Page 114 of Ghost Ribbon

What I didn’t understand was what kind of person looked at a boy with a dying heart and said I love you.

When I woke up, Alexei was already dressed.

He was leaning against my desk with several papers in his hands, dark hair still slightly damp from what must have been a shower, black shirt buttoned almost all the way up.

My room was washed in morning light. The curtains hadn’t been fully closed last night, so pale gold cut across the floorboards and the edge of my bed and the side of his face. My head felt heavy. My eyes burned the way they always did after too much crying, and there was a deep ache behind them.

I pushed myself upright too fast.

Pain lanced through my skull. A small sound slipped out of me before I could stop it.

Alexei was moving. One second he was by the desk. The next he was at the side of the bed, sitting close enough that the mattress dipped under his weight, one hand already on my arm, the other coming up to touch my face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you in pain?”

His voice was low, but the calm in it was fake. I knew him well enough now, or thought I did, to hear the fracture underneath.

And his eyes - there was something close to terror in them.

I hated that.

I reached up automatically and touched his wrist.

“Yes,” I said quickly. “But I just sat up too fast. My head hurts a little, that’s all.”

He studied my face for a second longer, like he was trying to decide whether to believe me.

Then his hand slid from my cheek into my hair, fingers brushing carefully through the tangled curls at my temple.

“Slowly next time,” he muttered.

I tried for a smile, but it came out weak. That was when I noticed the papers in his other hand. “What’s that?”

Alexei followed my gaze. Then he looked back at me.

His expression changed very slightly.

“I should be asking you that. You missed your checkup on March 12th,” he pointed out evenly. “And April 3rd. And April 29th. And May 14th. There was one more you rescheduled twice and then never attended on June 6th.”

I stared at him, feeling my heartbeat start to climb. “How…” I began, then stopped. “I thought you said you weren’t a stalker.”

Alexei looked at me for a long moment. Then, very flatly, he said, “I changed my mind.”

He set the papers down on the bed beside me and leaned in just enough that I had to look at him.

“I should have been one from the start. Then I wouldn’t have let you be so fucking reckless.”

Heat rushed to my face. Not from embarrassment exactly. Or not only embarrassment. Shame. Guilt. The horrible childlike feeling of being caught doing something dangerous and stupid.

I looked down at the blanket pooled in my lap. “I wasn’t trying to be reckless.”

“No? What would you call repeatedly missing cardiology appointments while coughing up blood?”

I flinched.

A frustrated sound left him, and when I finally risked looking up again, some of the edge in his face had changed shape.

He exhaled slowly and lifted a hand to my head, rubbing lightly over my hair the way someone might soothe a frightened animal they were also furious with.