I dropped Aubrey’s hand and tried to sit up but found that even that simple action was beyond me. I had zero energy. Moving my head was about all the effort I could expend at the moment. Hell, even blinking was enough to make me want to take a nap.

Everywhere ached and hurt like I had been run over by a Mack truck. My head beat with the constant throb of ten thousand tiny needles burrowing their way into my skull. My stomach felt as though someone had taken it apart, twisted it up, and shoved it back inside my body.

All in all, I felt like a dead man’s asshole.

And the last person I wanted to see me like this was Aubrey Duncan.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked harshly, not even attempting to be nice about it. I was way past niceties. The confident guy she was used to seeing was gone. That guy had died a swift and apparently very painful death.

I wasn’t sure why Aubrey was there. I sure as hell didn’t know how she’d found my apartment. I just knew that I wanted her to leave me to my misery.

If Aubrey was insulted by my less-than-stellar manners, she didn’t show it. She went about straightening my blankets and tucking them around me like I was some five-year-old who only needed a kiss and a cuddle to feel better.

“You should try to eat something,” she said, getting to her feet. I noticed that her clothes were creased and looked as though she had been wearing them for a while.

Crap, what the hell had happened?

My head was a fuzzy mess. I couldn’t remember anything.

Before Aubrey could move away from me, I grabbed her wrist, bringing her up short. “Why are you here?” I asked harshly, wishing I didn’t sound like such an ass.

“I couldn’t leave you the way you were,” she answered simply, giving me a bland look.

I shook my head and instantly regretted it as the needles pierced my head again. “What happened?” I asked, opting to try a different angle.

Aubrey sighed and tugged at her blond ponytail, which was half falling down around her shoulders. She looked tired. And sad? Could that be right?

But she looked fucking gorgeous. She always looked that way.

And she needed to leave.

“You need to get out of here,” I said, forcing my weak body to sit up. Aubrey looked as though she wanted to push me back down, but she didn’t move. She leveled me with an even look.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said shortly.

For the first time, I looked around my room and was startled by the state of it. “What the hell happened in here?” I was asking that a lot.

Aubrey snorted. “You were what happened. You don’t remember, do you?” she asked softly, her face wearing an expression that I hated. Pity. And sympathy and every other fucking emotion that was totally and completely useless to me.

I didn’t need her pity, or her lectures.

“Seriously, Aubrey, get the fuck out. I don’t want you here,” I gritted out, swinging my legs around to rest on the floor. The cold air hit my bare legs, and I realized I was wearing only a pair of boxers.

Fuck me, did Aubrey undress me? Normally the thought of Aubrey taking my clothes off would be a full-on cock-hardening fantasy. Not now.

Right now, I was mortified.

“Get me my goddamned pants!” I barked, swaying with the effort to hold myself upright. And yes, I felt like shit for yelling at Aubrey like that. I didn’t miss the way she flinched. It was like a knife to the heart. This girl did something to me that made me feel things I wished I didn’t.

Guilt, shame, the desperate fucking need to be with her all the time.

But I realized there was good stuff too. She made me feel like a little kid on Christmas morning every time I knew I was going to see her. She filled me with anticipation and something else entirely—a desire to be something better.

And that made me both want to run as fast as I could in the other direction and to hold on to her with everything I had.

Aubrey slowly walked across my destroyed bedroom, leaned down, and picked up my jeans. Deliberately she closed the space between us. My chest felt tight. I was twitchy and weak. Watching her out of one eye was throwing me off-balance. I wanted to back away. I wanted to crouch in the corner and cower in shame. I hated her seeing me at my worst. I never wanted to be anything but my best around her.

But here we were. And there was no escaping the reality of what I knew she saw.

She gripped my pants in her hand and held them out for me to take, her eyes never leaving my face. Normally I would have met her bold stare head-on. I would have taken her challenge and enjoyed it.

This time I looked away, my gaze dropping to the floor to escape her.

I grabbed my jeans and put them on as quickly as my quivering body would allow.

“You’ll probably need some help,” Aubrey said matter-of-factly, holding up a button-down shirt. Why in the hell would I need help getting dressed?

I yanked the shirt out of her hand, not bothering to respond. But when I lifted my arm to push it through the sleeve, I was bowled over by a sharp pain in my ribs. It wasn’t that sort-of-hurts kind of pain. This was a cry-like-a-little-pussy-and-curl-into-a-ball agony.

My hand went up to the right side of my ribs, and the barest touch made me wince and gag. I looked down to see my rib cage covered in a pattern of yellow and green bruising.

“I think you’ve got some cracked ribs. Now that you’re awake, you should probably go to the hospital. Get yourself checked out,” Aubrey said. I glanced at her and noticed she hadn’t moved any closer to me. She hadn’t left, but she was giving me space.

I was both thankful and masochistically hating it.

I gingerly ran my fingers down the length of my battered flesh, and vague memories of Gash and Vin tickled my subconscious. I had the feeling I had gotten myself into some serious trouble.

As much as I wanted Aubrey to leave to spare myself the awkward embarrassment of admitting I needed her to help me, I was stuck. Right now I couldn’t do this on my own.

I needed her.

My god, I really fucking needed her.

The weight of that thought hit me with a bone-crushing force.

“Can you help me?” I asked begrudgingly. I wouldn’t meet her eyes when I conceded defeat. It was too much.

Aubrey didn’t say a word, but I felt her, I smelled her, I could practically taste her on my tongue as she stood in front of me, her fingers carefully buttoning up my shirt. Her hair brushed my face as she bent her head down. I couldn’t help but lean in, my nose brushing the crown of her head as I breathed her in.

She made sure not to touch my bare skin as she hastily did up the buttons. When she was finished, she gripped me by the arms and pushed me back down on the bed.

“Let me get you something to eat,” she said firmly, propping me up against my pillows. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been taken care of. Definitely not since my parents had died.

I had still been young when my mother passed away and my dad stopped caring about himself, let alone his two small sons, after she was gone. And then he had died too, and with him the last person responsible for taking care of me at all.

I had forgotten how it felt to be tended to. To be treated gently.

It had been a long time since anyone had done anything for me. I didn’t know what to do with the unexpected feelings Aubrey’s innocent offer to make me food created inside me. She made me feel cared for. Wanted. The blossoming of emotion in my chest suffocated me with a violent awareness. This woman could change everything.

“I’m not hungry,” I lied, trying to swallow the thick lump in my throat.

Aubrey ignored me and left me alone with my out-of-control emotions and aching body, lost in a minefield of feeling that was ready to detonate in the worst way possible.

I had too many questions and zero answers. If the state of my room was any indication, things had gotten ugly. I only hoped it had happened before Aubrey had arrived on the scene.