FALLING FOR THE LYCAN BIKER: MY BESTFRIEND BROTHER

Chapter 70: HOW MUCH I FELT WITH WORDS

Chapter 71

Lumi

I looked down at his hand around my wrist, then at his face, the dark stubble, the fever flush high on his cheekbones.

I sat back down on the sofa next to him, and his hand didn’t let go of my wrist right away. His fingers were too hot against my skin, and it scared me more than I wanted to admit out loud.

"I need to get you something," I said, but my voice had already lost its urgency, softened by the warmth of his hand and the way he was looking at me. "You need medicine."

"I don’t do drugs when I’m like this." His voice was rough, dragging over the words like they cost him something.

"Why not?" He was quiet for a second, his eyes closed, his head tipped back against the cushion.

"Because when the fever’s this bad and I take something for it, I stop being able to hold anything back. My mouth doesn’t have a filter anymore." He opened his eyes and looked at me. "I don’t want you seeing that."

"I don’t care."

"I know you’ll say this, because..."

"Ren, you’re burning up. I’m not letting you lie here and suffer just so you can keep your secrets a little longer." I pulled my wrist gently out of his grip and stood. "Where do you keep it. The painkiller, anything."

"Bathroom cabinet. Left side."

I found it exactly where he said, mostly full, like he’d bought it once during a different fever and forgotten it existed since.

On my way back through the kitchen I stopped and stepped inside.

I needed to prepare something for him, because a man who hadn’t eaten properly in days needed something in his stomach before I put medicine into it.

I found bread and eggs in the fridge, not much else, and made him something simple, plain toast and a soft egg.

When I brought it out he was watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite name.

"You don’t have to do all this."

"I know." I set the plate on the low table in front of him. "Eat. Then take the drugs. I’m not asking twice."

He ate slower than I wanted him to, but he ate it, every bit of it, and thirty minutes later, when I finally put the tablets in his palm and watched him swallow them with the last of a glass of water, some of the tension in my chest loosened for the first time since I’d walked back through his door.

"Come on, let’s take you to the bed." I said, standing and holding my hand out to him. "You’ll sleep better there than folded up on this sofa."

He let me pull him up, which told me more about how tired he actually was than anything he’d said out loud.

He led me down a short hallway, one hand braced against the wall, and pushed open a door into a room as plain and stripped down as the rest of the place, a bed, a window, nothing on the walls.

"Lie down," I said.

"You don’t have to stay."

"I said I would. I’m staying until you fall asleep."

Something moved across his face, quick and unguarded, gone before I could read it properly. He lowered himself onto the bed, and I pulled the blanket up over him, and he caught my hand again before I could pull back.

"Promise you won’t leave the room. Not till I’m out."

"I promise."

He held onto that promise like it mattered more than it should have, his fingers loosening slowly around mine as his breathing evened out.

I sat down in the chair by the window and waited.

It didn’t take long. Within a few minutes his eyes had closed and his chest was rising and falling in the slow, heavy rhythm of someone finally giving in to exhaustion.

I sat there in the quiet, in a bedroom that belonged to a man I still didn’t fully understand, and let myself breathe for the first time all day.

I don’t know how long I sat there. Ten minutes. Maybe twenty. I was half dozing myself in the chair when I heard him shift, a rough, broken sound catching in his throat.

I sat up straight. He was trembling, his whole body shaking under the blanket, his brow drawn down hard, sweat beading along his hairline even though the room wasn’t warm.

"Ren?" I was up and beside the bed before I’d even decided to move. "Ren, are you okay?"

He didn’t answer. His head turned toward the sound of my voice but his eyes stayed shut, and what came out of him next wasn’t an answer at all.

"Don’t leave me." His voice cracked straight down the middle. "Don’t leave me. Please. Don’t leave." My chest caved in.

"I’m here," I said, sitting on the edge of the bed, reaching for his hand. "Ren, I’m here. It’s me. I’m not going anywhere."

His eyes opened, glassy and unfocused, and for one long, terrible second he looked at me like he didn’t know who I was, like he was looking straight through me at someone else entirely.

Then something in his face shifted, and he blinked, and it was me he was seeing.

"Lumi." My name came out of him like relief and disbelief tangled together. "You’re actually here."

"I’m here," I said again, softer this time. "You’re okay. You were just dreaming."

"I thought you left." His hand tightened around mine, too tight, like he needed proof I was solid.

"I keep thinking you left and you’re not coming back and I can’t..." He stopped, his jaw working, his eyes wet in a way I didn’t think a man like him let himself be.

"I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose you, Lumi." My heart melted at his words and even though I didn’t know what to do with it, I responded with a smile.

"You’re not losing me."

"I know it’s not right." The words were spilling out of him now, fast and unguarded, exactly the way he’d warned me they would.

"You’re Neve’s best friend and you’re older than me. I know how it looks, I know what people would say, but I can’t control what I feel when I’m around you.

And when you’re not around it’s worse. I see you everywhere. In every room I walk into, I’m looking for you before I even realize I’m doing it.

You’re in my head when I fall asleep and you’re there when I wake up and I don’t know how to make it stop and I don’t think I want to anymore." I couldn’t speak. My throat had closed around something too big to push past.

"I want to give you the world," he said, his voice breaking on it, his hand gripping mine like it was the only steady thing left in the room.

"Whatever that man made you believe you were worth, he was wrong. He was so wrong, Lumi. You are not less than yourself because of what he did to you. You are not something anyone gets to shrink."

His thumb moved over my knuckles, slow, like he was trying to memorize the shape of my hand while he still had the nerve to hold it.

"I want to be the one who reminds you of that every single day, if you’ll let me. I want you happy. Not surviving. Happy. I’d burn down anything standing between you and that."

Tears were falling before I even felt them start, hot and fast down my face.

He lifted a hand and wiped them away with his thumb, his palm cupping the side of my jaw like I was something he was afraid of breaking.

"Three things," he said quietly. "I need you to hear three things, and then you can do whatever you want with them." He took a breath, like even fever-drunk and unfiltered this still cost him something.

"I love you. I have for a while now, longer than I’ve let myself admit. Second, I will never make you feel small the way he did, not once, not ever. And third..." His voice dropped lower, rougher.

"I’m not going anywhere. Whatever you decide about this, about us, I’m not disappearing on you. Not now. Not after tonight."

I was crying too hard to answer him with words, so I didn’t try. I leaned down instead, and he met me halfway despite the fever still burning through him, his hand sliding into my hair as his mouth found mine.

The kiss was slow, like he wanted to prove every single thing he’d just said. I could taste the salt of my own tears between us, and he kissed them away too, gentle, like he couldn’t stand the idea of me hurting for one more second.

His mouth moved against mine like he was memorizing it, slow and deliberate.

Every time I thought he’d pull back he only leaned in deeper, his hand cradling the back of my head like he needed me exactly where I was.

I felt the heat of the fever still coming off him, but underneath it there was something steadier now.

"Lumi," he murmured against my mouth, my name sounding different in his voice now, like it meant something it hadn’t before. "Tell me to stop and I’ll..." I didn’t let him complete his words.

I wasn’t going to tell him how much I felt with words, but with actions.