Page 78 of Beautiful Savage
Her vanilla scent in the truck becomes torture. Every breath reminds me she's not here, that I left her with bruises and trauma and a father who almost died because of me. My body's been running on adrenaline and obsession for a week, and now that Hallstein's dead, there's nothing left to override the deficit.
The loading dock materializes at six fifty-eight. I sit for ten seconds after killing the engine, gathering strength I don't have. Step out. I manage three steps toward the stairs.
The ground tilts. My knees buckle. I reach for a wall that isn't where walls should be, vision tunneling to gray.
Marisol catches me, or at least slows my fall—she isn't big enough to hold my weight.
"We've got you," she says, and I look around to find Isa and Juliet on my other side, their small hands surprisingly strong as they get my weight against their shoulders.
"Jesus, Gunner," Marisol scolds, "when did you last eat? When did you last sleep?"
I try to answer but words won't form. She and Isa and Juliet walk me to the back office, muscles straining. The leather couch against the wall becomes my whole world. Between them, they pull off my blood-spattered plate carrier without flinching. They've seen worse. My boots next. Marisol's fingers find my pulse at the wrist, looking for solid evidence I'll be okay.
"Daphne," I manage before unconsciousness takes me.
"She's safe," Marisol says. "I told the guards on her cottage to check in every ten minutes, because I knew you'd be an old grandmother goose about it. Now, sleep."
But Marisol knows me too well. She sees the intent in my bones, the way my hands clench and unclench, the way my eyes keep darting to the door like I might sprint for it on instinct. She cuts me off before I even start, channeling the drill sergeant energy she reserves for emergencies and idiots. I'm definitely the latter.
"No.Don't," she says, voice low and edged with her own fatigue. "You don't get to make it worse."
I blink and try to drag some air through lungs that feel three sizes too small. "I'm not—"
She holds up a finger, the universal sign for shut the fuck up. "You are. For weeks I watched you fall for a woman with no common sense and a heart like a rescue dog, and now you're going to ruin it by showing up at her door looking like you just crawled out of a meat grinder? Just because you need to see her?"
I bristle despite myself. "She needs—"
"She needs to sleep. Eat. Realize her dad isn't dead. Maybe process the fact that she was kidnapped, and you were the reason." The words aren't cruel, but they land like blows. "Youwant to be the man she runs to, or the trigger for her next panic attack?"
I open my mouth, trying to find a comeback, but nothing comes. Marisol softens exactly one percent, reading my silence as surrender.
"Good," she says. "Because if you'd tried to go over there before I finished this lecture, I'd have called Isa and asked her to tase you in the hallway. And I'm not sure Isa would have set it lower than 'roast pig.'"
I can't help it: I almost smile. "You're the meanest nurse I've ever had."
"And you're the worst patient." She pours more water, shoves it into my hand. "Drink that. Now sleep."
I'm gone in ninety seconds, my body finally releasing after holding too long. Through the fade, I hear Marisol settling on the floor beside me. The soft tap of texts being sent. Then nothing but darkness and dreams of vanilla and bruises I couldn't prevent.
I wake to afternoon light through the high windows. Marisol's in the chair across from me, coffee in hand, shadows under her eyes. She hasn't left. Water waits on the desk.
"You look like death warmed over," she says, but there's affection under the sharpness.
"Feel worse."
She sets down her coffee, leans forward. "You've been out for six hours."
I shake my head, trying to clear it.
"Daphne."
"She's still ok."
"She told me to stay away."
Marisol's golden hair falls loose as she shakes her head. "She told you to stay away after her father almost died. After trauma. After shock, you dense beautiful idiot."
I try to summon a voice, to cut through the exhaustion and hunger and adrenaline shakes, to say the one thing all my battered synapses can agree on: I have to see Daphne. Now. I have to bury my face in her hair and hold her so tight nobody could ever pry her loose. I have to see her eyes and know, even for two seconds, that she's more than just alive, that she still wants me the way I want her. That she still exists in the world, and I'm allowed to touch her.
