Chapter 899
“Don’t,” he said.
The command was quiet, but it cut straight through her panic.
That was when the taut wire of her control finally snapped.
The terror, the despair, the absolute certainty that she had lost him, it all came rushing out in a single, choked sob.
Tears streamed down her face, hot against her frozen skin.
She didn’t answer him. She couldn’t. Instead, she lurched forward from the chair and struck the front of his brace with a weak, frantic fist. Once. Twice. A useless rhythm against medical-grade plastic and ruined bone.
“Don’t you do that,” she choked. “Don’t you disappear after you pull me back. Don’t you dare.”
He stood there and took it.
He did not catch her with his left hand. He did not wrap an arm around her. He couldn’t. His right arm remained locked across his chest, and his left hand stayed trapped in its splint.
But he understood.
He saw the empty bed she had woken beside. He heard the terror under the rage. He understood that she hadn’t been trying to defy Dr. Reed.
She had been trying to find him.
The rage in his own face vanished as if it had never been, replaced by an emotion so profound, so overwhelming, it shook him to his core. It was a tidal wave of awe, of guilt, of something that felt dangerously close to love.
She thought he was gone. And half-frozen, injured, barely conscious, she had tried to come after him.
He lowered his head until his mouth was close to her hair, the only contact he could manage without using his broken hands.
“I’m here,” he said, his voice a rough, unsteady rasp against her ear. “I’m here. I didn’t leave you.”
She collapsed forward, not into an embrace, but against the hard barrier of his brace, her body trembling violently, the last of her adrenaline fading, leaving only the bone-deep cold and the exhaustion.
Then it hit her.
A pain so sharp, so blinding, it stole her breath. It felt like a blade twisting deep in her abdomen. She cried out, a muffled sound against the brace, her body curling in on itself.
Her face, already pale, went sheet-white.
The cramp, triggered by cold shock, trauma, and the violent emotional swing, was a vicious, debilitating agony.
Jarrod felt the change instantly. He saw her body go rigid with pain. He didn’t ask what was wrong. He didn’t need to.
His eyes went black with self-loathing.
“Reed,” he said, his voice low and lethal. “Now.”
Dr. Reed was already there, moving fast with a gurney and two medics. “Back on the bed. Warm fluids, pain control, abdominal heat pack, and I want vitals every two minutes.”
Caroline tried to straighten. Her knees buckled.
Jarrod’s body moved by instinct, but his arms could not follow. The failure flashed across his face like a wound.