Another swift kick to Kellan's side, and another audible crack as a rib or two broke. Kellan again cried out in agony, spat out blood, but did nothing to really defend his body, said nothing to defend his actions, only endlessly repeated, "I won't fight you...I won't hurt you...I'm sorry, Denny..."

If my sanity was slipping, Denny's was completely gone. He was a completely different person viciously beating the life from Kellan's weakening body. Denny was beyond angry, beyond enraged. He was screaming ruthlessly at Kellan, a stream of vile things that I had never heard him utter. He seemed to have completely forgotten I was there, frozen in shock and horror as I was.

"Your word is worthless! You are worthless!"

Kellan cringed and turned his head away from those hurtful words, and I had the horrid feeling that it was not the first time he'd heard them. It wasn't the first time he'd been called worthless. "I'm sorry, Denny."

Denny didn't care about his apologies and was still kicking him viciously. "She is not one of your whores!"

Denny paused, panting in his fervor. Kellan weakly raised himself up on one elbow, his body crumpled and bruised in pain, blood stringing from his mouth and freely flowing from a cut above his eye and cheek. He looked up to meet Denny's enraged eyes and I watched Kellan's face twist with pain.

Kellan's next words filled me with an endless warmth and a bottomless fear. "I'm sorry I hurt you, Denny, but I love her," he panted, his eyes drifting back to mine and contentment filling them. He seemed at peace with the fact that he'd finally done it. He'd finally openly declared his feelings for me to his best friend, his brother.

Smiling warmly at me, he also added something onto his declaration that managed to push his friend over the breaking point. "And she loves me too."

I could literally see Denny snap. Glaring wildly at Kellan, he shifted his weight and aligned his foot for what I could clearly see would be a disastrous blow to Kellan's head. Besides panting in pain, his eyes still fixed on mine, Kellan didn't move. Watching me, he wasn't paying attention to what Denny was about to do. His inhumanly blue eyes taking me in, absorbing me like he was memorizing me, was going to be the last thing he ever did.

Without any conscious thought, I screamed "No!" and finally able to move, I dove to the ground to shield Kellan. The surely fatal blow meant for him, connected with my temple instead. I thought I heard Kellan shout my name, and then the whole world went black.


Chapter 24

Guilt and Regret

I became aware of sounds first - an insistent beeping near my ear that wasn't stopping and soft male voices echoing in my head, as if they were speaking through a tunnel. I tried to focus on those voices, to bring them closer to me, so I could understand what they were saying. Bits and pieces fell to my ears, but not enough to make any sense.

"... now...leave...she'll...hurt...sorry...her...kill...you know..."

A light chuckle filled the room and I thought it sounded familiar, but nothing in my mind or body really felt familiar at the moment. My head felt light and airy, like a balloon tethered to my body. Then I moved it, and a sharp pain screamed at me to not do that again. I listened and stayed still until that airy feeling returned to me. A dull ache in my head registered my body's relief at my decision.

As I was wondering why my head hurt so much, memories started flooding my brain. Horrid memories that I wished I could block out, that I wished had fallen out of my head when the pain had entered it. Memories of my painful goodbye with Kellan. Memories of Denny's face when he discovered us. Memories of Denny beating up Kellan, taking out all of his frustrations on him, trying to kill him. His foot lining up for a devastating blow to Kellan's awaiting head...

"No!"

My memory of the attack invoked the action of what I'd foolishly done to stop it. I sat upright in bed as I yelled "no" and immediately fell back in a heap against the pillow, tenderly clutching my head, and gasping at the level of pain searing my body.

Denny's concerned face filled my hazy eyes. He stroked his thumbs across my cheekbones and turned behind him to mutter something to someone else in the room. A response was muttered back and I heard footsteps walking away as the pain in my head subsided to a throbbing ache. Denny turned back to me and continued stroking my cheeks, drying away some tears that had reached his fingers.

"Shhhh, Kiera. You're okay. It's okay....relax."

I realized I was clutching the front of his t-shirt with a deathlike grip, and forced myself to calm down. My eyes went in and out of focus and I blinked heavily several times to try and see him more clearly.

"Denny?" My voice was scratchy, my throat raw and aching of thirst. "Where am I? What happened?"

Denny exhaled and rested his forehead gently against mine. "What happened? What happened is I thought I'd lost you. I thought I'd killed you. I can't believe what I..." His accent sounded strained to me, like it did sometimes when he was upset or emotional. He exhaled heavily and swallowed before giving me a chaste kiss on the forehead. Pulling back, his dark eyes looked moist. "You're at the hospital, Kiera. You've been in and out of it for a couple days now. It was touch and go for awhile there. We were very lucky...there was bruising, but very little bleeding. You'll be okay."

I reached up and felt the side of my head carefully. Denny's fingers brushed mine as we both felt the tender area above my right ear. "They almost had to relieve the pressure with surgery, but they were finally able to get you back with medicine..." he murmured, as he rubbed his thumb against the back of my hand. My stomach twisted at the thought of a piece of my skull almost being removed. Thank God they didn't have to do that. I closed my eyes and dropped my hand, clutching Denny's tightly.

"Good...she's awake. Probably in a good dose of pain too." A cheerful, plump nurse with a smile about five miles long walked through my door. I cringed at her loud, peppy voice and tried to slip on a smile; it felt a little weak to me. "My name is Susie and I'll be taking good care of you today." With an air of authority she shooed Denny off the bed, even though I tried to keep him there, and shot a clear liquid into an IV attached to me. That was when I noticed the needle in my hand and again felt my stomach twist. She checked on my vital stats and seemed pleased with them. "Do you need anything, sweetie?"

"Water..." I croaked out.

She patted my leg. "Of course. I'll be right back."

She turned to leave and my more focused eyes followed her cat-covered scrubs out the door. Denny sat down on the other side of my bed and grabbed my non-IV needled hand, but I barely noticed. I barely noticed anything anymore and not because the pain meds were kicking in. No, that only cleared the ache in my head. My heart...? That was suddenly throbbing. The beeping beside me sped up as well.

As I watched the nurse leave, my eyes had drifted across the person who had gone out to find her. A person who was still standing beside the door, leaning against the wall, keeping their distance from me and from Denny. A person who's left arm was casted from the wrist to the elbow and whose face was a mosaic coloring of yellow to near black bruising...and still completely perfect.

He smiled at me when our eyes met, and I involuntarily clutched Denny's hand. Denny noticed my rapt attention and looked over to Kellan leaning against the wall. I couldn't understand what the both of them were doing in my room...and not trying to kill each other. They looked at each other and then Kellan nodded to Denny and throwing me a final smile, turned and left the room.

I wanted to shout at him to stay, to talk to me, to tell me what he was thinking, what he was feeling, but Denny cleared his throat and I looked back to him, confusion clear in my eyes. Denny smiled warmly at me and my confusion leapt even higher.

"You're not angry?" was all I could find to say.

He looked down for a moment, and I saw his jaw clench under the light hair there, hair that was a bit longer and stragglier than he usually kept it, like he hadn't left my side long enough to see to himself. He looked back up to me and I watched his eyes shift through multiple emotions, before he relaxed his features and seemed to settle on one.

"Yes...I'm angry. But...almost killing you, well, that sort of put things in perspective." He raised one corner of his lips in a sad smile, and then dropped them to a frown. "I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't made it." He ran a hand down his face. "I don't know how I would have gotten through that. That would have destroyed me..."

I brought my IV hand to his face; it felt heavy and solid, like the rest of my body was starting to feel. He looked back at me as my fingers ran across his jaw. He sighed and smiled slightly. "I wish you'd just told me, Kiera...from the beginning."

I withdrew my hand that suddenly felt overly hot. My heart started thumping and I begged it to calm down, as the monitor with the insistent beeping beside me picked up its pace to match it. He noticed my reaction and sighed. "It would have been hard...but so much better than how I found out."

He dropped his head and ran a hand through his hair; I noticed that his knuckles were still raw and red from attacking Kellan. "Of course...I should have talked to you when I suspected. I never should have set you up like that. I was just hoping... I just so wanted to be wrong."

He raised his head and his eyes suddenly looked exhausted, like he hadn't really slept in days. "I never thought you'd hurt me, Kiera." He cocked his head as I bit my lip to not cry. "Not you..." He spoke so softly, I had to lean in to hear him. "I thought Kellan might try for you. I even made him promise to not touch you when I left. But I never really thought you'd..." He looked away from me and a bitter note that I was not used to hearing from him, entered his accent. "How could you do that to me?"

He looked back to me and I opened my mouth to try and speak. Before any rational speech came out, the nurse came back and merrily handed me a Styrofoam cup, one bead of water hanging off the end of its straw. I couldn't take my eyes off that drop of water, and immediately slurped down the drink when she handed it to me. I think I mumbled some sort of thank you, before she cheerfully walked away.

Denny waited patiently for me to gulp down half the water. Finally I removed the straw and looked down at the cup in my hands, no longer able to meet his sad eyes. "Where do we go from here?" I quietly asked, terrified of his answer. With shaking fingers, I put the cup down on a table beside my bed.

He leaned in and gently kissed my uninjured temple. "We go nowhere, Kiera," he whispered in my ear before pulling away from me.

Tears immediately sprang to my eyes as I looked over his sad, but calm, face. "But I was leaving him. I love you."

He tilted his head and ran the back of his finger down my cheek. "I know...and I love you. But I don't think we love each other in the same way. And...I think keeping you near me, would destroy me. Look at what it almost made me do to you and Kellan. Look what I did do to you and Kellan." He looked back down to the pillows. "I'll never forgive myself for any of that...but it could have been so much worse, and I think it would be, if we stayed together."

The tears spilled down my cheeks now and when he looked back at me, similar tears were on his. "Stayed together? We're not together?"

He swallowed roughly and wiped some of my tears away. "No, Kiera...we're not. If you think about it, really think about it, we haven't been together for awhile." I started to shake my head but he kept going with his awful truths. "No...there's no point in trying to deny it. It's right there, Kiera. Somewhere along the way, you and I started drifting. Even when we've been together, we haven't...connected, like we used to. I don't know if it's only because of Kellan, or if this was just going to happen with us anyway. Maybe he just sped up something that was already coming."

I shook my head again, but I couldn't deny what he was saying. The only thing echoing in my head was "he's right" and I couldn't say that to him. I couldn't confirm what was surely going to be the end of us.

He smiled slightly at my feeble attempt to disagree with him. "I think in the end, you would have stayed with me, out of obligation...or maybe comfort. Maybe I was safe to you, and you needed to feel that." He rubbed my cheek again. "I know how scared you get of the unknown. To you...I must be kind of a security blanket."