Page 63 of Damaged

“It’s okay, Dalton. I’ve got you,” Silver whispered into my ear. “Just hang on to me.”

So that was what I did.

I hung on to him when he turned and slipped his arm around my waist so he could support my weight like he had so many times at my house. I hung on to him while he led me back toward the nurses’ station. I hung on to him as I let out a soft chuckle.

“What?” Silver asked curiously. I could feel the smile on his face.

“I thought I made it a lot farther,” I said on a sigh. The crashing adrenaline along with the relief of finally seeing Silver, touching him, made it feel like I had cement blocks tied to my feet. I tried to keep as much of my weight off Silver’s shoulder as I could but with wave after wave of exhaustion washing over me, I didn’t know if I’d managed to ease the physical burden on him.

I was in a fog for what came next. At one point I was sitting, then I was lying down. Everything got heavy and I gave up on trying to keep my eyes open. It didn’t matter because Silver never once let go of me.

Not once.

And as the last few moments of awareness faded into sleep, I knew in my heart that he never would.

I heard the familiar beeping sound first—the annoying one that told everyone whether you were alive or not. Then I felt the warmth.

So much perfect warmth.

It was centered around my chest and abdomen.

There was a soft weight on the inside of my upper arm and the familiar sting of a needle on the back of my hand. It was easy to identify the second one. After all, I’d had enough IVs to last a lifetime. But the first one, the soft weight, I wasn’t as sure about. It could have been a blood pressure cuff, but it didn’t quite feel like it. I’d had plenty of those in my lifetime too.

Soft hair tickled my arm and then the silkiest of breaths caressed my neck.

Then I knew. He’d stayed.

Silver had stayed.

And not just stayed in the sense that he’d stayed in the room or even next to the bed. No, he’d stayed much closer than that.

He was in the bed with me.

His presence should have made the already too small hospital bed feel uncomfortably snug, but it was the exact opposite. Even with our arms wrapped around one another as we lay face to face, he wasn’t close enough.

Although I’d memorized everything about his face from the moment we’d met, I hadn’t gotten a chance to commit the feel of it to memory yet. I carefully removed the arm I had around his waist and used my fingers to brush the heavy locks of hair off his face. Something about his hair was a little different, though it took me a moment to figure out what it was. His hair was still the same gorgeous golden-brown color, and it might have grown a little bit since I’d last seen him, but it no longer shone like it used to. The overhead lights weren’t exactly flattering, even at the dim level they were currently at, but his hair still had a certain dullness to it.

I shifted my eyes lower and saw that his normally pale skin looked even more ashen than usual. I skimmed my fingers along his cheek. I didn’t have to feel it to know that his cheekbone was more prominent than it had been before, but it was still startling to actually feel the sharpness of the bone. I kept stroking his cheek as I took in the rest of what I could see.

The puffy, shadowed skin below his closed eyes was proof that he hadn’t been sleeping and that he’d likely been crying.

A lot.

I’d done that to him. I’d made him cry. And from the pallor of his skin to the prominence of his bones, it was clear he hadn’t been eating. I slid my hand softly along his side and then closed my eyes in shame. His ribs felt like they were just beneath the skin with no muscle or fat to protect them. Silver had always been on the thin side, but shedding pounds was the last thing he needed.

There was no way to tell how much weight he’d lost overall, but it didn’t matter. I’d done that to him too. I could have tried to place the blame on Jace for not taking better care of Silver, but it would have been a lie. Jace or Ronan or any one of the men watching the house could have gotten Silver anything he wanted to eat or even tempted him with the best junk food in the world, but they wouldn’t have been able to make him eat. The only consolation that kept me from waking him up at that very moment so he could eat something was the fact that Ronan had been the one who’d brought him to me, and if the surgeon had thought for even a second that Silver was in immediate danger due to his lack of calories, he would have done something about it. Jace too. Over the past few weeks, my best friend had come to understand how important Silver was to me, and he wouldn’t have let Silver get to a point where he became seriously ill from not eating.

I sighed as I mentally added to the official list of amends I’d have to make when I reached that step that the Alcoholics Anonymous people had said would be part of the recovery process. I couldn’t remember what step it was, but I wasn’t about to wait with that particular step. Especially when it came to Silver. I’d hurt him so many times, lied to him either directly or by omission, and simply hadn’t tried hard enough to show him that I wanted him to be a part of my life.

Permanently.

Silver chose that moment to sigh and snuggle closer to me, so I put the shit I’d have to deal with when we were both in a better place on the back burner and focused on his face again. His long dark eyelashes hadn’t changed, nor had his gently arched eyebrows. I ran my fingers over those first. Then I was skimming one finger along his pretty lashes. If I hadn’t been afraid of waking him, I would have leaned down and softly kissed those lashes and eyebrows and every other feature of his face until I got to his still-plump lips.

I pulled my hand away and settled it around Silver’s waist again.

“That’s it?” Silver asked softly. “You’re done already?”

He kept his eyes closed, so I did what I’d wanted and dropped my lips to kiss each eyelid with whisper-soft caresses. “You faker,” I murmured.

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