Page 83 of Breathe
“No.” Cat opened the door but still wasn’t quite done. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” she said fiercely.
“Okay,” he promised. “Quiet life for me from now on.”
Cat disappeared. Kane tried to sit up a little more, and look and feel a little less sick. The ten minutes he had to wait felt like hours.
Ellen pushed the door open and padded over to him. Half her hair had fallen out of its ponytail and was tucked behind her ear instead. She was wearing yoga pants and a gigantic BC sweatshirt that might have been Antonio’s. Her eyes looked huge, her skin very pale.
She stood a couple of feet away from the side of the bed. If he’d reached out his hand, he couldn’t have touched her.
For a long moment they looked at each other. She wasn’t smiling, but Kane knew he had a big stupid grin on his face.
She said, “How are you feeling?”
“I’m great,” he said.
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah.” Apart from not being able to breathe or talk, he’d never been happier in his life. “Bit of razor burn on my chest,” he joked weakly.
“Good.”
Suddenly she rushed forward and hit him, hard, on the shoulder. “You stupid bloody jackass!” she shouted, hitting him anywhere that didn’t have a sensor or a tube attached to it. “What the hell were you thinking? Must you always play the bloody hero? God, when you get better I am going to kill you!”
“You’re right,” he said, contrite, but he was grinning fit to crack his cheeks.
“Don’t talk! Quit agreeing with me!” She hit the top of his head. “You scared Carl so bad his eyes nearly turned blue!” More blows on his arms and legs.
He caught one of her hands and held it, pulling her so she had to sit on the bed next to him. “I was doing fine before I met you!” she said, not as loudly but still very angry. “You make me want you, God, like water and food, and you make me fall in love with you, and your family, and then you scare me sideways—”
“Ellen,” he interrupted. “Don’t leave. I love you. Don’t leave.”
“Me leave?” she almost shouted. “I’m not the one running into burning buildings! Don’t you leave me!”
Kane’s grin hurt his face. “Okay.”
“Don’t look so damn smug!” And for the second time in an hour, a woman he loved burst into tears.
Kane ignored the IV pulling on his hand and the crush of the sensors on him and pulled Ellen onto his chest. Burying his face in her hair was like coming home.
Against his neck, she said, “You were right. I was running away. I was so afraid of you, because I loved you so badly.”
“You scared me too,” he whispered into her hair. “But that’s the way it works. That’s how I knew it was real.”
She stayed in his arms for a few more moments. Then she sat up, pressing one hand into his chest. “You didn’t have to run into a burning building to teach me that, you know,” she said, one side of her mouth tilting up.
She kept saying that. “Technically,” he pointed out, “it wasn’t burning, and I was already in it.”
“Don’t be pedantic.” She was recovering, swiping the moisture from her cheeks. Again she had that fire in her eyes that meant she was determined on something. “Let me tell you how this is going to go.” She counted on her fingers. “First, you’re going to quit smoking. Which, if you haven’t noticed, you already have done, as of twelve hours or so ago. I want you around for a long time, and you trying to get a rise out of Cat is not a good enough reason for me to lose you before I’m good and ready.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Then,” she went on, “you’re going to sell that ridiculous apartment that has absolutely none of your personality in it. We are going to buy a proper home.” She grimaced. “Maybe even near Cat. And you will come to England and meet my family, and they’ll love you, and I’ll try and see things from their side more often.”
“Okay,” he agreed.
“And then, we are going to date, for a while.”
“But—”
