Page 178 of No One But Me
And everything I'd been holding onto slipped through my broken fingers.
Belle fumbled for her phone on the nightstand, nearly knocking over the lamp. Her movements were jerky, panicked, still half-caught in sleep.
I sat up slowly, every muscle going tense. Something in the quality of her breathing shifted—from sleep-soft to razor-sharp awareness that set off alarms in my chest. My broken hand throbbed with the sudden movement, but I barely registered it.
She swiped the screen with shaking fingers.
"Yes? This is Belle Reiss…"
The hospital. It had to be.
The thought landed like concrete in my gut.
I watched her face drain of color. Watched her lips part on a breath that wouldn't come. Watched her entire body go rigid like she'd been struck.
"What do you mean he took a turn?"
Her voice pitched higher, desperate, breaking on the edges.
"Is he?—"
She stopped. Swallowed. Tried again.
"No. No, I'll be there."
The last word cracked down the middle.
She hung up.
Her hands shook so violently the phone nearly slipped from her grip. Her eyes swam with tears she refused to let fall—still fighting, still trying to hold herself together when everything inside her was clearly shattering.
I felt something inside me twist.
Tight.
Cold.
Violent.
Her father was dying.
And she was trapped here with me.
Because of me.
Because I'd forced her into this house, this bed, this contract that bound her to my side while the man who raised her slipped away in a hospital room she couldn't reach without my permission. Because I'd taken everything from her—her freedom, her choices, her ability to be where she needed to be when it mattered most.
The realization cut deeper than any broken bone.
I'd saved her from loan sharks last night. I'd broken my hand defending her. I'd pulled her close and held her while she slept and told myself that meant something. That protection equaled care. That possession could be mistaken for love.
But right now?
Right now I was the cage keeping her from the only family she had left.
And the look on her face?—
That look destroyed me.
