Page 62 of Love's Ace

I wasn’t sure I knew who I was anymore, and I wasn’t sure if that was a bad or a good thing.

It felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Fuck, I couldn’tbreathe.

I didn’t realize I was having a panic attack until my shoulders hit the wall and I slid down slowly, trying to force oxygen into lungs that felt like they’d shriveled into nothing. Even as I gulped in the chill morning air, my brain wasn’t registering it. My fingertips were tingling, my scalp was prickling—my vision was too bright and hazy at the edges.

Everything was collapsing inward. My ribs, my lungs, my body. The world.

Because I realized—Iknew—things had changed. Things were different.

I could never go back to who I was before I’d been attacked by the Enmity in the alley, even if we found a way to cure me. Even if we found a way to turn me into a human again.

“Theo?”

Stay with me.

Stay with me.

He’d burned those damn words across my ribs, and somehow they’d stolen away my ability to inhale.

“Theo, are you with me?” I was so caught up in my head that I didn’t realize I’d closed my eyes, and so wrapped up in my panic that I didn’t hear Wren coming outside. His fingers were tangled in my hair, and it wasn’t his words so much as the sharp pull of those digits that finally forced me to take a shuddery gasp of air that I felt go all the way down.

“I’m f-fine.” The lie couldn’t have been more obvious.

“Sometimes thinking too hard will do that to a person.” Gethin’s voice from the doorway was as sardonic as ever, but his eyes were fixed on the way Wren’s fingers were tangled in my hair, his brows knitted together. “Probably not used to it, right?”

I couldn’t even summon up a streak of anger around the panic still trying to claw its way from my chest, and my hand was shaking when I raised it to flip Gethin off. He rolled his eyes and held the door open as Wren half dragged me back inside and pushed me onto the couch.

When the ex-cupid flung a blanket at my face, I was still too wrapped up in my head to catch it. Wren glared at him, but draped the plush black fabric across my legs, wrapping me in the warmth of it. At least shivering was better than burning alive from the inside out, right?

“I’m fine.” I finally got out again. “I’m just… tired.”

Lies. Fuck, since when had I been so bad at lying?

“I’ll go get us some coffee. I know I sure as shit could use it.” I barely caught sight of his blond hair whipping behind him as Gethin left the room. As soon as the door closed, Wren turned to me, and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t quite convince myself to move back when he ran his fingers through my hair and forced me to look at him.

“What the fuck was that?”

Ah, there was the tone I recognized—a little angry, fucking bossy, but it was edged with concern. How did I recognize an entire spectrum of emotions from a man I’d only known for a week?

How did any of this make sense?

“It’s… nothing. I’m tired, Wren. And this is… Fuck, it’s a lot. I might be turning into a monster. A week ago, I was just a poor fucker trying to decide whether I wanted to spend the last of my money to pay for my room or buy something to eat. Just…” I trailed off, the venom in my voice dying somewhere on the back of my tongue at the expression on his face.

Anger, concern, and buried beneath it all, the same confusion I felt.

The same worry.

The same panic.

Fuck, he’d probably felt every bit of my damn panic attack, hadn’t he? They were so physical for me, so visceral, that I knew he had. There was no point in lying about it. I shook my head and dropped back onto the couch.

“It’s hard for me too.” Wren finally spoke, his voice hushed, like he didn’t know how to give a confession but he was willing to try. “I went from feeling nothing to feelingeverything.The entire world was gray before, Theo. Gray with little bursts of crimson when I fought, and the prospect of an eternity wherethat was all it would ever be.” He sounded soft, maybe a little lost. “And then you were there in that damn alley, and you changed everything. You changedme.” I opened my eyes and found him staring at me, his mouth set in a hard line, his hands fisted and crossed over his chest. Every line in his body was rigid, his jaw sharp with how hard he clenched it.

He looked just as beautiful as he had when I’d first seen him, and the last bit of panic in my chest slowly melted away. I was struggling with emotions, with what this all meant… but Wren was fighting with trying to figure out how to feel any of it at all.

“You’re the one who shot me, asshole.” I leaned in as I spoke, dropping my head to his shoulder. He blew out a shaking breath when I turned my head and brushed my lips against his thundering pulse.

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