Mending Ryan Falls ✓

7 | in which she makes soup for strangers

You said I was your dream-girl,
Guess you decided to wake up.

.\.|./.

Crystal Monroe

|in which she makes soup for strangers|

Ryan ... that's what his sister calls him.

Maybe all guys with the name look like freaking gods. But honestly, though, this man would give Ryan Gosling and Ryan Guzman a run for their money.

He's a special specimen.

He looks at me through confused eyes, and I'm just as confused as he is. He probably can't see me straight, because I see him doing weird things with the muscles around his eyes. He blinks, squints, widens, flexes, and whatnot.

I should stop him before he loses his eyeballs.

"I just came to say I'm sorry," I blurt out.

"Sorry?" he whispers, his voice passing through me like wind and knocking the breath right out of me.

I have an idea about the kind of things he would say.

'Sorry? You think sorry can fix anything? It can't get me out of this hospital bed. It can't get me walking again. It can't make all my pain go away. I don't need your fucking sorry. Keep it.

"I'll do whatever you need," I say quickly, resorting to pleading before he can utter another word. "I have little money but I can pay the hospital bills and ... if you need physiotherapy or anything --"

"Wait, stop!" he interrupts, his voice breaking halfway through. His eyes close and the thousands of lines popping on his forehead demonstrate how much pain he's in.

Now, with my mind focusing more on him and less on the fact that I nearly killed a man today, I see just what he looks like.

I'm sure the initial impression that I got from seeing him — that I have actually murdered a god — was pretty accurate. The man looks like he dropped out of heaven and right in front of my car. That would also explain why he was flying midair on a stop-less freeway.

Sticky raven hair flop out from under his white bandages, and onto the face that looks like it used to have a beautiful tan to it but is now growing pale. His nose was probably pretty before it broke this morning, and his full lips chapped and dry.

If this man looks this good in hospital scrubs and bandages, imagine what he would look like in Calvin Klein's. On second thought, maybe don't imagine it at all. You'll need to go and 'cool down' after that image.

I don't know what's scarier, the fact that this god-man in lying in front of me in a hospital bed, or the fact that I put him there. Either way, if he turns out to be some sort of angel-slash-deity, I'm pretty sure I'm screwed.

"I'm really sorry," I repeat, praying to the real God to keep this one from getting up now and tossing me three hundred feet below hell.

"For what?" he asks, opening his eyes a fraction to show me grey irises. Maybe it's the anesthesia's effect, but his eyes look pretty much transparent.

Now I'm positive he's a god.

"The accident --"

"Exactly. It was an accident. You don't have to apologize. It wasn't your fault."

Damn right, it was — wait what?

His eyes close and the grimace that flashes across his face when he shifts his head tells me he's not okay. Maybe he hit his head so bad he forgot how to act normally. Maybe this 'you don't have to apologize' is just code for 'wait till I get my hands on you'.