Chapter 27

Olivia's warm, tentative hand slid up Nate's arm and he pinched his eyes tighter, gripped the edge of the sink in her suite's kitchen harder. He tensed at the pleasure/pain combo her touch forever instilled and hunched to defend himself. Or her.

For going on three days, he'd watched her lying in bed, pale as a corpse, and sick to his gut with abject fear she wouldn't wake up. Every concussion check by Mae or Amy or Nakos that first night had been goddamn torture until she'd briefly opened her eyes, muttered a few syllables, and drifted off again.

And mercy. That fever? The need for an IV? Her drenched in sweat and hotter than the damn desert he'd escaped? He'd thought he'd die. Shit, death would've been preferable. He'd almost redecorated her bedroom by punching holes through the drywall upwards of a thousand times.

None of his experiences had prepared him for that. Nearly starved as a child in foster care...subordinate to countless violent acts in that gang as a teen...holding Ju