Page 74 of In Somnis

I vaguely register a car door slamming, followed by fast footsteps.

“No… no, no, no,” a deep voice pleads, the words tripping over each other. “Fuck, I shouldn’t have driven. I shouldn’t…”

A body blocks the rain, then drops down beside me. I try to look, but pain ripples through my temple, and I groan, squeezing my eyes closed.

“Oh my God.” His voice catches. “You’re alive.”

I crack one eye open, but the rain and the pain blur everything, turning the world into nothing more than streaks of gray and light.

“Barely,” I rasp.

His laugh sounds strangled. “Wait. Don’t move. I’ll call an ambulance.”

“No… wait.” I force myself upright with a hiss, dragging my legs under me and cradling my palm against my body. Everything protests, but nothing feels wrong-wrong. “Please don’t. I’m fine.”

“I just ran you over. You’re not fine,” he protests. “I should have killed you.”

“Could,” I correct groggily, examining my palm. The scrape burns, similar to the way my temple is screaming, and my thigh is already throbbing, but I’m alive. “It’s just some scrapes and maybe some bruises.”

If Seraphine hadn’t scared the shit out of me earlier, I might not be sitting here arguing.

The thought sends a shudder through me, even colder than the rain.

When he doesn’t respond, I start to worry that he doesn’t believe me. I look up at him, gasping when I find him crouched close enough that I can see rain beading on his glasses and skin, clinging to dark curls. His face is stricken and unfairly beautiful.

Deep brown skin, strong jaw, and neatly groomed stubble with some gray streaks. When I meet his eyes, his full lips part on an answering gasp.

God, his eyes. They’re almost black in this light.

“Found you,” he breathes out on a whisper, reaching toward my temple.

I don’t even have time to process that before his fingers brush my skin and pain sparks across my head, white-hot.

“Ow!”

He jerks his hand back but keeps it hovering uselessly in the air. “Sorry. I… I didn’t mean… are you… can you stand?”

“I think so.”

He rises smoothly and offers his hand, waiting for me to accept his help. After only a moment’s hesitation, I do, but pain pounds in time with my heartbeats as he pulls me to my feet, and the world tilts. He keeps me from falling over, though, his big palm comforting around my hand that isn’t scraped raw.

I look down at our joined hands, watching the rain drip off them, then back up to him. Those dark eyes are already on me, searching my face, and it feels somehow more intimate than a stranger checking for injuries.

Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought.

“Your temple’s scraped up pretty badly.” He reaches out again, and I brace for the shooting pain, but this time, he cups my cheek. The warmth of his palm makes me realize how cold I am, and as if on cue, I start trembling, and my teeth clack hard enough that it startles me.

His brow furrows. “You said no ambulance.”

“Yes,” I manage between shudders. “No ambulance.”

It’s really not that bad, and honestly, I’ve spent enough time in hospitals for a lifetime. I know the smell of them, the lights, the hard chairs. I’m not going back inside one if I can help it.

He studies me for another second, like he’s weighing the cost of believing me, then nods once. “Do you want me to call someone else?”

Mom.

The thought flashes through me only a split-second before reality, and it hits me even harder than his car just did. I breathe through the pain, all the layers of it, and shrug. “There’s nobody left to care.”