Alex Brett wasn’t fooling anyone.

Even if he wasn’t officially on the clock, the uniform he wore may as well have been tattooed on his skin. He was a cop, and that didn’t change just because the schedule posted in a staffroom somewhere within the precinct said he wasn’t on shift.

I’d pissed him off, though, by cursing at him. Well, what did he expect? Here he was, badgering me about lying to him, when all he was doing was lying to me about the capacity in which he’d come here in the first place.

“I just want to know what happened,” he said again through clenched teeth. “I want to know what’s got you so damn scared.”

This conversation was doing little to aid the cessation of my raging headache, but I was aggravated enough now that I couldn’t back down. “You tell me,” I shot back. “You’re the cop, remember?”

His jaw ticked visibly, and I saw his chest heave as he took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, steadying himself. “Hailey, so help me…” He stopped, closed his eyes, did the breathing routine again, and started over. “Hailey, all I know is that a man beat you up in a bathroom. Pretty bad, I might add.”

His eyes flitted over my face, and I wondered just how bad it was. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to try to get off the stretcher yet and seek out a mirror.

“It was a public place,” he continued. “In broad daylight. That tells me the guy’s got balls. And we both know he’s dangerous as hell. What I want to know is why he chose you to attack.”

He watched me with a sense of curiosity that I felt was beyond the scrutiny of his job description.

“I really think you should go.” My voice was barely a whisper.

“Damn it, why won’t you tell me?” Alex’s nostrils flared slightly, and his outburst made me flinch. “You’re not even outright denying that there’s more to it, and you’re a damn horrible liar if you did try to! Yet, you won’t let me help you with whatever has you so—”

“You can’t help me!” I exclaimed. “Why are you so hell-bent on interjecting yourself into this?”

“Because you’re hell-bent on not telling me what this is! And this almost got you killed today!”

The breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding came out all at once, followed by a ragged attempt to inhale again. It was too late. A sudden flood of emotions overtook me, and I suddenly felt so exhausted I wasn’t sure I had the energy needed to get down from the stretcher. Tears stung my eyes, welling up over my swollen and bruised eyelids. They stung even more as they streaked down my cheeks onto the scratches and abrasions on my jaw.

“Shit,” Alex sighed. “Hailey. Jesus, I’m sorry.” He glanced around the room in a slight panic, stepped away long enough to pull the Kleenex box from the counter in the corner, and held it out to me. “I’m sorry,” he whispered again. “I shouldn’t be talking to you like that.”

I pulled a tissue from the box and wiped my face. “Oh God…” Even the slightest pressure on my skin sent sharp pain coursing through me.

“Here, let me.” Alex’s voice was warm now, and when his fingers wrapped around mine to take the Kleenex from me, he let them linger for an instant. Just long enough to make me raise my gaze to meet his. Then, he began to talk in a hushed voice. “According to Trent, a woman tried to enter the bathroom in the midst of the attack on you.” He dabbed the edge of the tissue against my face—he could see where the bruises were, I couldn’t—and I watched him through blurry eyes, his brows drawn down as he concentrated on the task before him. “She ducked back out and signaled to her husband, who’d been waiting for her with their shopping cart. He entered the bathroom and yelled, which startled your assailant, but didn’t immediately stop him. The husband dove at the man, but he’d already smashed your head into the floor.”

“My God,” I whispered, letting my eyes flutter closed. I couldn’t bear to see the look in Alex’s eyes. I couldn’t read it, and the uncertainty of that combined with the stinging of my tear-stained face and Alex’s efforts to dry those tears was having a profound effect on me. Things had spiraled completely out of control so quickly, and it made my head spin.

“The husband got into an altercation with the attacker, but he was only hit once and suffered no long-term effects. The perp fled the scene. He got away, Hailey.” Then he added, “I’m sorry.”

Like I would blame him for that fact.

“As long as the wife and husband are okay.” I reached up, pushing Alex’s hand away gently and pulling the Kleenex from within his fingers. He let me.

“They are,” he nodded, reassuringly. “But save for a few minute details, their description of the guy is weak at best. Did you get a good look at him?”

My stomach fluttered, anxious. There were only two ways this could go. Either I admitted that I could help them find the man who’d tried to kill me, or I kept it to myself and packed my things as soon as they discharged me from this hospital. I could disappear by morning, if all went well.

But, for the first time, something stopped me. I was exhausted and petrified, and not just from the day’s ordeal.

I didn’t want to run anymore. I didn’t want to have to hide. I wanted a life, not just an existence.

“Did you mean it? About being here for me as a friend, I mean.” The question tumbled from my lips before I realized I said it out loud, and my voice cracked with the weight of it.

“Are you getting ready to tell me to go to hell again?”

“No,” I breathed. “I just need to know.”

A flicker of something I didn’t recognize flashed in Alex’s eyes, but he didn’t hesitate. “I did. You have my word.”

I wasn’t sure how to feel, but I swallowed down the lump in my throat and held out my hands toward him, palms up, fingers bent. “I got a good look at him, Alex. I’d know him anywhere. And I can sketch him; I know I can. But that’s not all.”

One brow arched high on his face, but he waited, his expression stoic.

I lifted my hands up a fraction of an inch higher. “I scratched the hell out of him. So, he’s got something to remember me by.” I stole a glance down at my short fingernails. “But, so do I.”

Alex reached out, his hands on my wrists. His touch was gentle, and an encouraging grin formed on his mouth. “Good girl.”

* * *

A heaviness furled in my stomach as Alex retreated to get Officer Montagne, and I remained relatively quiet while he relayed what I’d told him in a hushed voice just inside the doorway. He stayed within earshot, and kept the fact to himself that he knew there was something I wasn’t telling him, so my best guess was that he was trying to gain some trust from me.

I wanted to trust him. My body, on the other hand, was reeling with faint nausea over the fact that I’d chosen to tell him what little I had. It wasn’t exactly regret that I felt, but a strange sense of anxiety came over me as Officer Montagne asked a few more questions. I answered him honestly, and it felt foreign to have someone to talk to, even if it was the cops.

Sitting there while a lab technician removed samples from under my fingernails was scary as well, because I knew it meant I couldn’t just pretend this hadn’t happened after I walked out of here.

The painkillers were starting to kick in, and the fatigue that veiled my consciousness had become thicker. I didn’t even think about the full repercussions of the swabs and samples they were taking until after the fact, and I couldn’t hide my dismay.

“What was the mouth swab for?” I asked, my mouth dry as the cotton the lab technician had used.

Alex picked up on the thick slur of my words, and pushed a paper cup of water toward me. “Just a routine DNA test. It’ll help them separate your blood from his.”

I left it at that, unprepared to have this conversation. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be ready, or if I ever would have to talk about it at all, but I’d already divulged enough today. Too much.

“I think that’s all we need for now,” I heard Officer Montagne say to Alex. “I can call you if anything comes back. You’re on tonight, right?”

Alex shook his head. “It’s my two days off in a row.”

“Go home, then,” Montagne insisted. “Get some sleep.”

I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping, but it was hard not to in the close quarters of the room. The nurse came back in, checked my vitals and the wound on the back of my head. They’d had to shave a small section of my hair, but thankfully they’d done it so that, if my hair was left loose, there were strands that would cover the bare spot while it healed. Now, though, it was tied up awkwardly to keep my hair off it, and I was embarrassed all over again at the thought of what I must look like in front of Alex and his colleague.

My vain thoughts were interrupted by the nurse’s voice. “Have you got someone at home to keep an eye on you for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours?”

I stared at the woman. She was always doing something, her eyes focused on the charts she was filling in, the monitors she checked, and her examination of the back of my head. “I don’t,” I admitted. “But I’ll be fine. I just want to go home and rest.”

“And that’s exactly why you can’t,” she stated. “That head wound of yours is no joke, and you’ve undoubtedly got a concussion. Without someone to watch you and wake you every half hour, the doctor wants to keep you here overnight for observation.”

“I don’t need to—”

“She’ll stay.” Alex pulled himself from the conversation with Montagne and stepped toward the nurse. He turned to me. “It’s just one night.”

“You need to be monitored,” the nurse stated again, as though I hadn’t heard her the first time.

Alex stared at me, his narrowed eyes daring me to resist again.

“I could sign myself out against medical advice,” I said grimly, but the fact sounded hollow even to my own ears.

“Yeah, but you won’t.” Alex turned back to the nurse. “She won’t.”

The nurse just nodded, satisfied with this, and left after tucking my chart back into the holder at the foot of the bed.

“That wasn’t your call to make.”

He shrugged. “Maybe not, but there’s nowhere safer for you to be right now than in a monitored hospital room surrounded by medical staff and a cop.”

I huffed a sigh, too tired to argue with him further. “There are no cops here, Alex.”

“I am,” he said. “And I’m staying.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You can barely keep your eyes open, Hailey,” he reminded me with a sly grin. “You’re going to fall asleep on that stretcher, and I’m going to do the same in that chair.” He pointed to the lumpy-looking upholstered chair beside the bed. “Because it’s been one hell of a day, and I’m just coming off a night shift. We both could use the rest.”

I was exhausted, but for the first time I noticed the heaviness in his eyelids and the lines etched across his face. He was tired, too. I could’ve put up a fuss, told him I didn’t need him there.

And I didn’t. But I wanted him there now, even if I hadn’t in the beginning.

“You’re seriously going to stay.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’ve got to talk to Trent for a quick second, but, yes, I’m staying.” He glanced toward the doorway, where the other officer was still standing, awkwardly facing out the doorway, trying to pretend he wasn’t eavesdropping on our conversation. “I’ll set an alarm to wake you up in a half hour, and as long as you don’t snore, I should be able to get some decent shut eye,” he quipped. “Now, do me a favor and lay down, will you? You’re cutting into my first thirty-minute nap.”