“The fuck I do! You’re as bad as Allie.”
“What did you say to her? She ran out of here like a bat out of hell.”
“I didn’t say anything. She just freaked out.”
And told me I was stupid. And a masochist.
Apparently I fucking am.
He stopped struggling. Jamie backed off.
“Whatever’s going on with you two, you need to sit tight for a while,” Jamie told him.
Mick put a hand to his head, winced when his fingers smoothed over the bruise there. “Yeah, fine. Maybe I don’t need to talk to her right now, anyway.”
“That sounds cryptic.”
“Don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered.
“You have a head injury so I’ll ignore that grumpy-ass tone.”
“Go ask the nurse when they’re letting me the hell out of here, will you?”
“Yeah, okay. Don’t go anywhere or I’ll hunt you down, Reid.”
“I won’t. Just go find out.”
His head was pounding. From the knockout. From the hard lump in his gut that told him what Allie really thought about him. Hell, he should have suspected. It was what he’d always thought himself. But to have to hear it from the woman he loved . . .
Maybe he’d been right all along. They should never be together. He was poison to her—that had been obvious tonight. He’d never forget the look of misery and pure terror on her face. His damn fault. And still he’d argued with her like an ass.
But he couldn’t give up the fighting.
The fighting? Or the rest?
Fuck, his head was spinning, his stomach churning.
He closed his eyes and leaned back on the pillows.
He’d have to let Allie go. Again.
For the last time.
CHAPTER Fifteen
MICK WOKE AT six out of habit, his limbs itching to go for a run, but the ER doctor—and Jamie—had made him promise he wouldn’t work out for a week. It had only been five days. Maybe he could push things a little?
He felt okay. The bruise was already clearing up, and he hadn’t had any nausea or dizziness since that first night. Physically, he was fine. The rest of him was pretty well fucked up.
He got out of bed and pulled on a pair of sweats and a tank top.
“Fuck it,” he muttered as he put on his running shoes. He was going to lose his shit if he had to hold still any longer.
The sky was dark and heavy with clouds when he stepped outside, and he could feel the damp air cool on his skin. Didn’t matter. He’d warm up fast enough.
He did a few quick leg stretches on the sidewalk in front of his house, then he took off at a slow jog to get his muscles warmed up.
He went down Dauphine to Canal Street, turned toward the water and let himself speed up, his legs and his lungs pumping. It felt good, even if the bad leg hurt. He didn’t care. It was good to be out, to be moving.
The last few days had been pure torture—constant thoughts of Allie with not enough to distract him, going back and forth with himself about whether to call her or to stay away. He had a great argument for keeping his distance. Logical reasons. But emotion was telling him something else.
He loved the girl.
There was no getting around it. And she loved him back. Despite her walking away from him at the hospital, despite their history. Despite everything. And maybe—just maybe—there was something to it, some reason.
She was scared, which he understood when he could get out of his own head long enough to let his own shit go—all the shit that had been holding him back his entire life. The shit that had been stirred up once more by the angry words she’d hurled at him in the emergency room. He’d let it get to him, he realized now, in a way that was . . . every bit as stupid as she’d accused him of being.
And he was if he couldn’t give up the Goddamn fighting to be with her. She was worth it. If he could have Allie, why would he need it anymore? What did he even have to be so pissed off about? Hell, weren’t there other reasons why he shouldn’t need to fight anymore? Wasn’t he stronger than that? Better than that?
It was time to fucking get over himself.
Heat flooded his body, a kind of release as years of tension and stubbornness drained from him.
Amazing what a good knock on the head could shake loose. That and the love of the most incredible woman he’d ever met.
He really was stubborn to have hung on to this image of himself all these years—even now, knowing she loved him. Was he really so in love with the idea of him being the bad seed that he hadn’t been able to let it go? Had he really been so damn stuck in that awful place inside his head where all the good things he’d done with his life counted for nothing?
His legs pumped, taking him down one block, then the next, past houses and stores, bars and restaurants, all of it a blur.
He’d been standing in his own way for most of his damn life. He hadn’t been able to stop until she’d come back into his life and made him feel worthwhile again.
They’d wasted so many years . . . he’d wasted so many years.
He had to tell Allie. Had to. He had to tell her what he’d just figured out. And he had to get her back.
“Fuck,” he puffed out, increasing his stride until he reached Magazine Street and made the turn to head toward Allie’s neighborhood just as the sky opened up and it started to rain, a light spring shower that felt good on his heated skin.
She made him feel amazing. No more letting this twisted shit inside his head talk him out of that. With her, he could believe it. Now it was time to learn to believe it on his own. Because if he didn’t, then he really didn’t deserve her.
He did, damn it. He was going to make her see that.
He concentrated on keeping his legs moving, breathing in, breathing out, until he turned the corner at Orange Street and ran toward her house.
The sun was beginning to break through the rain, lighting up the sky in shades of pale silver, bathing the old cottage in a watercolor wash. He had to stop on the sidewalk, bent over, hands braced on his knees while he tried to catch his breath. The leg throbbed, but he didn’t care. Allie was the only thing that mattered now.
He straightened up and went to her door.
* * *
A LLIE SKIPPED TOWARD the French doors that led into her father’s study.
“Papa! I have to go to school soon. Play something for me.”
She stopped in her tracks when she saw him. So still. Slumped over the piano keys.
“Papa? What are you doing? Does your head hurt?”
The house was more silent than she’d ever heard it. She knew something was terribly, terribly wrong.
“Papa, why won’t you answer me?”
She stepped closer, put a hand on his arm, running her fingers over the crisp blue cotton of his shirt.
“Papa?” she whispered, her heart twisting in her chest.
She took a step back, terrified. Guilty for being scared of her own papa. Tears slipped down her cheek.
She woke to a loud pounding, clutching the sheet—and wiped the tears away.
The pounding continued.
She glanced at the clock. It wasn’t even quite seven—who would be there so early? Allister wasn’t due to work on the kitchen until Monday.
She got up and padded barefoot down the hall in her pink cotton nightgown as the pounding came again, more insistent this time.
“Okay, I’m coming!”
She unlocked the door and pulled it open. And froze when she saw Mick standing on her porch.
His hair and his skin were wet, and it was only then she realized it was raining. He was panting hard, his expression grim.