweet, like peaches, and it made me forget for a moment what was happening.

“I’m probably going to lose my job for this,” she mumbled, but she kept on working away at the bandages like she didn’t give a fuck and I knew I’d made the right decision.

I didn’t trust a lot of people in my life. Not completely. A handful, at most; I could count them on one hand. And Belle, for some weird, kismet reason, had been put in my life and grouped with that handful of people, despite our blatant differences.

“You won’t lose your job,” I said. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“Keep your eyes closed,” she said, her voice close to my ear as she leaned in, her fingers pulling gently on the bandages. They began to loosen and I did as she said, closing my eyes against the world and willing myself to be able to see. If I was a praying man I would have prayed, but God had left me a long time ago so instead I just hoped.

I felt the bandages begin to fall away as Belle unwrapped them and set them down. I’d never been scared in my whole life. Not as a hard-starved little kid waiting for his mom to come home. Not as a teenager in care anxious at the sound of my foster dad coming up the stairs. And not as a man waiting for death. But at that moment I felt something akin to fear as I waited to see what if I’d be able to see out of both eyes again. I needed my eyes—no, not just needed, I wanted them! And I willed them to work. To not let me down like everything else had.

Belle’s hands moved over my face as she used a warm cloth to wipe my skin, and when she was satisfied, she placed her hand on top of mine and gave it a little squeeze.

“Okay, open them slowly, Beast. Try not to panic,” she said softly.

I snorted out a dry laugh. “Too late,” I said a little too honestly for my liking, and she squeezed my hand a little harder. What was it with this woman? She brought out a side to me that I didn’t recognize and couldn’t control.

“It can take a while for sight to come back after something like this. Weeks, months, even years,” she rambled on, “so what happens right now might not be forever, okay? It could come back when you least expect it and surprise you, so just don’t freak out or anything. And Doctor Collins said—”

“Belle,” I said as calmly as I could to get her to shut the fuck up. She sounded more nervous than me, and that was saying something.

“Sorry, it’s okay, Beast, we’ve got this.”

I paused on her words, tasting them, swallowing them, devouring them whole.

We’ve got this.

That’s what she’d just said.

We’ve got this. Not just me.

I’d never been a we before—never wanted to be either—but if it meant not facing the prospect of losing my eyesight alone, then I’d take it.

I slowly started to open my eyes, the world coming into view in my right eye, but not in my left. Panic rose like bile in my throat. I blinked and blinked, but still nothing. There was just blackness.

“I can’t see