Page 54 of Stuck

She didn’t deny it.

“Why not?”

With the fingers of her good hand, she fidgeted with the hem of her bloodied shirt. “He’s out for dinner with his mum and sisters. They had a fight—a bad one. No swords involved.” She attempted a weak laugh. “But bad. I didn’t want to disturb them.”

I watched her, trying to get a read on what she was thinking, but she wouldn’t hold my gaze.

“Have you fallen out?”

I wasn’t blind; I’d seen how they were with each other at the gala. Bingley had been on his phone all night, and Elizabeth had clearly been annoyed with him. I was fairly sure they’d argued. A sick part of me hoped they had, because then, perhaps…

But I stopped myself from thinking it. Even if this spelled the end of their relationship, there was no future for Elizabeth and me. Friends did not poach their mate’s exes.

“No, we haven’t,” she said quietly, almost reluctantly. “But you ought to know⁠—”

“Elizabeth Bennet?” a nurse called.

“That’s us,” I replied loudly, coming immediately to my feet, not wanting Elizabeth to miss her turn.

She hesitated, that air of guilt hovering around her for a second longer before she, too, stood up and wove her way gingerly through the chairs.

“Thank you so much for waiting with me,” she said when we reached the double doors to the treatment area.

“Your fella can come in with you if you like, love,” said the nurse, who was holding the doors open.

“Oh no, we’re not—” Elizabeth started to say, but the nurse either didn’t care or didn’t have time to indulge us, because she simply shrugged and said, “Up to you. This way.”

“I’ll come,” I said firmly. “I said I’d stay until Bingley got here.”

Which was how, despite all my mental gymnastics, chiding myself for caring too much, I ended up being the one to hold Elizabeth’s good hand as a doctor numbed the area around her cut and stitched up her thumb. She hadn’t said she was scared, but I already knew she didn’t like blood, and I’d seen the slight tremor in her hands and the shallowness of her breathing. When I’d closed my fingers around hers, she’d squeezed mine back, hard, and hadn’t let go since.

I hated how natural it felt, me offering her comfort, her taking it, our hands fitting together as though they’d been holding each other for years. It was one more thing I had to live with knowing.

After such a long wait, everything else passed by in a rush. Elizabeth was patched up, given instructions on keeping the dressing clean and dry and a follow-up appointment, then discharged, all within another hour. Bingley had presumably not gone anywhere local for dinner; it looked as though we’d be out before he got here.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked as she stood up from the bed. “I can have Trent take you straight to Bingley’s if you—whoa, Elizabeth!”

I threw my arms out to catch her as she swayed wildly on her feet. She stopped herself from crashing into me with her forearms on my chest and half slid, half collapsed into the chair behind her.

“All right, love?” the nurse asked, totally unfazed. “Pop your head between your knees, that’s it. It’ll pass.” She carried on tidying up the bay as though Elizabeth was the four hundredth person she’d seen faint today. Which she quite possibly was.

I crouched down and put a hand on Elizabeth’s knee. “Are you okay?”

“I’m embarrassed,” she groaned. “I always seem to be a complete mess in front of you, but fainting because I got a glorified paper cut is a new low.”

“You’re never a mess, Elizabeth. I’ve never seen you anything less than perfect.”

She lifted her head to look at me, and our faces were suddenly mere inches apart—and she didn’t pull back. That was the first thing I noticed. The second thing was the look in her eyes—soft, grateful, and something else. Something warmer.

“Thank you for being so kind tonight,” she whispered. “I’m really glad you were here with me.”

She still didn’t pull away, and for the briefest moment, her eyes dipped to my mouth. My heart thudded in my chest, because… Did she feel this too? This unbearable, unrelenting pull between us? My breaths started coming harder. This was bad—this was really bad.

And it had to stop.

“Bingley won’t be much longer. We should…”

But I let my words trail off, because she was shaking her head, and I couldn’t think of a single reason why she would do that.