Chapter 28

Her Obsession.

A Reason To Stay.

Sage

I woke to the sound of silence. Not the comforting kind, either, the sharp kind. The kind that feels like something’s wrong. My body was heavy. No, not just heavy, anchored. My shoulder pulsed with heat and pressure, and every muscle in my back screamed like I’d been thrown from a building…Oh. Right. I peeled my eyes open slowly. The light hurt. Everything hurt. The ceiling above me was unfamiliar, cream-colored, cracked faintly in the corner. High. Too high for any safe house I’d ever used. Linen smelled like cedar and clean cotton. Not hospital-grade bleach. Not blood. Not mine, at least not fresh. I shifted and groaned as pain stabbed through my shoulder. A soft gasp caught in my throat. Fuck. Clean bandages. A lot of them. My mouth was dry, tongue thick, and I could still taste iron at the back of my throat. Then I realized, I was warm. Too warm. A blanket tucked up to my ribs, and beneath it, bare skin met soft sheets. Not my clothes. Not my shirt. Not my gun. Panic sparked behind my ribs, weak but real. I tried to push myself upright, but my left arm was useless. I winced, grinding my teeth as my good hand fumbled under the blanket. Cotton. Loose. Big. Not mine. It was a man’s shirt and it smelled like Conner. The sound of a chair scraping nearby made me snap my head toward the corner, instinct before reason. He was there. Sitting in the dark, his elbows on his knees, watching me like I was something holy. Or haunted. His shirt clung to my frame, sleeves rolled up past my elbows, swallowing my body whole.

“You’re awake,” he said softly.

I swallowed. Tried to speak. Failed.

“You’ve been out for almost two days,” he said. “You lost a lot of blood.”