He stops growling at his dad when he looks at me, his eyes widening.

His dad smiles as he drinks him in. “I’ll go to the hotel, take a shower. Be back to check on you later,” he says, smiling as he slaps Racer’s back.

I meet Racer’s blue, blue gaze, noticing his hair is standing up more crazily than before, as if he was raking his fingers through it. “What’s up. Did you think I’d leave?” I ask, confused.

He curls his fingers into his hands and the muscle in his jaw starts working again.

“I’m spending the night here tonight,” I say, then I flush when I realize how much I’m invading his space and already did last night. “But I want you to be comfortable. I’ll take the chair,” I explain as I head to the chair.

I cross the room, feeling his blue eyes watching me.

“Lana.”

My stomach twists as the rough word reaches me and sort of wraps itself around my stomach and my heart, and I turn as I lift my head. His voice is raspy and textured.

“Come back here.” He motions to the bed.

“I want you to be comfortable.”

He grits his teeth in frustration, then pulls off his IV, and my eyes widen as he starts jamming his fingers into the beeping machine, trying to quiet it with a frown.

Finally the machine quiets, and he walks over and I’m on my feet, wide-eyed.

“What are you doing.”

“You can come, or I can carry you,” he says plainly.

He tugs me forward, and I can’t breathe because I don’t understand why this gesture undoes me so much. I don’t understand why I want to cry but, afraid he’s not going to lie here with me as he leads me with his warm, firm grip on my hand to the bed, I tug him down with me.

Racer doesn’t seem to have been intent on leaving. He lifts the cover and slides his long, toned, muscular legs inside.

He slides his arm around me and I’m so desperate to touch him, to know that he is real, that I did not imagine a guy that has wanted me more than anything, that has taught me how to care for a guy again, that I press closer.

Suddenly Racer slides his hand under the covers and says, in my ear, “Take these off. I just want to feel you.” His eyes are brilliant in the darkened room, and I don’t need to be asked twice. I reach beneath the covers and flip open my jean button, and before I can take them off, Racer moves the sheet back and pulls them off me. He pulls them off me and then discards them, our bare legs touching under the covers.

I exhale a shuddering breath when he runs his hands along my skin.

“That shirt long enough to cover you when someone comes in?” His deep voice makes my skin pebble as he whispers the possessive question into my ear.

I’m melting and aching all over. “Yes.”

He looks at me with those blue eyes and I buzz inside as he slides his hands over me, just looking at me in the dark with something fierce and intense in his eyes.

He sets his hand on my stomach and leans his head and smells me. I stroke his hair when he wraps his arm around me and just sets his face between my breasts, growling softly before he settles down. He shuts his eyes, kissing my stomach.

“Oh, goodness, that bed isn’t made for two.” I start at the voice of a middle-aged nurse.

“I think we need to give the patient his space,” the nurse tells me chidingly.

I’m instantly making to move out of the bed when he grabs my wrist to halt me.

“I need her here.”

The nurse was busy changing the med packets, but she pauses at that and looks at Racer after the raspy whisper.

Gruffly he repeats, “I need her here. She’s my medicine.”

She smiles. “Young love,” she whispers as she fixes the machine and hooks him back up. “Enjoy it while it’s young,” she says laughingly.

We’re both sitting on the bed now, and I turn to meet his intense gaze as he leans back on the bed and slowly reaches out and draws me to his chest.

Whereas yesterday when I came, he wouldn’t look at me. Now it’s like he cannot stop. His blue eyes drink me in in silence, and I drink him in while all my body clutches with yearning for this guy.

“You have no idea how hard it is for me for you to see me like this. I’ve never wanted anything less in my life,” he gruffs out.

A muscle in his jaw twitches uncomfortably, his eyes dark and tormented when he looks at me.

“Don’t hide from me. Both the good things and the bad,” I plead.

His blue eyes seem sad, as if his whole life force is turned off. “I didn’t want to give you the bad.”

“I want it. I want all of you,” I blurt out.

Those dark, sleek eyebrows of his shoot upward at that comment, and then his eyes begin to glow as if something about that lit up his fire.

“I’m not scared of this as much as I’m scared of what you make me feel, Racer,” I whisper painfully. “I’m scared of the way it feels to be with you, everything so acute and alive and thinking I wouldn’t bear to one day live without you. When David died it hurt too much and I never wanted that again, but I never thought I could feel it again a thousand times more intense until you. Guys didn’t even draw my eye that much but you. Like I was meant for you, Racer.”

I pause to get my breath.

“That day you told me that I … loved you … I was crying because I have never felt this intensely for anyone. And I don’t know if I can be all you need.” I catch my breath on a gush of emotion. “I want you, your whole being, your entire you. Even this.”

He shuts his eyes and puts his forehead on mine, his arms like steel around me as he exhales.

He starts to growl as he clutches me tighter, whispering in my ear, “You have no idea what you’re asking for,” he warns.

“I do. I do, and I WANT it. I want you.” I clutch his jaw and am so desperate for him to know how much I mean it, cuddle him. Smell him. Let my body say what I haven’t said in words, that I love him, so much, so much I’d stay here with him forever if that were the only way I’d get to be with him.

I cup his strong jaw and look into his tortured blue eyes. “Are you okay. What are you thinking?”

“What I’m thinking stays in my head,” he says, frowning determinedly. “I get sucked into this goddamned vortex, and I need to remind myself it’s just perception. Just in my head. You’re what’s real. This.”

He cradles my skull in his palms and presses me to his chest. I can hear his heartbeat. Strong and steady. His muscles feel lax, his blue eyes shadowed and his energy subdued, but his arms are still his arms. He is still him. And I’m even weaker against him, determined to be strong for him and at the same time, I’m completely vulnerable to him.

“I love you.” I wipe my tear as I start to cry.

His strong, large body seems to jolt and tighten at that, and his embrace tightens around me as he drops his head and growls in my neck, “God. Don’t say that. Don’t tell me this now.”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t want to hear it.”

He releases me and drags a hand over his face, his fingers trembling. “You don’t, crasher. You don’t. You can do so much fucking better than me.”

“You’re it.”

“I’m no good,” he hisses. “I’m no fucking good for you. I’m as fucked up as it gets … look fucking around you, Lana. Is this really what you want?”

I stare at him squarely in the face. Never surer.

“I love you, Racer Tate. YOU.”

His eyes flash, and his nostrils flare as if he’s fighting to stay in control as he looks at my face like I’m not even real. Like he’s imagining me.

He reaches out and drags his thumb along my jaw, his voice achingly tender and pained. He shakes his head warningly. “Don’t say it because I can’t take it if it’s not true. If you leave me. If you get sick of me. Stop loving me. Don’t give me hope only to take it away one day because it’ll push me over the edge and make me insane.”

“I won’t ever take it away, it’s yours. I’m yours.”

He growls and yanks me to his chest, pressing my skull to his chest as he leans his head and kisses the top of my head. “Baby. My sweet girl,” he whispers out on a hiss, shutting his eyes as he lovingly nuzzles my face.