Until Alex - J. Nathan Page 0,38
stop from remembering the hurt he’d knowingly inflicted outside the coffee shop.
How could he be so frustrating, yet put me at such ease? How could he hurt me, yet be the only one to protect me?
“Your fiancé tells me you don’t remember much,” the nurse said, interrupting our moment.
I broke eye contact first and shook my head, wishing I didn’t like the way fiancé sounded each time she said it.
She frowned. “But he told you that you were given a drug?”
I nodded, still stunned it happened in the first place. I’d seen things like that in Lifetime movies. Not in my real life. Then again, nothing over the last month and a half had happened before in my real life.
The nurse glanced to Hayden, gauging his reaction. “What he probably neglected to mention was when you were brought in, there were concerns.”
My eyes jumped between the nurse and Hayden. “Concerns?”
She nodded regrettably. “About what occurred while you were unconscious.”
My stomach dropped. My hand shot out from under the sheets. Searching for comfort. Searching for reassurance. Searching for Hayden.
Without hesitation, he moved to me, grabbing hold of my hand. He squeezed it just enough to let me know he had me. “Was I tested?”
The nurse nodded. “The results just came back.”
My heart thundered in my chest. I squeezed Hayden’s hand and swallowed down the large lump lodged in my throat.
“You’re clean,” she explained. “You weren’t assaulted.”
I let out a long shaky breath.
“Thank God,” Hayden whispered, dropping into the chair beside me, still clutching my hand.
A whirlwind of emotions flooded my body. Anger. Relief. Foolishness. Loneliness. I wished my body could settle on just one. But it was par for the course that was my life.
Tears tumbled down my cheeks. I wiped at them with the hand Hayden wasn’t holding, but I couldn’t stop their fervent descent.
“Hey.” He leaned closer, his eyes leveling with mine. “You’re okay.” He lifted the back of my hand to his mouth, gently pressing his lips to it. “Nothing happened. You’re fine.”
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to hold onto the tingle his lips left on my skin. Wanted to grasp onto the sincerity in his voice. I really did. But I wasn’t fine. I was nowhere near fine.
“Would you mind doing something about these?” I gestured to my tears, feeling like an idiot for crying in front of him again. God. I was so pathetic. “You wouldn’t want to witness them for another four days, would you?”
Hayden scooted to the edge of his chair. His minty breath the only thing between us as he inched closer.
I stilled.
He obviously didn’t realize I wasn’t serious.
He lowered his soft lips to my cheek, pressing slow gentle kisses to my salty tears as they slid down, one after the other.
The beeping of the heart monitor accelerated quite ceremoniously. He had to have heard it. And if I wasn’t so lost in the sensation of his lips on my skin, and the glorious tingles left in their wake, I might’ve been mortified. But what could I do? Hayden was kissing my face.
Once he reached the corner of my mouth, his lips hovered dangerously close. Did the thought of kissing me cross his mind? If so, he didn’t let on. With his feet planted firmly on the ground, he placed his hands on either side of my hips and rested the weight of his body on them. Then he leaned over me, his lips touching down on my other cheek, trailing the same slow gentle kisses over my tears from my eye down to my chin.
He pulled back an inch, his eyes dropping to my lips.
In my head, I begged him to kiss me. To make me forget my circumstances, my sadness, my name. I knew there couldn’t be a worse time, but the emotions bouncing through my body thought otherwise.
Instead of indulging me in my ephemeral wish, Hayden pulled away and sat back down in the chair beside my bed, leaving me breathless.
I expected him to look away. To avoid my eyes. To pretend he didn’t just kiss my face. But he didn’t. The fire in his eyes, a fire I hadn’t seen before, blazed.
My lips moved before I could stop them. “A tissue would’ve been fine.”
Hayden snorted, before dropping his head and shaking it from side to side.
Over his shoulder, the nurse stood in the corner wearing an envious grin.
Oh, she had no freaking idea.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HAYDEN
“I told you, you didn’t have to do this,” Alex pleaded.
I looked down at her