“Come inside. And talk normally,” I said, hoping the noise would force some kind of a reaction from Dominic.
Derek came closer to the bed, sticking his hands in his pockets, never even looking Dominic’s way.
“When did he come home?” I asked.
“Day before last, sometime after midnight. Said he was tired, wouldn’t tell me where he was. He was completely wet,” Derek said. “Then he slept, and I didn’t bother him until last night. I came in here and tried to wake him up, but he kept mumbling and turned his back to me, so I figured he needed more rest. And then this morning, he wouldn’t even react.”
The fear in his voice, the panic that he tried so hard to shield, made me feel like shit.
“You should have called me sooner,” I whispered, shaking my head to myself. I should have come here myself yesterday, too. I’d spent the whole day doing nothing, and I’d somehow convinced myself that coming here was a stupid idea.
“Is he…is he gonna be okay, Teddy? Because we need Dom. The kids need Dom, you know? They’re crying,” he said, raising his brows, before he leaned down closer to my face, as if he was letting me in on a secret. “I never know what to do when they’re crying.”
Oh, God. My heart broke all the way. “You just let them cry and tell them it’s going to be okay.” And it wasreallyhard not to cry myself right now, but I sucked it up. “He’s gonna be okay, Derek. He’s breathing, and he reacted to this powder at first, too. He just needs some time, that’s all.”
He nodded, even though he didn’t look like he believed me. “Are you going to stay?”
“Yes. I’ll be here,” I said without having to even think about it. Didn’t I havea job? Didn’t I have some place to be right now?
It didn’t matter one bit.
“Good, good,” Derek said, and practically tiptoeing again, he rushed to the door and out like he was afraid I might stop him.
With a sigh, I looked at Dominic. “Hear that, wolf-ass? The kids need you. Your brother needs you. You gotta wake up now.”
Ineeded him, too. Not because we were anything, but how would I live in a world where Dominic didn’t exist? Just the thought made me want to throw up, and I was glad I hadn’t had breakfast.
“You’ll be okay,” I said again, more to myself than to him, touching his cheek and his overgrown beard with my other hand gently, hoping the physical contact would make a difference. It didn’t. “You’re going to be just fine.”
If I felt helplessthe day before, it was even worse now. I kept pacing around the room, the bed, trying to keep myself from losing it. It had been three hours already, and he wasn’t waking up.Threehours after breathing in all that powder that usually had me wide awake and ready to sprint within seconds.
There were no wounds on his body, no sign that he’d injected Crackdown on himself recently. There were no syringes anywhere in his room, either—and, yes, I checked. I checkedeverythinghe had in there, hoping something would calm me down, but Dominic was worse than me. He didn’t have anything personal in this room, anything that would tell me more about him, though I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to know.
Eventually, I was too tired to keep pacing around, and I sat on the bed again. Just to look at him sleeping like that had my heart yearning, my fingers itching to touch him. Funny how even in this situation, my body reacted to the sight of him like nothing in the world was more important than feeling him against me—not even the fact that he wasn’t waking up.
Derek hadn’t come in to check on me for the past hour, and I just needed to lay down for a bit. The bed was big and there was plenty of space. I wouldn’t take up much of it anyway. So, I lay down on Dominic’s pillow, careful not to put all my weight on my wounded arm. With my hands tucked under my cheek, I looked at his perfect face, analyzed it again the way I’d dreamed of doing a thousand times, except in my dreams, the situation had been much different. I hadn’t been terrified that Dominic wouldn’t wake up then. I’d known he was really just asleep.
“Please wake up,” I whispered, knowing very well he wouldn’t hear me, but I just needed to hear it myself. “Don’t you dare die on me, Dominic. Just wake up, okay?”
But Dominic didn’t react. His eyes were still closed, his breathing even, and I closed mine, too. It was getting really hard to convince myself that nothing was wrong. Really hard not to pick up the phone and call in a healing crew from the ODP. The nymphs would know what to do. They would know how to wake him up right away. And who cared if he was pissed about it after? He’d beconscious, at least. The rest I could handle.
Another hour. That was all I was willing to give it—one more hour, and I was calling it in. It was torture to lay there and wonder if I was making the right call by waiting or if I was making a fatal mistake, but at least when I locked myself inside my head, I could make reality into anything I wanted.
That’s how I fell asleep.
ChapterTwelve
“Teddy.”
I thought I heard my name being called but I wasn’t sure. Sleep left me lazily, and it tried to pull me back under as it went, but even in my subconscious, I knew I needed to wake up, though I didn’t knowwhyyet.
I lay on my side on something soft, and something heavy was over me, draped around my waist. I opened my eyes and the shock at seeing Dominic’s face right in front of mine had my whole body numb.
Until I remembered that I’d laid here by myself what felt likeminutesago, and he’d been sleeping peacefully. He still was.
Except…when I lay here earlier, his arm had been by his side, not around my waist.
My heart skipped a beat. Had he called my name? Or had I imagined that? I wasn’t imagining his arm around me—I could feel his warmth perfectly. My body knew it by memory, and it craved it like it didn’t care about the situation at all.