Page 33 of Piece You Saved

I lift the sheets and slide my legs out. “When will that be?”

“A couple of days.” Kade glances over his shoulder but almost immediately returns to face his laptop. “You need more sleep.”

“I don’t. You’re the one who needs sleep. I can watch the cameras if you want,” I offer.

“I’m good,” he says, but he doesn’t sound distracted anymore. He’s also not moving his mouse around or clicking anything. I don’t know what he’s doing now, but it isn’t what he was before.

“No, you’re not,” I push. “You must be exhausted.”

“And you, angel, were not telling the whole truth when you told me you had just a bruise at the hospital.”

I pause with one foot on the hardwood floor at the silky note in his voice and glance down. Kade might still be wearing what he wore to the hospital, but I’m not.

Someone has replaced the white t-shirt and gray sweats I was in before. It takes no stretch of the imagination to guess the identity of the person responsible for dressing me in the far-too-big black t-shirt.

Kade.

I wince because he must know. Worse, he saw.

Now, the silky note in his voice makes sense.

I scramble to figure out what to say, because there’s no way he could have missed the bruises splashed across my belly. If I know bruises, and I do, it would’ve darkened and spread, and they were bad enough then for Harley to suggest I needed a scan.

“I—”

“Don’t keep something like that from me again, angel,” Kade says flatly.

Yep. He saw my bruise, and it’s about as bad as I think it is, which is pretty fucking terrible.

Lifting my hand, I graze the tips of my fingers over my belly. One glancing touch is more than enough to make me wince.

And then I realize what Kade is doing. My eyes connect with his reflection on his laptop screen. He’s watching me.

“You’re making a bigger deal out of it than it is,” I say as I get to my feet and turn to the door. “Can I see—”

Kade moves so suddenly that I whip my head back toward him, my heart in my throat.

He says nothing as he shoves himself to his feet and stalks toward me.

I tell myself this is Kade, that he won’t hurt me, but fear is a beast I’ve never learned to control.

As he approaches, I back up and keep on backing up past his bed until a wall stops me. On my right is the open doorway for his bathroom, but it’s hard to focus on anything except the man bearing down on me with all the blankness of a calm before a violent storm.

He rests his palms on the wall beside my head and leans in close, the scent of him enveloping me. “If you’re hurting, you need to tell me.”

How have I found a man who cares this much?

“It’s just a bruise,” I say and place my palms flat on his chest and nudge. “I’d like to see Aden, if that’s okay.”

Kade fixes another long stare on me, then grabs my hand and tugs me toward his bathroom. He leads me into a bright white room with a shower, bath, and black towels to go along with the black bedding and paint he seems to like. Stopping directly in front of the mirror, he stands behind me and lifts the hem of my shirt.

When I get a good long look at the angry, vivid black and red thing that is my belly, I can’t quite believe it.

Kade presses his mouth to my ear. “Tell me again it’s just a little bruise, angel.”

But I don’t look at the bruise. I lift my head and meet his reflection. Anger hardens his voice, tightens his lips, and furrows his brow. That’s not all I see. I turn in his arms, forcing him to release my shirt.

Rising to my tiptoes, I press a soft kiss on his lips.

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