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Not now. Not when she’d finally learned how to survive without wanting anything at all.
Her bubble wasn’t just gone. He wasinsideit.
Her chest squeezed, breath fluttering. “It’s you,” she said, so quiet it barely touched the air, like the words themselves were afraid to exist.
CHAPTERFOUR
For a long,agonizing moment, Nash stood as the door closed in his face. Shock coursed through him.I’m distracting her?He hadn’t meant to. If anything, she was reawakening everything that was male in him. That numbness he’d experienced crawling through bars, fucking women he didn’t know, stumbling home to his bed feeling dirty and hollow. The empty pleasure left him aching in his bones.
He clasped his head as he stepped back. He admitted that he was looking at her not like a coder, but like a lush, desirable redhead bound so tightly she would break if someone…his mouth went dry…touched her. Was he attracted to her?Fuck, yeah. But not like those women in the bars. They were a blur, faceless bodies he used to release all the anger and tension, to help with the headaches. But it had all been a temporary fix, and deep down he knew that, but he couldn’t stop. He didn’t know what else to do.
It’s you.
Him. He was chasing her away. He was the reason she’d packed her bags. That revelation dropped on him like a load of cement. Thrusting himself away from the door, the heavy sensation in his gut spreading, he settled on the edge of the bed, suddenly blindsided. He looked at the door, one that connected between them. Hell, theywereconnected. They needed each other for this investigation. He needed her more than she needed him.
Leave.
That one word had been laced with tension. Now he knew why. Tightening his jaw against the jolt of anger directed solely at himself, he dragged his eyes away from the closed door,and he couldn’t fathom why it hurt, the sudden thickness in his chest crowding his breath. He barely knew her.
You want to know her.
Again.Fuck, yeah. There was all that reckless hair that was now tamped down into that audacious bun, leaving her neck bare…kissable skin tempting him into more than sin, and her buttoned-down librarian clothing only made him want to loosen her up.
What the hell was he doing? He couldn’t fail his teammates, yet instead of finding answers they both wanted,noneeded…fuck…tomoveon, to letgo, he was thinking about Grace in a way that wasn’t going to help.
Panic grabbed him by the throat, the anger, shock, attraction all mixing together, settling into a lump in the pit of his stomach, setting off one hell of a headache. He’d suffered from them after he’d gotten out of the hospital, blinding, mind-splitting headaches so bad that it felt as if his skull would explode if he so much as moved his head. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had one. An hour later, he was at the gym pummeling the bag, but each hit seared from his knuckles up his arm into his head. He worked the bag until he was sweat-soaked, until his shoulders were burning, until his muscles were quivering from sheer physical exhaustion.
By the time he got back to his room, a doozy had already clawed into his temples, and the back of his skull felt on fire. He was courting something debilitating if he didn’t lie down. Fighting against the nausea boiling in his stomach, he stripped down to his boxer briefs.
Gritting his teeth against the sickening jolt of pressure in his skull, he stretched out on his back on the bed, then rested his arm across his eyes. Remaining absolutely motionless, he waited for the nausea to ease, trying to release the grinding tension in his jaw. All this time without one, and one run-in with Grace, one run-in with reality, and he felt as if someone was trying to drive a tank through his head.
What the hell was he supposed to do without her help? Caspari…she would ruin Grace even more than she had already been traumatized. He couldn’t have that on his conscience. He couldn’t. If she had endured even half of what he’d gone through after everything went to hell, his heart contracted for her.
The pain took him under. He dreamed, he saw snatches of flashing lights, heard screams, sobbing, dirt and sand and wind swirled around him. The heat of an explosion and the blackness of night that had cloaked his mind. He reached for answers, but there was nothing there for him to latch onto.
There was soundless movement beside him, and someone very gently slid a delicate hand under his head. Her scent settled over him like a breath.Jasmine and steel, a contradiction in grace. Softness layered over something unbreakable. He hadn’t known a woman could smell like a delicate flower and armor at the same time… but she did.
It grounded him. Anchored him.
“Nash,” she whispered, voice low and laced with something too tender for the battlefield of his mind. “Let’s get this pillow under your neck.” Carefully cradling his head in one hand, she fixed the pillow with the other, then gently lowered his head, making sure there was a secure roll under his nape. “Take these. I found them in your bag,” she whispered.
He always carried the medication just in case. He opened his mouth, and she tipped the water carefully so he could swallow them.
Was that her fingers brushing the hair from his forehead? Or was he dreaming? Her voice was husky with concern when she asked. “Do you need medical attention?”
“No,” he managed. “Just the pills.”
“Ice sometimes helps,” she offered.
The next thing he knew, cold pressed to his temples. The excruciating pressure in his head eased, and he was finally able to unclench his teeth. Letting go of that grating, brittle tension left him feeling cold and shaky. As if tuned into his every need, Grace stopped massaging him with the ice, drawing the sheet, blanket, and comforter over him, her touch infinitely gentle as she tucked everything around his shoulders. His throat closed up, and he had to shut his eyes against the sudden surge of emotion. Had he ever known how this kind of attention felt? He couldn’t recall.
He opened his eyes, found her profile in the dim light. Her thigh pressed warm against his ribs. He meant to say don’t leave. But it came out different.
“Please… don’t leave them. The ones we lost. One of them, I can’t find him. No one knows what happened.”
She tensed beside him. He swallowed the groan, pushed through the pain.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know I’m a lot. I’ll try to be better.”