by Peyton Bogue
He needs to say it. He needs to get the words out. He can feel them caught in his throat, right on the tip of his tongue. Today, of all days, while he’s lying in Rhys’s bed with Rhys’s arms around him—so safe and secured and loved—he’s finally realized that it’s the right time to say it. There’s no denying how serious their relationship is now. Rhys is easily one of the most important persons in Sage’s life. They practically live together. He can’t keep these words in any longer.
“I’m worried that you’re going to freak out,” Sage admits after a full minute of silence passes, still resolutely staring out of the window. He knows he probably smells nervous now and that his heart is beating way too fast. He has to get these words out. He wants to say them, but he’s afraid of how Rhys will react. He knows Rhys, now. He knows how Rhys thinks. It’s entirely possible that Rhys will shut Sage out once he hears those words, or that he’ll start to close himself off again. Sage doesn’t think that he will be able to handle it if Rhys were to shut him out again. Not after everything they’ve told each other.
Rhys gently cradles Sage’s face in his hands, slowly turning Sage’s head so that their eyes meet again and gives him an encouraging smile. “You can tell me anything,” he says, rubbing both of his thumbs over Sage’s jaw. “I promise I won’t freak out.”
Sage exhales a disbelieving chuckle. “I don’t know if you should make that promise.”
“I’m going to make it stop hurting, baby. I promise.”
“You’re stalling,” Rhys says, smiling as he leans forward and kisses Sage’s forehead. “I’m not taking it back, so tell me. I promise that I won't freak out."
His smile widens and Sage feels his heart swell. He takes another deep breath, exhaling slowly out through his nostrils.
“I’m in love with you,” Sage tells Rhys quietly, staring right into Rhys’s eyes. It’s silent for a moment, the words hanging between them as if they’re stagnant in the air. Abruptly, Rhys’s thumbs freeze against Sage's face, and Sage feels him suck in a startling breath, as if hearing the words has knocked all of the air out of his lungs.
Sage pulls his face away from Rhys’s hands and places a soothing kiss on top of Rhys’s naked sternum, gently saying, “You’re freaking out.”
“I’m not freaking out,” Rhys replies, his voice strained.
“I love you. You’re going to be fine. Hold on, baby. Please hold on.”
Sage reaches his hand up and gently entwines their fingers together. He presses a kiss to Rhys’s knuckles, holding his gaze as he waits for Rhys to process what he’s saying, for him to understand what Sage’s words mean.
“Okay,” Rhys says after a few tense minutes pass. “Maybe I am freaking out.” Rhys looks down at him with wide eyes, and Sage can’t hold back a knowing smile as he soothingly runs the fingers of his opposite hand over Rhys’s heart. “You’re in love with me?” Rhys asks him quietly, his breathing ragged. Sage nods slowly, giving Rhys a soft smile, and Rhys inhales shakily. “Sage. . .” he says, trailing off.
“Can I tell you something else?” Sage asks, keeping his voice steady. Rhys exhales slowly and nods a tad shakily. “I think you might be in love with me, too.”
Rhys’s breath catches in his throat, and Sage tightens his fingers in between Rhys’s, giving him another soothing smile.
“I see it in your eyes every time you look at me,” Sage continues, his voice barely above a whisper. “I feel it in the way you touch me. In the way you make love to me.”
Rhys inhales sharply, tensing. His eyes widen even more as they start to glaze over. “Sage,” he repeats, his voice thick.
“Come back to me, baby.”
“I don’t expect you to say it back, Rhys,” Sage says quietly, rubbing his thumb over Rhys’s wrist. “I know you. I know that you’re afraid to fall in love. I knew you might freak out. But I wanted you to know how I feel. I wanted you to know that I love you. I’m in love with every little thing about you.”
“I. . .” Rhys starts, taking a deep breath. He closes his eyes after a moment, inhaling deeply. Sage places another kiss on his sternum.
It’s quiet for a while. Sage just lays his head on Rhys’s chest and listens to the panicked beating of Rhys’s heart. He’s mildly surprised that Rhys hasn’t asked him to move so that he can run off and gather his thoughts. Rhys likes doing that when he gets stressed.
“I feel like—” Rhys says, before he cuts himself off sharply with a frustrated growl.
“Like what, Ree?” Sage asks him encouragingly, kissing right above Rhys’s heart.
“Like I’m so messed up inside that hearing my boyfriend tell me that he loves me literally makes me freak out,” Rhys says, sighing deeply and bringing his hand up to cup the back of Sage’s neck.
“Rhys. . .” Sage says softly, frowning.
“I don’t want to be freaked out,” Rhys says, shaking his head.
“Okay,” Sage says easily, nodding. “Talk to me about it. What’s making you freak out?”
Rhys closes his eyes, exhaling shakily again. “I convinced myself a long time ago that I wasn’t worthy of love. You know that. I never thought I could feel like this before. It’s. . .hard to explain how I feel. I. . .” he trails off, swallowing audibly. “I’m messed up. I’m not—not put together. I feel like I might be broken. But I’m in love with you, and when I look at you, I feel like I can’t breathe. Like I’m. . .dying. You don’t look at me like I’m broken. You see me. You look at me like I’m worth something. But If I let myself love you. . .if I let myself fall even deeper for you. . .you’ll get pulled into all of my problems, Sage. You might decide that I’m not worth it after all.”
“Rhys—”
“I don’t want you to regret loving me. If this is a mistake—” Rhys inhales sharply. “If you changed your mind, or. . .decided to leave me or—something, I think my heart might break. I have all of this ugliness inside of me, Sage. I don’t want that ugliness to ruin you, too. It’s taken me awhile to accept that part of me, to know that it’s a part of me that I don’t know will ever go away. I can’t ask you to accept that, too. I’ve known for a while that I was in love with you, but I’m afraid to love you. The people I love always get taken away from me. I feel like. . .like maybe I’m cursed. I won’t survive it if I lose you, too. I won’t let my love drag you down. I can’t do that to you. And I can’t wake up one morning and watch you leave me when you decide that all of my ugliness is too much for you.”
“Rhys. . .” Sage says, leaning up completely. He feels a tear escape his eye, and he sniffles as he cups Rhys’s face with his other hand before looking into Rhys’s eyes. “There is nothing about you that is ugly. You’re so amazing, Rhys. You’ve had horrible things happen to you. You’ve lived through unimaginable things. But you’re so strong, sweetheart. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. I will never leave you. I see you, Rhys. All of you. Every piece. And there is not one part of you that I don’t love with my entire heart.”
Rhys’s face crumbles as tears well in his eyes, and he pulls Sage forward, crashing their lips together. Their tears mingle together as they kiss, but Sage doesn’t care. It’s one of the best kisses they’ve ever had.
“I love you,” Sage says when they part, his voice thick.
“I love you so much. Baby, please come back to me.”
“I love you, too,” Rhys breathes, sniffling. He pulls Sage down again, and everything fades away as their lips meet once more.
◆◆◆
Sage gets flashes of things as he passes in and out of consciousness. Rhys carrying him. Wind rippling through his hair. The emergency room. Doctors and nurses swarming around him. Kai crying. Rhys crying. There isn’t much after that, though, when he hears the sounds of Rhys’s sobs.
He sleeps. He dreams. His dreams turn to nightmares of blood and teeth and glowing blue eyes after he dreams about the first time he told Rhys that he loved him. He sees bright lights at one point and thinks he’s dying. The sound of Rhy
s’s howls echo in his ears until he thinks he passes out again.
He doesn’t wake up.
Sounds filter over him sometimes. The steady rhythm of a heart monitor near his ear. Overlapping voices of a few nurses. And, at some point, a conversation between Kai and Rhys.
“—and he’s alive, Rhys,” Kai is saying quietly. His voice is raspy, as if he’s been screaming. Sage hears a sniffle, and there’s a pause.
“Barely,” he hears Rhys reply, and his voice is absolutely wrecked. The raw hurt and anguish in his deep tenor makes Sage’s heart clench. He sounds so broken and raspy that Sage doesn’t know how Rhys's words reach his ears.
The heart monitor beeps loudly in the silence.
“You got him out, man,” Kai reminds him softly.
Another sniffle.
“He was scared of me,” Rhys says, a whisper so quiet that Sage’s ears have to strain to hear it. The rest of his body doesn’t move. “I scared him.”
“You saved him,” Kai says resolutely. “He might have just been scared of Steele, man. Maybe you can ask him about it when he wakes up.”
“He’s been through hell,” Rhys replies, sniffling. “He needs all the sleep he can get.”
It’s quiet for a long time after that, and Sage isn’t sure if he slips into another dream. He doesn’t move. The heart monitor continues to beep steadily.
“Sometimes,” Rhys says into the silence jarringly, his voice strained. “I think that maybe Sage may have been better off if he’d hadn’t met me.”
“Don’t say that, Rhys,” Kai says sharply.
“I can’t stop thinking about it, Kai,” Rhys replies hoarsely, a tad harsh. “He’s given up so much for me. He risked his job to destroy my DNA samples, Kai. That was almost four years ago. He didn’t even know me.” Another sniffle. “He lied to you about what I was for months. He’s constantly dealing with all of the shit that I bring to him—my possessiveness, my lack of control, all of this secretism. He lies to the people he cares about every single day to keep me from being exposed. I hate that he has to do all of this stuff for me. He almost died, Kai. Steele almost killed him. He risked his life for me. How could I possibly still believe that being with me is something that’s good for him anymore?”
“Don’t do that,” Kai tells him. “Don’t make decisions for him. You aren’t the one who hurt him, Rhys. Steele did. No one could have seen this coming, man. Not even you. Don’t do this to yourself.”
“I put him in danger, Kai,” Rhys says, and his voice is so broken, so full of emotion that Sage feels his chest tighten painfully at the utter devastation in Rhys’s words. “I’m the reason he’s here.”
“You’re the reason he’s alive, Rhys. If you hadn’t of done what you did—”
Rhys laughs bitterly, cutting Kai off. “I shouldn’t have even had to do it. I shouldn’t have let myself get trapped.” He pauses. “Seeing that omega bite him. . .” he trails off, his voice barely a whisper. “That’s not even the worst part. Not seeing him on the floor, writhing in pain. Not hearing him beg me to leave him so that Steele would hurt him instead of me. Not thinking that I was too late. I’ll carry the sounds of his screams with me for the rest of my life, Kai. But the worst part?” He inhales sharply, and the breath he releases is thick and shaky. “The worst part was knowing that he was still trying to save me, even as I stood trapped and unable to fight for him, to save him. Even as Steele choked him so hard that I thought his neck was going to snap.”
“Rhys. . .” Kai says quietly.
“I did that to him, Kai.”
“You know what else you’ve done?” Kai snaps harshly. “You put him back together. When he came back from whatever hell he went through in Afghanistan, he was a ghost, Rhys. I didn’t know how to help him. I didn’t know what to say to him. He finally started getting back to himself when we graduated from the academy. And then, not even a year into making detective, he meets you. You honestly think that’s a bad thing? Do you regret ever meeting him?”
Rhys says something, and it’s too low for Sage to hear, but the sound of his refusal is clear.
“Rhys, Sage loves you,” Kai says earnestly. “He’s so in love with you, man. I’ve never seen him look happier than he is when he’s with you.”
“I’m so in love with him that I don’t even know if there are words that could describe how I feel. He’s everything to me, Kai. When I lost my family. . . ” he pauses. “I thought I was going to be alone for the rest of my life. I had all this anger inside me. I still do. And I just closed myself off to everyone. But when I met Sage—” he cuts himself off. “He just. . .he wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met before. He was beautiful, Kai. He wasn’t scared of me. And now he is.”
“Stop that,” Kai warns him. “You don’t know that, Rhys. Come on, man. Stop doing this to yourself. He needs you right now. He needs both of us right now. ”
Silence overtakes the room again, and Sage wishes he could open his eyes, but when he tries, the weight of his eyelids is too heavy for him to lift.
“Shit,” Rhys suddenly snarls, and the sound of ragged breathing reaches Sage’s ears as footsteps sound rapidly on the tile floor.
“Hey,” Kai says sternly but softly. “Come on, dude. You can’t wolf out right now. I know the moon is at its apex, or—whatever—right now, but you’ve got to fight it, man. I know you can do it. Take a deep breath.”
There’s a growl in Rhys’s throat when he grits out, “I’m trying.”
“Calm down,” Kai says soothingly. “Focus on Sage. Come on, man. Listen to his heart. Count his breaths. Focus.”
Rhys inhales sharply, and a rumble sounds through his chest as he continues to take in deep lungfuls of air. He starts to mimic Sage’s even breaths.
“There you go,” Kai tells him encouragingly, and Sage would give anything to be able to comfort Rhys right now, but when he tries to move, nothing happens, and darkness begins to emulate through his head.
“Thank you,” Rhys says quietly, and then a feverish hand is being slipped into his good one, and Sage can hear how Rhys takes another steadying breath before he slowly starts to rub his thumb over Sage’s wrist, feeling the steady pulse beneath Sage’s skin.
“Anytime, man,” Kai says, and everything fades away from Sage once more.
When Sage does finally wake up, he stumbles into consciousness with a start, sweat beginning to cool on his skin as he breathes harshly through his fading dreams of pain and sorrow. He tries to blink open his eyes, but they sting and burn, and he ends up squeezing them tightly instead.
He abruptly realizes that he has a tube down his throat, and he immediately starts panicking. He starts to swallow around it instinctively, trying to clear the intrusion, but the tube doesn’t move as his throat convulses around it. He tries to lift his hands up to grab it, but his arms are heavy and tremble unsteadily until they fall back onto a cotton blanket. His heart begins to race, his panic swelling, but then a pair of hands are pushing gently at his shoulders and gently trying to steady him.
“Hey, you’re okay,” he hears, and Sage frantically focuses his blurry vision and blinks rapidly until it clears, and Kai’s sorrowful face comes into focus vividly. “Relax, Sage. Someone’s coming to get it out. You’re okay.”
Sage just stares back at him, gagging around the tube. He feels nauseous, and perspiration clings to his skin and makes him feel overheated, as if his skin is on fire, but then Kai’s cool left hand begins to soothingly run over his head, steady and gentle as a nurse suddenly appears on Sage’s left side.
The nurse reaches forward, and Sage suppresses a flinch as she disconnects the bottom of the tube from a machine above his head, then quickly lays a gauze sheet on top of his chest and gently pulls a piece of tape off of his mouth.
“Breathe out,” she tells him softly, and Sage complies, pushing a deep breath out of his mouth as she slowly removes the tube.
Once he’s no longer intubated, he takes a deep breath through the burn in his
throat. He coughs almost immediately, and he becomes distinctly aware of how sore he is in every inch of his body. He groans lowly and the nurse bunches up the gauze sheet and the tube in her hands and briefly trails her eyes over his face with an apologetic look.
“You’re okay, honey,” she says kindly, giving him a sympathetic grin. “You’re in the hospital. I know that’s probably not the best way to wake up, but you’re safe. I’ll tell your RN that you're awake. Let me know if you need anything, okay? I’ll just be right outside,” she continues softly, and when Sage gives her a dazed nod, she leaves with a soft, reassuring smile.
A dull ache blooms over his chest as he moves slightly, but it’s not the burning pain he’d felt when he’d lost consciousness. There’s a building pressure at his head that radiates out towards the base of his neck, and he brings a hand up to gently rub at his throat, but his fingertips run over a few bandages when he makes contact with them, and he drops his hand back onto the blanket with another groan.
His joints throb, and he belatedly realizes that his right arm is in a large brace all the way from his elbow to his wrist. He doesn’t feel anything when he looks at it, no pain or ache, and he thinks that he’s probably got some kind of painkillers thrumming through his system.