Just Because (Completed)

Chapter 9: Delilah

9Delilah

So, the secret was out. Not that it was really a secret. I'd told Keiran from the get-go that he'd saved my life. I had just never bothered to elaborate, and to my surprise, he had never asked, not even when I tried to prompt him a little, asking if he'd ever been heroic. He simply hadn't remembered.

But... now he knew. He knew what he had done for me, and why I had fallen in love with him. Maybe it was a dumb reason to fall in love. Maybe it was impossible when I'd only seen him in person once prior to the tornado, and I'd barely been conscious for the duration of our time together. Could I truly love someone I didn't really know?

Yes, I could. Because I did know Keiran. In a way. I might not know his favorite color or his favorite food. I might not know his mother's first name or the first car he learned to drive in. I didn't know what he spent his childhood doing, or what his hobbies were off-stage as an adult. I knew nothing trivial.

But I knew his heart. I knew his morals and the code of ethics he held himself to, and I was moved by them. What kind of twenty-two-year-old kid with a concussion leaps out of his damaged car to go help the person in front of him? What kind of man allowed a woman to beat on him because he refused to hit her back? What kind would see a tornado coming and usher his friends into safety before himself?

Keiran may have been a rockstar, but he was also a saint.

Though I doubted very highly that he would agree to that statement.

I sighed as I leaned into him. He was holding me. Despite the intrusive beam between us, it was something I'd dreamed of for six years. It was both a blessing and a curse to finally feel his arms around me. While it set my heart to nearly bursting with joy, it also broke it, because I knew that the moment rescue crews found us we'd go our separate ways. He would go back to being a celebrity, back to Janet... with a long road to recovery as far as his legs were concerned. And me... I would go back to being his invisible fan girl. More than likely, we'd never see each other again.

It made a lump grow in my throat as tears pricked my eyes. But I swallowed it down and blinked my eyes dry, refusing to let Keiran see me cry anymore. Especially over something as petty as losing him. He wasn't mine to lose...

Despite the fact that our departures would break me, it likely would not mean much to him, and I wasn't going to make him feel guilty for something over which he had no control.

But I would let him hold me. For now. And I would enjoy every moment of time I had left with him.

What happened in the basement, stayed in the basement, as it were.

A loud growling interrupted the silence in the room, and I reluctantly pulled away as Keiran withdrew his arms to look down at himself.

"Sorry." He mumbled. "I'm so hungry. The more I ignore it, the worse it gets..."

"I know. Me too." Rising to stand, I picked up the jelly bean bag from the beam. "I'll get you some more water. Hopefully, enough of it will trick your stomach into thinking it's full."

Though he pursed his lips, he didn't protest, just nodded, and I carried the bag away, returned a moment later with it filled. I sat beside him as he slowly drank, my eyes sweeping over his face. The pink scrap from my shirt that I'd tied around his forehead had turned red with blood where the cut leaked through. Gave me half a mind to peel it back and see if it was at least starting to scab over, but I didn't. I just hoped it wouldn't heal too much before he could have stitches, or it would leave a canyon of a scar. Same for the cut on his arm.

His legs were another matter entirely. I could only imagine the surgery he was in for once we got out of here. And that was if surgery could save them at all. I looked at them while he drank the water. They were mangled. His right leg was crushed mid-shin beneath the X in the two beams, the left one twisted between the X and a third beam that fell lengthwise, his feet dangling uselessly from the carnage.