Page 78 of Cross Check Hearts

Chapter34

Declan

I know I should leave her alone and let her rest, but I haven’t been able to stop myself from peeking my head into my room to check on Hannah every half hour or so since we got back to my place. She hasn’t moved a bit since I laid her down, and I’m pretty sure she was out like a light again as soon as her head hit the pillow.

But she’s been out for a few hours now, and I don’t want her to sleep the entire day away, so I step quietly inside and lower myself down on the edge of the bed next to her as gently as possible. I don’t know how it’s possible, but somehow she looks even more beautiful asleep like this than she does awake. After that first night we spent together all those months ago, I never would’ve dreamed I’d one day have her in my bed like this, but here she is. It feels surreal yet perfect at the same time, like this was always destined to happen.

Some part of me has always felt that way, even when I really didn’t want to admit it, and that’s exactly why I kept going back to that club every night for weeks on end, hoping to find her. But then she dropped back into my life hundreds of miles away when I least expected it.

I didn’t do any of this today to try to win her over or anything, but I hope it at least lets her see how serious I am about her. About this thing between us.

Like she can hear my thoughts, Hannah stirs and lets out a little groan before she wakes, then turns her head to find me. She blinks away her sleep and confusion as she tries to orient herself and remember how she got here, then smiles when her vision focuses on me. My hand instinctively reaches out to brush her sleep-tousled hair out of her face.

“How are you feeling?”

“Much better.” She gingerly touches her fingertips to her temples, checking for tenderness. “I think the migraine finally passed.”

“Sleeping several hours has a magical way of doing that,” I tell her with a smile, and she groans as she brings a hand to her forehead.

“Shit. I guess there’s no way I’m getting that paper in on time now.”

I grin at her and lean over to tuck a lock of her beautiful dark hair behind one of her ears. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

Her brows crash together as she stares up at me. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t be upset, but after I got you situated here, I went over to your apartment to get the paper and took it to your professor.”

She sits up quickly, clearly showing that the migraine’s gone. There’s no way she could’ve done that a few hours ago. “You really did that for me?”

I stroke her cheek with the back of my knuckles. “I told you I was going to take care of you, and I meant it.”

“But… how? How did you get him to take it?”

I shrug. “Turns out your professor is a huge Aces fan. It didn’t take much convincing to let you turn that paper in late after I walked into his office.”

Hannah stares at me for a second, looking dumbfounded. “I—I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”

“Of course, hummingbird.”

I move off the bed to make room for her to get up. She stands and stretches, lifting her arms high above her head like she’s about to launch right into one of our yoga routines, but she just bends over to reach for her toes a few times before she straightens. The shirt she fell asleep in is all rumpled, and she frowns down at it.

“Sorry to ask you for even more, but do you maybe have another shirt I could borrow for a while?”

“Of course. Help yourself,” I tell her, gesturing at my closet on the other side of the room. As she makes her way over, I follow to flip the light on in the room so she can see. She pulls the closet open and stands for a second looking over all her options. She pulls out a couple of t-shirts, but none of them strike her fancy, so she keeps riffling through them until she gets to the very end of the rack. Then she lets out a little gasp.

“Is this…?” she trails, reaching for a mask hanging by its strings. She unties it carefully and turns around to hold it out in front of her face. As soon as it lines up with her perfect features, she smiles at me through it. “You kept my mask.”

She almost sounds like she can’t believe it, but she shouldn’t be surprised. Did she really think I’d get rid of it when she left it for me? But then my heart skips when I remember that the note she left is taped to the inside of the mask. She spots it at the same time and plucks it away, and I feel embarrassment twisting in my stomach. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about—I’ve already told her how much that night meant to me and how often I went back to look for her—but I still feel a little exposed.

“You kept both of these and brought them all the way with you to Denver?”

I shrug, willing my cheeks not to burn. “Like I told you, I never stopped thinking about that night. Or about you.”

Something I can’t quite pin down passes over her face at that, and her expression shifts as she unfolds the small piece of paper to read over what she wrote. She shakes her head and folds it back up before reattaching it to the inside of the mask.

“You have no idea how many times I rewrote that note. And I still don’t think I got it right.”

“I don’t know about that. I kept it, after all.”

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