Page 1 of Reading Between the Lines
1
Diem
(Now)
Fucking love.
How had I ended up here?
I’d never felt more unstable in my entire life, and this from a man who had suffered endless abuse growing up.
Love made a person irrational. It trumped reasonable thought. It took over logical thinking.
Love exposed a person’s underbelly and left them vulnerable and unprotected.
Under its influence, I was dangerously weak. Exposed.
Afraid constantly, and I was never afraid anymore.
A villain sought these debilities and used them to their advantage. If they couldn’t get at you directly, they went for your Achilles’ heel.
The mere thought of losing someone you loved was a pain unlike anything I’d ever felt. It hurt more than a solid punch to the temple. More than a leather belt across a bare backside asit sliced into young flesh. More than frostbite and burns from cigarettes or stove elements. It hurt more than taking a hard swing from a bike chain to the face, one forceful enough to leave you maimed for life.
Having experienced pain on more levels than most, I could say with certainty that the fear of losing someone you loved was a torture that went beyond the physical. It happened on a cellular level. It drove you to the breaking point. That fear took over your reflexes and became the essence behind your motives, often without you knowing.
Given what I understood about pain, suffering, and lack of control, one might think I would avoid falling in love. But that wasn’t possible.
Love happened without warning or permission. It snuck beneath your skin and burrowed into your heart the minute you weren’t looking. No matter how hard you steeled yourself against the world, no matter how reinforced your barriers, love found a way, and oh, the sweet devastation it left behind.
The fear.
The joy.
The triumph.
It both crippled me and sent me soaring.
A creaking door hinge sounded from behind me. Echo lifted her head as a triangle of light cut across the floor, highlighting her inquisitive gaze. With a soft huff of recognition, she lowered her head again and closed her eyes.
I didn’t have to look to know who it was.
The frail woman in the hospital bed didn’t stir. In the deepest, darkest depths of night, her face, pale and drawn, hung slack with sleep. The harsh yellow light bleeding into the room from the hallway turned her skin jaundiced, accentuated wrinkles, and amplified the shadows under her eyes.
With a muffledthunk, the door swung shut. A high moon shone in the window, providing enough illumination to cradle the woman in its beam like a lover’s touch. Was her husband out there, watching over her? Possibly. The doctors had called her recovery miraculous.
A hand landed on my shoulder. I didn’t startle or tense. The knot in my stomach loosened a fraction. A warmth filled my veins. Fucking love. Comforting one minute, an atomic destruction to my insides the next.
I grunted something resembling a greeting, never taking my eyes off the woman in the bed.
“They had Dr Pepper, so I got you that instead of a coffee.”
A sweating bottle appeared in my field of vision. Robotically, I reached for it with my casted hand, snagging it precariously between the fingers sticking out of the plaster as I murmured thanks.
I set the unopened bottle between my thighs and cracked the knuckles on my good hand. “They said maybe tomorrow.”
“Fingers crossed.”
The weight on my shoulder vanished. Long, confident fingers landed on my head, massaging my scalp and tugging at the thick mane I’d grown over the past few months. They scratched purposefully, and I closed my eyes, letting Tallus’s touch ground me.
