Page 37 of Heart of Stone
How long had he been like that? How many hours had it been?
Like he could sense my focus on him, Reid’s eyes came in my direction. He blinked away the disorientation from what had to be an uncomfortable bout of rest and sat up straight, his hands pressing into the arms of his chair. “Hey. Are you okay? Can I get you something?”
The concern in his voice was unmistakable. Even though I recalled so much of what he’d said from the moment he showed up on my doorstep, his tone changing after he’d seen what had been done to me, there was something about hearing it againnow that caught me off guard. He’d never spoken to me with such tenderness in his tone.
Without answering him, I moved to sit up, immediately wincing with pain as I did, and barely a moment into it, Reid had rushed to my side to help me. “Easy,” he urged, his voice soft. I tried to ignore the feel of his hands on me as he propped up some pillows behind me. Once I was situated, he asked, “How’s that?”
I gave him a nod. “Good. Thank you.”
“Are you feeling any pain?”
“Achy,” I murmured. “What time is it?”
He flipped his wrist over, glanced at his watch, and said, “Almost seven-thirty in the morning.”
“Wow.” I marveled. “I slept all night.”
“Two nights.”
“What?”
“It’s Sunday morning.”
There hadn’t been much remaining, but the last bits of that fog vanished.“Sunday?!”
One half of his mouth quirked. “You’ve been going through it, lady.”
Reid came to my house on Friday. It’d been early in the afternoon. Now, it was Sunday morning. I’d missed a day and a half of life. “Are you… Are you joking?”
He shook his head. “I’m not. I’ve done my best to keep you hydrated and fed. You woke up for brief periods, but they were short, and you were really out of it.”
Wow.
I knew I hadn’t slept well Thursday night because I’d been so terrified, but this seemed extreme.
My eyes drifted down over him. He was still standing by the bed, towering over me. “You changed.”
Given that he’d shown up here wearing clothes that indicated he’d come right from the office and wasn’t wearing thosesame clothes now, it wasn’t as though I’d made some massive revelation.
Nodding, Reid shared, “I left for just shy of an hour on Friday when Danielle showed up. I hadn’t realized she knew what happened to you. She told me she was the one who took you to urgent care. I told her I intended to stay and take care of you, so she insisted that I at least run back to the cabin to get myself changed. I was gone long enough to shower, put on fresh clothes, grab a few necessities, and bring you dinner.”
So the memory of him feeding me had been real then. And I knew I’d remembered seeing Danielle. “I was really out of it.”
“You look clearheaded now.”
“You were here all this time?”
He gave me a small smile. “I was.”
I didn’t know what to do with that information. Sure, Reid had said he wasn’t going anywhere while I rested, but I hadn’t expected I’d be asleep for days. In all the instances where I’d been beaten previously, I hadn’t ever needed that amount of rest. Maybe this time had been worse than I thought.
I’d spent so much time trying to come to grips with the whole situation, and namely, the fact that Reid had spent two nights here with me, that he took advantage of my silence and spoke. “Are you hungry?”
I was still in such disbelief over this. Of course, taking stock of how I felt, I noted there was a hollow sensation in my belly. “A little.”
“I can make some breakfast for the both of us.”
“What?”
