His grimace told her everything. He was hurting more than he was letting on. She picked up her hood and dampened it with some of the water.
She motioned to the spot next to her against the wall. ‘Sit here,’ she ordered.
‘I’m fine,’ he insisted.
She pulled his arm and he winced.
‘Take your shirt off and let me see what they did,’ she said, her voice cracking.
She could see that every movement he made was agony for him. His whole body was a mismatched mess of cuts and angry red bruises. He closed his eyes, leaned against the wall, and took a slow, steady breath inward.
She got close to him, lightly pressed the wet cloth to his swollen eye, and watched his reaction to the pain.
‘You need something more than this. We need antiseptic,’ she said. Tears welled in her eyes and sentiment coated her throat.
‘I’m fine, Autumn. It could be worse. They could have killed me.’
‘Look what they did to you.’
‘It isn’t as bad as it looks.’
She dabbed at his eye. ‘I don’t believe you.’
She didn’t know if she made it better or if touching it made it worse. It looked so puffy and enraged. She stopped dabbing and held the now lukewarm compress to the injury.
‘What did they say?’ she questioned. ‘Did they say anything? Have they heard anything?’
‘They asked me for information I didn’t have. I gave them what I did have. It’s old and out of date, they’ll find that out, but it bought us some time.’
‘How long? Just tonight? Tomorrow? Tomorrow until midnight? How long?’
She knew the tone of her voice had gone from controlled to desperate in a millisecond, but seeing firsthand what those men were capable of had brought it all home.
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.
She burst into tears, dropped the wet hood to the floor, and curled up into herself.
He lifted her chin with his finger. ‘Sshh, listen, don’t give up now. You’ve been so brave all this time. Don’t fall apart at the last moment.’
‘You just said it. You just said “the last moment”. Is this the last moment?’
‘No.’
‘But it could be, couldn’t it? These moments might be all we have.’
The silence that followed bit at her. Her whole body shook at the thought she might spend her last hours in a dark, damp, locked room. What had she done with her life? She’d written a few songs. So what? In a few months, after she had been forgotten, the songs would be history, gathering cyberdust on iTunes. She had done nothing in her life that counted. Nathan, he had saved lives, fought for what he believed in. She had moaned and whined, bought too many clothes, and ordered meals she never ate. She didn’t want that to be her legacy.
She wiped at her eyes then blurted, ‘I’ll never have children!’
*
He didn’t know how to console her. He couldn’t lie to her and promise everything would be all right. Their fate was in the hands of Rick O’Toole.
He took her hands in his and interlocked their fingers. He brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles.
‘Tell me about Marie. She’s your daughter, isn’t she?’ she whispered.
He stilled and brought her hands down to his lap. He softly smoothed each finger in turn, concentrating on touching every millimeter of skin.
‘Yes… but… I can’t,’ he whispered.
‘Please, Nathan. I want to know. I want to know about you, about your life. Let me in.’
Just making his mind move back to that time made his chest swell with the loss. Time didn’t heal anything. The pain never disappeared. He had been left with a hole inside since that day, and there was nothing that would ever fill it.
‘I want to help you.’
‘You can’t. We’ve had this conversation before, Autumn. You can’t help me, and you shouldn’t want to. I’m no good for you.’ He raised his head to meet her eyes, watching her expression.
‘I’m capable of making my own mind up about things. I don’t have Stuttgart syndrome,’ she retorted.
‘Stockholm.’
‘What?’
‘It’s Stockholm syndrome, and that’s a captor/hostage thing, not a pop star/bodyguard thing.’
‘Is that really all I am to you? Still?’
He didn’t know what to say. What was the point of telling her how he felt now? When morning came, he didn’t know how long he would remain alive. What was better? To admit how he felt and worsen the loss for her? Or to play down his emotions and have her remember him as someone she simply slept with once?
‘I’m in love with you, Nathan. I love you.’
Thirty-Eight
The words came rushing out of her mouth because the feeling had built up inside her and she needed the release. The circumstances of their meeting, the position they were in right now, had nothing to do with the way she felt about him. It was more than a sexual attraction now. It was something else, something deeper, something almost indefinable.
She knew, whether they had a few hours left together or the rest of their lives, she wanted to spend that time with him. She had been too wrapped up in herself for too long, in her fabricated career and all the back-patting and back-stabbing that went with it. She’d missed out on everything since her father had left because she’d locked herself away emotionally. She’d held onto the fake friends, and she’d done as she was told. She’d walked the walk, talked the talk, and done several guest spots on American Idol. She didn’t want to live that way anymore. She didn’t want to be that person. She wanted to be who she’d become with him. She ate more and counted less.
*
He held her hands in his, wanting to press their skin together, needing to feel that connection. She loved him. This beautiful, complicated, fragile yet strong woman loved him. Him. He didn’t trust himself to speak yet. There was an ache in his gut that wasn’t due to the injuries he’d received. It went further down than that,
