I felt his eyes move up, waiting for me to meet them. When I did, I wanted to set the world on fire and watch it burn for refusing to let me have this man.

His eyes grimaced with confusion as they scanned the room.

“You were hit, Jude. Hard,” I explained, gripping his hand like centrifugal forces were trying to tear us apart. I didn’t ease up because this time, his hand was gripping mine right back. “You blacked out, sustained a concussion, so the doctors put you into a coma so your brain could take its time recovering.” So much for the managed coma. But it shouldn’t have surprised me‌—‌Jude didn’t conform to social standards, a forced upon him coma no expectation.

“The hit I remember,” he said, reaching for his head. “The rest not so much.”

“God, Jude. I’m sorry,” I said, needing to say so much more.

“Sorry for what?” he said, inspecting the IV running into his arm. “That I was dumb enough to look in the opposite direction of a three hundred pound mamma-jamma who wanted to grind me into the astroturf? That was all my bad, Luce.”

“Yeah, but our fight,” I said, scooting closer to him when I should be moving in the opposite direction. “You wouldn’t have been so distracted if we hadn’t just gotten into it.”

“Luce. We fight. I’m used to that. Sure, that fight was the scariest ass one we’ve ever had, but you’re here now. That’s all that matters. No matter how many fights we have, or how much they tip the Richter scale, none of it matters as long as at the end of the day, you’re still with me.”

He shifted in bed, propping up onto his elbows. “And I wasn’t all that distracted from the fight. I was distracted by that D bag I was planning to torture as soon as the game was done.”

Smirking at me, the color began to bleed back into his face. “That was one hell of a phone spiral you launched onto the field. I’m going to start calling you Laser Rocket Arm. If coach saw that, he’s going to dump my sorry ass and drop you into the starting QB spot.”

I smiled at his forearm, tracing patterns over the lines of muscle and vein. “If you keep taking hits like that, you’ll be riding the bench for sure, Ryder.”

He snorted, like he didn’t only believe he was invincible, but he knew it. Lifting his hand to his neck, he searched for something below his gown. His expression dropped. “Where the hell is my necklace?” he said, sitting up in bed and searching the room.

“I don’t think you’ll find it glued to the ceiling,” I said when he investigated the white ceiling tiles.

“Where is it?” he asked, his voice tight.

“Jude,” I said, worried he’d been hit as hard as I’d been worried he had, “calm down. I’m sure it’s around. They probably took it off when you were in the ER and have it tucked into a drawer or something. We’ll find it.”

“Okay,” he said, exhaling, “you’re right. We’ll find it.” Collapsing back onto the bed, he looked exhausted.

“Since when did you start wearing a necklace?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t some huge gold chain with some hubcap sized eagle hanging from it.

“Since I started trying to get my act together,” he said.

“And that happened when?” I teased, narrowing my eyes at him.

He chuckled, that deep, throaty one of his that went right through me, vibrating everything in its journey. As it tapered off, his face twisted.

“What?” I asked, ready to push that red button resting on the table beside the bed.

“I was dreaming,” he said, his eyes going into that far-away place. “I remember it. That’s what woke me up.” One side of his face twisted up higher. “It was the same dream over and over again. I must have had it a thousand times and all I remember is wanting to break past that dream and wake up. But I couldn’t. Something was holding me down. Something was keeping me from waking up.”

That probably had something to do with a team of doctors forcing him into a coma. A coma that had lasted all of an hour.

“What was it about?” I asked, wanting to reach inside him and extract all the poison I could see eating him away.

His dark eyes flickered to mine. “You.”

I swallowed. “Me?” I tried to sound brave, but I’d never sounded so scared. “What was I doing?”

I already knew before he flinched out his answer.

“You were leaving,” he breathed, his arm covering his chest. “You left me. And you never came back, no matter how hard I ran after you or how loud I begged you to stop.” And it could have been the drugs, or the horrible lighting in a hospital room, but for the first time, Jude’s eyes looked like they could have spilled tears. “You left me.”

And now it was my face and my everything else that was twisting as words failed me. It wasn’t my consciousness that reacted next; it was my heart. The heart I’d been depriving for so long and had just busted free.

In one seamless movement, I was straddling his lap, covering his mouth with mine. I kissed him, God, like I’d never kissed him before. I couldn’t kiss him hard enough. I wanted his mouth to make me forget everything. I needed to forget reality for a while and pretend life was going to work out just the way I wanted it to.

His lips were quiet beneath mine for one second as he processed what the hell had just happened, but when they came to, they moved against mine like they were trying to consume me as much as mine were his.

The heart rate monitor starting keeping beat to our frantic mouths retreating and advancing on one another. Leaning back, I ripped the sweatshirt over my head and my tank was off and flying before the sweatshirt hit the floor.

Jude’s hands grabbed my face, pulling me back to him, his tongue forcing its way into my mouth. I trembled, feeling his hands and his mouth and the rest of his body wanting, taking, and having me.

One hand crawled down my back, sparing no time freeing my bra from my back. His breathing for the first time was almost as ragged as mine and that realization put a crack in this dream we were actively participating in. We shouldn’t be doing this right now, for a baker’s dozen of different reasons. And I didn’t want to care about a single one of them right now.

His mouth moving in and over me wasn’t enough to keep reality at bay.

I had to have all of him.

Leaning away for what I hoped was the last time, I worked everything that was still covering me down my legs, around my ankles, and off onto the floor.

Jude’s breathing hitched again as his eyes inspected me. Naked, tortured, and dying in my need for him.

“I’m one lucky bastard,” he breathed, managing a smile as he propped up on his elbows. “And there’s no way I’m letting anything get in the way of this,”‌—‌his hands slid down my hips, curling into the flesh of my backside‌—‌”so help me get this damn hospital dress off.”

I grinned, leaning down and letting my fingers work over the knots on the back of his gown while my mouth worked over the tendons and muscles of his neck. His heavy breath burst my body up and down in time to his heart. I rose with him, I fell with him‌—‌always together.

Pulling the last tie free, I slid the gown up and over his arms, pulling it up through my legs and over his body until it had joined my discarded clothes on the floor.

It was working. I felt nothing but the here and now. I felt nothing but Jude‌—‌his body, his love, and his need.

His hands returned to my backside, lifting it and sliding it back. I could feel him against me, just waiting for my final acceptance. Judging to see if this was really the perfect moment. The place in time where Jude and I would mark this last passage of intimacy.

I was so ready for this moment in time I could feel it throbbing my every nerve to life. “You know, your doctor said you were supposed to stay relaxed and rest,” I said, smiling down on him where his face was as excited as it was tortured. “I wouldn’t say this counts as rest and relaxation.”