Then, like dawn breaking after the longest night of my life, her eyes fluttered open. Emerald green. The color of life, of hope, of everything I’d almost lost.
“I’m here, Tessa.”
She blinked slowly, her pupils struggling to focus in the harsh ICU lighting. Then her gaze found mine, and as her lips parted beneath the mask, the faintest whisper escaped.
“Blake?”
Relief hit me like a wrecking ball. For this one moment—this single, precious heartbeat—I let myself feel nothing but gratitude. She was alive. She knew my name.
She had come back to me.
But right behind it was terror of what came next.
What damage had the poison done to her brain, her heart, her organs?
74
TESSA
Consciousness came in waves, first the stabbing brightness, then the acidic taste in my mouth, and finally the steady beeping that meant I was alive. But it was the warmth of his hand in mine that drew me from the chasms of darkness into the sterile hospital room.
“Tessa?” His voice—that deep baritone I’d know anywhere—cracked with emotion.
Something pressed against my mouth and nose, heating with each painful breath. Through the fog, I made out Blake’s face above me, his tuxedo shirt wrinkled, like he’d been wearing it for days.
“I’m here,” he said softly, his composure warring with something raw in his eyes. “I’m right here, Cupcake.”
That nickname. It pulled me further from the depths, even as my body cataloged each ache: the sharp pain in my lungs with every breath, the vicious throb behind my temples, the cool drip of fluids through my IV.
“Blake?”
He dropped his head, and I caught the slight tremor in his shoulders before he straightened. His fingers never left my skin,tracing small, soothing patterns on my palm, as if reassuring himself I was really there.
“Do you remember why you’re here?” The professional tone couldn’t quite mask the undercurrent of fury and terror in his voice.
My gaze drifted around the private ICU room, taking in the array of monitoring equipment. That’s when it hit me. Eli. The drink. His threat against Blake.
“Did he hurt you?” I tried to sit up.
He stopped me from moving. “You’re lying in the ICU after nearly dying, and you’re worried aboutme?” His chuckle was rough. “That’s so perfectly you that it hurts, Cupcake.”
“But he said?—”
“He didn’t hurt anyone else.” Blake’s free hand curled into a fist at his side. “And he’ll never hurt you again.”
The clinical fluorescent lights cast shadows under his eyes, highlighting the muscle working in his jaw. I’d seen Blake angry before, but this was different.
“He’s gone?” I managed.
Blake’s gaze swept over me, cataloging every monitor, every tube, every mark Eli’s poison had left on my body. Something dangerous flickered in his eyes. “He deserved a fate far worse than what he got. If you hadn’t been fighting for your life …” He left the sentence unfinished, but his grip on my hand tightened.
“The tea!” I jerked upright, or tried to, but he pressed a hand to my shoulder again. “It’s in your house. You need to get rid of it before anybody touches it!”
Blake’s features shadowed into an almost-unrecognizable version of himself. “He laced your tea?”
I nodded.
Blake’s jaw hardened. “You consumed poison in my home.”
