Page 124 of Long Way Down

Melissa sniffed again, hard, and her eyes were dry now. Anger kindled, but she was too exhausted to hold onto it. She didn’t like being doubted; didn’t want to be seen as weak.

But most of all, right now, she didn’t want to be conscious.

“I’m fine.”

Leslie’s frown deepened. “Bullshit. Let’s–”

“I’m just tired,” Melissa insisted. “I need to sleep for like a week.” She scrounged up the tiniest, lamest smile. “Promise. Thanks for stitching me up.”

Leslie cocked her head to the side and studied her a moment, then released her and turned away with a muttered, “Unbelievable. Fucking…” She went to the part in the curtains and turned back, one hand propping on her hip, the other coming up so she could point a threatening finger at her. “I’m sending Pongo in. Maybe he can talk some sense into your dumb ass.”

“Les–”

“Nuh-uh. You’re talking to him.” She swept out with a dramatic yank of the curtain. The cheap, blue-dyed cotton swung back and forth in her wake, metal rings clacking softly.

Melissa sighed, and it felt like all her insides collapsed together, a liquid slump like snow melting. She wasn’t as numb – save the whole left half of her face – as she’d been back at the gallery, but all her feelings on what had happened tonight slid and skidded just below the surface, rats running from the light every time she tried to examine one. She was too tired. The pain in her face was dulled by the lidocaine, but a full-body soreness was beginning to overtake her: the aftereffects of tensing all-over in a moment of crisis.

She wanted her bed.

She wanted a drink.

She wanted this fucking case to disappear and to never have to think about Doug Waxman and his red, twisted face again.

(She knew from past experience that this sentiment would go away, eventually. That, sometime soon, she’d be overtaken by a strong need to understand the whys and hows of it all. A relentless, furious curiosity that had lent itself well to her chosen career.)

She eased off the table with a loud crackle of paper and a sharp inhale when her feet touched the floor. Pain made itself known in a dozen sharp pinpricks, little flickers of nerve pain like she’d been in a car accident. She didn’t know this hospital well, but she thought that if she took a left outside this ER room, and walked past the other little curtained rooms, she’d find an emergency exit that would let her out in a parking lot. She could call a cab, there, and maybe not have to see–

The curtain eased aside, and half of Pongo’s face appeared, cautious and blue-eyed, freckles stark beneath the harsh tube lights.

Melissa’s pulse jumped, caught-out.

“Dixie?” He pushed the curtain wide and stepped through, moving in a careful way as if afraid he’d spook her. The curtain swung shut behind him, sealing them in together, blocking her escape, and his expression did something tragic as his gaze moved over her face and locked on to the side of it, where Leslie had smoothed a bandage over her stitches. “Shit.” Then, again, voice cracking: “Shit.”

“I’m fine.”

His throat jumped hard as he swallowed. She could hear the dry click of it, and a muscle leaped in his cheek when he ground out, “I’m goddamnsickof hearing you say you’re fine. He tried to cut your damnfaceoff.”

“It’s just a scratch.”

“Bullshit.” She’d never seen him like this, with his hands balled into fists, and his nostrils flared, and his normally-affable face transformed by anger. It was, honestly, upsetting. “You’re at the hospital, aren’t you? He was–”

Pongo caught himself with a sharp inhale, and wrestled a moment, jaw working on nothing. Through the anger, there came a flicker of fear, pale and skittery, like he’d just escaped disaster and couldn’t quite believe it. “I was out looking for the guy. I was at the scene where April got dumped, and a witness saw the car, and I found out it was registered to some rich prick named Waxman.”

She already knew; had known at the gallery, the moment she realized Doug was very much not calm and very much wanted to kill her. But hearing Pongo confirm the name for her was still a blow. She shuddered, and he crossed the distance between them, pulling up at the last second when she wasn’t able to keep from tucking her shoulders into a defensive position.

He stood less than an arm’s length away, and she could hear the unsteady hitch in his breathing. “It’s alright,” he said. His hand moved toward her face, and though she tried not to flinch, he hesitated again – but only for a moment. Brows knitted, moves slow and telegraphed, he traced the edge of his thumb just behind the bandage, pushing back her hair and turning her head a fraction with his other hand beneath her chin so he could better assess the damage.

“I came as soon as I realized – as soon as I put it together,” he said, with an air of apology; his warm, fluttering breath touched her face, smelling of cigarettes. “I called you, over and over, and you didn’t answer, and I thought–”

Her skin tingled in the places where his fingertips rested, light and careful. It hurt to swallow. “I’m okay, though. I didn’t–”Need you.She couldn’t say that, not and mean it. He stood close enough that she could smell the leather of his cut, the familiar notes of his shampoo and cologne. Against the antiseptic backdrop of the hospital, they were familiar, comforting smells, and she wanted to fall against him and let him hold her up so badly it set her teeth on edge.

His frown was pained, like he knew what she’d almost said – and, worse, like it had hurt him. This moment was surreal. This sense ofcareradiating off of him. Worry, and fear, and hurt all mixed up. It was easy to dismiss Leslie’s insistence that he cared about her, hard to dismiss the man himself, standing before her, visibly worked up about it all.

Again, she knew the urge to crumble. To let the thick, messy tangle of emotion lodged like a stone in her belly work its way up her throat and out into the air between them. To fall, knowing how strong his arms were.

“What do you need?” he asked, hand sliding down to rest at the base of her throat, where honesty kept getting log-jammed.

You.

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