Page 84 of Ravaged From Fate

My ears prick up. I stare at Caspian lying there in the hospital bed in front of me. “Sorry for what?”

He looks so vulnerable all wrapped up with tubes coming out of weird places hooked up to a myriad of machines. It’s true what Dad has said, I have barely left his unconscious side in the last week.

And I would do it a billion times again in a heartbeat because I know it would be what he’ll do for me. Caspian took a bullet to save my sorry ass, and I could never repay him for the debt.

“I’m sorry for hiding my past from you like a secret,” he says quietly. Despite all his manly attempts to hide it, he’s still obviously nowhere near one hundred percent better.

“Thanks,” I reply. “I’m just so shocked at who you are. I still see you as… you. I can’t believe you are part of some… massive band. To me, you’re the guy who stupidly assaulted a gang in a bar because they were harassing a ditzy woman you didn’t know.”

“I wouldn’t call you ditzy, Elsa. Maybe pretty.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m still me, though,” Caspian says in a dead serious tone. “Forget all the band stuff. I’m still the Caspian you know, Elsa. I was wrong to lie to you and try to hide who I am, but I hope by my actions I’ve proved what matters. And that’s you.”

I take him in with my eyes. He risked everything to go into that barn. He so very clearly wants to prove himself to me.

I should be angry. I should be upset by the way he’s lied, but the way he’s currently looking at me with all the love in the world in his eyes just melts away any anger I could possibly have for this man.

Am I really that foolish in love to trust a man who’s lied to me?

Maybe I am.

But he did take a bullet…

“I had some crazy ideas when you were blacked out,” I tell him. “I went to some dark places in my mind in the last week. I thought you might wake up a different man. The famous rockstar who doesn’t have the time for small town nurses. I thought you would wake up and walk out from here at the first sight of my face, but you saying what you just said means, to me, that you’re still the same man I once helped late at night in East Springs’ medical clinic.”

Caspian pauses for a long while, thinking over what I’ve said.

And then he answers.

“So you’re not a groupie of Ravaged?”

I laugh. “I wouldn’t even know any of your songs, even if you played them right here yourself.”

“That’s my girl.”

He reaches out with his hand and takes mine. The contact is all I need.

“Saying all that, I do have some questions for you,” I mutter.

He shrugs. “I thought that might be the case.”

“I’ve been watching a lot of news, sitting here with nothing to do.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“And a lot of internet research.”

“Oh no.”

“All about Ravaged. Why did you leave the band? Why did you come to East Springs? I know you had some sort of incident with some paparazzi weirdo, but that didn’t mean you had to completely disappear and end up in a town with only one bar.”

“It’s the question everyone in LA is asking, isn’t it?”

“Kinda is.”

Caspian sighs. “I wouldn’t want anyone to know this, but I want to tell you, Elsa. You deserve to hear this. It’s my aggression. Ever since I was a kid, I had this… power inside me that always reared its ugly head. I hate that side of me. You’ve seen it firsthand at the bar and at the fucking barn. Over and over again in my life, it’s come out and bitten the people I love the most. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t hurt Ravaged. I couldn’t hurt my boys. So, I left and moved to the middle of nowhere, hoping that I wouldn’t hurt anyone because I wouldn’t love anyone out here. But then I met you, with your pretty face and your compassion and your… goddamn beauty, and all my stupid plans went to shit.”