Page 2 of Fall for Him
Dylan ignored the stinging, sharp pain that lightninged from his palm and pushed himself off the destroyed mattress. Between his hand and the dull agony around his ribs, he felt lucky to make it upright without actually crying, and he offered himself the manliest sort of mental self-congratulations on that feat. He could almost imagine his two oldest brothers in his ear yelling Shake it off. Shake it off. Man up. Like every time he’d gotten clobbered in peewee hockey by one of the eight-year-olds who looked like they took baby doses of HGH.
Dylan pointed above him. “Wait, I think I know why it…” Slippery warmth dripped from Dylan’s wrist to his forearm. The slice across his palm was leaking much more than he expected—spots sparked in his vision. What he was saying? A rubber band tightened around his sternum. It was so hot all of a sudden.
Nope.
“I—I-I think…” His ears popped like he was too deep underwater. His body vanished beneath him.
Derek’s low voice grumbled, “Oh Jesus Christ.”
Then everything went black.
Chapter 2
Dylan’s chest heaved. Strong arms were wrapped around his waist and shoulders. His cheek was pressed into the crook of a warm neck. A neck that smelled like sandalwood and something sweeter too. The niceness of that scent almost overpowered the damp, moldy smell that was everywhere else… Everywhere else…
Dylan’s awareness jolted. The moldy smell was the destroyed drywall. The large hand braced against the bare skin of his lower back belonged to… Derek Chang.
Dylan froze.
Froze. Like his mouth couldn’t make words and his legs locked up. Yep, contact with a hot man had actually provoked a fight, flight, or freeze response. Fantastic. As his mental operations revved to functioning speed, Dylan yanked himself away, almost tripping over the mammoth dog sniffing his bleeding hand.
Derek tossed a tissue box to… well, at Dylan. “Please don’t bleed on him.”
Dylan covered the cut with a handful of tissues. “I’m so sorry.” He grimaced at the ceiling again. “Not for bleeding on him. I didn’t. But for this. I’ll fix it.”
“What do you mean you’ll fix it?” Derek rubbed his forehead. “It’s completely wrecked.” He sighed. “Is the rest of you hurt? Besides the hand?”
“Uh… I’m fine.” Dylan suppressed another groan as he moved. “Fine-ish. Mostly fine. Fine enough. And the ceiling’s really only wrecked in that one spot actually. Wow, that was unlucky.” He tilted his head.
“I have to call my insurance. You need to call your uncle’s insurance.” Derek rubbed his chin, smearing the dust that Dylan had evidently gotten all over him when he fainted—
Ugh, he’d actually fainted, hadn’t he? He had never been great with blood. The dizzying ache in Dylan’s head and ringing in his ears didn’t help.
“I guess we need to call the HOA, maybe? Since it’s between the units… wait, no… we can’t. Shit.” Derek’s mouth tightened and his troubled gaze went to the dog.
Why would the dog be what he was… oh…
Dylan’s brain was bad at a lot of things. Dates—both the kind on a calendar and the sort with men. Timing. Figuring out how to use an avocado before it went from rock hard to brown mush.
And given the most recent events, it was clear his brain sucked at remembering to shut off the faucet after filling his makeshift sous vide tank when a work call interrupted him. But… there were other things that Dylan’s brain could intuit very quickly. Like certain body language cues and patterns. He also had a very good memory for certain types of information, and he’d spent an entire day going over his uncle’s HOA rules about repairs and renovations and ended up hyperfixating and reading the HOA’s entire document.
Some combination of the twist of Derek’s mouth and that pointed, apprehensive glance at the bear-dog made Dylan understand.
“You aren’t supposed to have that dog here. They have strict breed restrictions, don’t they?” Dylan said, not quite realizing how that would sound given the current predicament. He’d been trying to state a fact, but Felicity had told him he wasn’t always good at getting tone right. “I meant—”
If possible, Derek’s body went more rigid. Every taut muscle on display now resembled chiseled granite. His demeanor that had been a mixture of frustration and concern shifted. Dylan had never seen a mother grizzly bear in the wild when he lived on the West Coast, but now he understood that experience. The dark, attractive eyes that had betrayed surprising, heartfelt concern about Dylan being injured now flashed. “Given that you just wrecked my bedroom and fell through my ceiling, I’m not sure you’re the person who is supposed to be telling me what I should or should not have in my apartment. Speaking of things that shouldn’t be here… if you’re not seriously hurt, I would appreciate you getting the hell out of here and leaving us alone.” Derek folded his arms over his chest and took a protective stance beside the dog. “He’s just visiting.”
Did he think Dylan wanted to kidnap a creature that probably weighed as much as an undersized manatee? Derek flipped on a lamp on the table next to him, and reached down—not far given the height of the behemoth beside him—to rest his hand on the animal’s head. Like Derek was guarding him or something.
Dylan shrugged and refocused his attention on the ceiling, seeing a detail he hadn’t before. He made to push his glasses up on his nose, but they weren’t there. After cursing internally, he searched the rubble and found half of the frames. He set the intact lens over his right eye. “That shouldn’t look like that.”
“Okay, since two hours after going to bed a human crashed through my ceiling and almost killed me and my dog, I’m gonna have to just say duh.”
“No, I mean…” Dylan got up on the bed, regretting the decision immediately as something sharp bit into his foot. “I need a flashlight… or can I have your phone?”
“I’m not giving you my—”
“Just for a second.”
