Tame his Beast - Claire C. Riley Page 0,52
his mouth tipped up and told me he wasn’t serious. “You get this faraway look in your eyes when you’re overthinking things, and your shoulders sag like you’re trying to hold up the world on them.”
I sighed. “Sometimes it feels that way,” I admitted.
“You ever wonder what would have happened if your mom hadn’t left you?” he asked.
I frowned. “Wow, this conversation took a huge U-turn.”
He looked back out at the world. “My mom used to go off for days at a time. I learned that you had to look after yourself because no one else was going to do it for you.”
“And you think that’s why you are the way you are?” I asked.
Beast looked back up at me. “And how am I, Belle?”
I could sense he was bristling below the surface, but I didn’t care. He had asked that for a reason, and maybe that reason was because he wanted my honesty because no one else dared give it to him.
“You don’t trust anyone,” I began. “You don’t even like most people.”
“Most people are assholes,” he replied.
I shook my head and laughed. “You’d be surprised…Most people are actually pretty good if you let them in.”
“Do you think I’m good, Belle?”
I stared at him long and hard, thinking how to answer that question. Was he going to yell at me if I said no? Would he laugh at me if I said yes? Was he asking because he wasn’t sure of himself anymore, or because he was just genuinely interested in what I thought? With Beast I could never tell what he was thinking.
“I don’t think anyone is intrinsically bad.”
“That’s a cop-out and you know it,” he said with a raised brow.
I shrugged. “Okay, well, I think you’re both things, actually. Both good and bad. Deep down you have a real good heart and care about people way more than you let on, but on the surface you’re bad and you do bad things.” I took a deep breath and waited for him to push me away and be horrible, but he just sighed and looked away.
“Fuck, it feels good to have the air on my face again.” He closed his eyes but then quickly opened them, like he was afraid that if he kept them closed for too long he might never be able to see again.
I looked over at the machines, checking the numbers to make sure he was okay.
“Told you to stop doing that,” he growled. “You need to stop treating me like a sick patient.”
I could already sense the old Beast brimming under the surface, waiting to come out and lash out at the world again, but I wasn’t ready for that man right now.
“Well, Beast,” I sighed dramatically, “like it or not, you are a sick patient,” I teased.
“Fuck you,” he growled with a hard scowl.
I wagged my finger at him playfully. “Tut tut, that’s no way to speak to your nurse, now, is it? Now be a good boy and sit still so I can check that you’re not about to pass out or anything.”
He almost choked on a laugh, his scowl falling away as easily as it had come. “A good boy? You’re pushing your luck, Belle,” he warned, his expression curious.
My stomach fluttered and I fought to keep the smile from my face.
Over the past few weeks, I had met many versions of Beast. From the angry and enraged, to the pained. To the ignorant and downright sexist to the horny. But this Beast was different from all of those, and he might just be my favorite of them all. Beast and I were two very different people from very different backgrounds, as far as I could tell. We had nothing in common so small talk had been awkward between us. But I had a feeling that underneath the hard-man image he liked to portray, that maybe there was someone softer there. Maybe in a different life I would have gotten to meet that version of him properly.
I continued to check the machines, ignoring his warning, and I watched him from the corner of my eye shake his head and look back out at the view in front of the hospital. We both lapsed back into comfortable silence—him, sitting in a hospital wheelchair, dressed in a hospital gown and bandages, and me, standing next to him in my ugly nurse’s uniform. We looked out in silence, both of us comfortable in each other’s presence for once, where usually we both walked