There was tightness around my legs. I couldn’t move them freely and it felt like I was suffocating—too warm, needing air.

I kicked and the covers around them began to give way.

“Hey, hey,” a deep, soothing voice said in my ear, “Careful.”

Caine?

The beeping sound in the distance suddenly grew louder as I forced my eyes open. I blinked against the brightness of the unfamiliar room. I was in a bed. One much smaller than my own.

At the foot of it stood my grandfather. “Grandpa?” I croaked, and then pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth. It was so dry.

Grandpa’s hands curled around my foot. He looked tired. Disheveled. Not at all himself. “You’re going to be okay, sweetheart.”

“Lexie.”

I moved my head to the side and found Caine sitting at my bedside. He held my hand between both of his and he was leaning in so close his face was inches from mine. He looked exhausted too.

I was confused. “What’s going on?”

Caine frowned. “You don’t remember? You’re in the hospital.”

The hospital?

I frowned and glanced up behind me at the origin of the beeping. I saw the monitors and the IV drip that pierced my arm and it finally hit me that I was in a hospital bed. “Hospital?” I repeated.

The memories came back in an avalanche of images.

The dark blur. The pain. The blood.

Waking up on the gurney as I was wheeled into the ER. Caine’s anxious face. His shirt covered in my blood. His hand refusing to let mine go as the paramedics tried to calm me down.

The sight of the ER doctor rushing toward me was the last thing I remembered.

The beeping on the machine escalated in rhythm as my heart rate picked up.

“I had better go tell the doctor she’s awake,” Grandpa said before disappearing out of the private room. As he passed the door I noted the huge guy in a tight T-shirt and jeans standing outside with his hands behind his back, alert to the world around him. A gun holder was strapped across his back. He was armed?

Understanding only the basics of what had happened to me, I felt fear and panic starting to crawl inside me. I looked back at Caine, whose grip on my hand had tightened. “Someone stabbed me.”

I remembered the black blur of the body that had brushed me before the pain hit me in the gut.

Why? Why would someone attack me?

Anger blazed in Caine’s eyes as he replied thickly, “Yes. I didn’t even see it happen. When I came over to you, you looked up at me with this strange, pained look on your face. Your eyes weren’t focusing. You were pale. And then I looked down and I saw the blood spreading across your shirt. You passed out. We got you here and you woke up for a bit in the ER, but then you were out again. A surgeon arrived and he didn’t think anything major had been hit. He had you taken to the OR to explore the area. Thankfully he was right. The knife didn’t hit any major organs or arteries. They stitched you up and we got you a private room. They said you’ll have to stay in the hospital for a few days.”

All of that of course was great to hear, considering the fact that someone had put a knife in my belly … but I was more interested in what Caine wasn’t saying. “Why would someone do this?” I moved to push myself up, but a sharp burn shot down my stomach and I cried out in pain.

“Jesus, Lexie,” Caine scolded, “you just got stabbed. Try not to move.”

I glowered at him. “I forgot about my wound, okay?” I winced at the ghost of pain. “I won’t again anytime soon.”

“Alexa, you’re awake.” I looked up at the sound of the rich, smooth voice and found it belonged to a pleasant-looking young man. “I’m your surgeon, Dr. Fredericks.” He looked so young I was kind of anxious about the fact that he’d been poking around my knife wound.

“Hey.”

He smiled at my weak greeting and came closer, followed by my grandfather. “When you were admitted to the ER, I took you up to the OR to explore your wound and make sure that no major organs …”

I listened as he repeated pretty much everything Caine had already told me.

“So I’m okay?” I said when he was finished.

“Yes. You’re going to be okay. I recommend that we keep you in the hospital under observation for a few days just to make sure you’re fighting off any possible infection, and then we can send you home. You’re looking at a recovery time of four to six weeks. Your nurse will be in soon to discuss antibiotics, pain management, and the routine for dressing the wound.” He looked between Caine and me and obviously drew his own conclusions when he said, “I’m glad you’ve got someone to help you. As much as I want you to be gently exercising throughout your recovery, the first week or so is difficult. You’ll need someone to help you get around.”

I lowered my gaze at the doctor’s misunderstanding, and wondered how the hell I was going to cope on my own for the next six weeks. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“You’re welcome. We gave you something for the pain, but if you need anything just use your call button. Angela, your nurse, will be in soon.”

The door closed behind him and I pulled my hand out of Caine’s grasp. “Now that that’s done, would one of you like to tell me why there’s a huge guy guarding my door? I’m thinking it’s got something to do with being stabbed, but I’ve been wrong in the past in situations like these. Oh, wait. I’ve never been a situation like this before.”

“Lexie.” Caine’s warning only pissed me off more.

“Don’t.”

“I’m asking you to keep calm so I don’t fucking lose it,” he snapped, pushing up out of his chair with agitated energy.

“Please, Alexa,” Grandpa said soothingly. “It took a lot to calm him down while you were out.”

Guilt pricked me. I glanced up at Caine from under my lashes. He was worried about me too. “Sorry. I just … I half want to know whatever it is you guys know and I half really don’t.”

Caine shared a look with my grandfather, then sat back down beside me. “We looked at footage from security cameras outside the building, and I have friends in the police department, so we’ve got them moving fast on this. They looked at footage from traffic cameras in the area. Both show you were approached by a man dressed in a black hoodie and jeans. He brushes by you, pauses a moment, and then hurries away like all he did was stumble into you. He had his hood up the whole time. We followed him using the traffic cameras, but we lost him at Faneuil Hall. The police are looking for him, but there are no leads so far.”

“We’ll be looking to see if anyone has a grudge against Caine,” Grandpa spoke up. “But we also need to know of anyone in your past that might have a grudge against you.”

I was paralyzed by disbelief. “No. I can’t think. No one who … This was … You think this was premeditated?” I was outraged and hurt in so many ways. “Why would …”

The hardness in Caine’s eyes dissipated and he took my hand in his again. “I don’t know. But I promise you I will do everything to find out. For now I’ve got private security guarding your hospital room, and when you’re released I’m taking you back to my apartment where you can be protected.”

Horror racked me. “Are you saying … are you saying this person might try to hurt me again?”

Their silence was answer enough.

I suddenly felt stifled by my fear in a way I’d never encountered before. I felt hunted, trapped, by the idea that some person was out there waiting for his next opportunity to attack me. I’d never feared walking out of my door, stepping out on my street before, but now the very thought of standing anywhere out in the open caused me this bone-deep terror.

My chest wheezed as I tried to draw breath.

I couldn’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

Black dots speckled my vision and my skin felt suddenly clammy and too tight.

“Lexie.” Caine’s hand tightened on mine as his other smoothed my hair back from my face. “Deep breaths, Lex.” He took in a deep breath and let go of it slowly.

I concentrated on his face and on mimicking him.

The panic began to ease its death grip on me.

My limbs felt limp, and I was more exhausted than ever. “Why is this happening?” I whispered as I closed my eyes.

A few seconds later warm lips brushed against my forehead. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

I relaxed a little more upon Caine’s hoarse vow and felt the darkness of sleep reach for me.

“I’ll have to tell Adele everything,” I heard Grandpa’s voice in the distance. “I’d like to help in any way I can. I don’t want to leave Alexa to deal with this alone.”

“She’s not alone. She’s got me,” Caine said. His voice sounded much colder now.

“Yes, but for how long?”

“Don’t you dare … You have no right to even be here. I’ll take care of Lex. You just go back to keeping the peace in your family, Edward. Lexie knows where your priorities lie. It would be hypocritical to change your mind now.”

“This coming from you? I watched you on Saturday night and I can see the way she is with you now. You’ve left her.”

“I never stopped being her friend. Now, the last thing she needs is us arguing, and frankly there’s only one Holland in this room I can stand, so why don’t you do what you’re good at and leave, and let me take care of her?”

“She’s my granddaughter, my family. I’m going home to tell Adele about her, and I’m going to bring her to the hospital to see her granddaughter, and by God, no one, including you and your security guards, is going to stand in our way.”

I tried to stay awake to hear Caine’s reply, but the darkness was much too warm and inviting …