Until now, I’ve never been sure if it’s good or bad, but as I rise and the floor tilts, I know he’s the best person the world has ever given me.
I sit down and grip the mattress, glaring at the floorboards, willing my body to fall back in line while Mal watches, helping me more than he knows by not trying to stop me.
He’s not silent, though. “How’s that headache?”
“Fuck off.”
“So you can drop like a stone again?”
“Why do you give a fuck?”
Mal’s face does something I can’t decipher. Then he comes to me and holds out his hands. “I’ll help you shower.”
Mal shadows me to the bathroom. Then he gives me some space to put myself back together, and if he’s worried about me puking in the shower, he doesn’t show it. But in any case, he doesn’t need to be—there’s nothing in me but the sports drink and electrolytes he’s poured down my throat, and I’m too busy trying to stay upright to think about losing it.
He gets dizzy in the shower.
Maybe that’s why he didn’t come in. I turn the water off, steam clogging my lungs, and let flashbacks of the last time we were in the bathroom together flood me.
The spray hits my chest and Mal’s mouth finds my neck, his hot lips fusing to the slick skin he’s claimed as his own.
Breathing rough.
Biting me.
He grips my hips like he owns me. Fucks me like he’s trying to brand me on the inside. Something permanent when we both know we’re on borrowed time, something I’ll still feel long after he’s chased release from my body and curved around me with his own?—
The tiled walls around me distort. I make it to the sink and find fresh clothes stacked there. Just sweats and underwear, but it’s all I need.
I dress and open the bathroom door, aware I missed Mal slipping in and out, and how little it fazes me.
Because it’s him.
He’s waiting for me in the hallway, leaning against the wall. He comes upright as I near him, hands flexing as though he wants to touch me, but he jerks his head at his room instead. “Unless you’ve got a hankering for a wet mattress.”
I don’t have a hankering for anything except him, and I don’t need to think about whether to follow him into his room.
Head still throbbing, I sit on the edge of his bed while he retrieves the bowl from the chest of drawers.
“It’s yogurt.”
“No bananas?”
His lip curls. “I’ll eat six of those fuckers if you keep this shit down.”
“What makes you think I won’t?”
“Everything, Sky.”
Sky. Awareness hits me again, kicking my subconscious with a thud that ripples through me hard enough that Mal seems to feel it.
He sets the bowl aside again and comes closer. “What is it?”
“You told me you loved me. That’s why I punched you.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“No?”