I was so busy studying the color of his eyes that it didn’t even bother me that he was frowning as he watched me staring at him.
Well, that was until he asked, “How hard did you hit your head?” and then covered an eye, then did the same on the other one, as he looked between them. “Pupils seem equal, and there are no obvious differences in reaction. Do you feel dizzy? Sick?”
Not following what he was doing, I shook my head, smacking my nose into the hand that was still in the air beside me. “No, why would I feel dizzy or sick?” Then I registered the hand that was still next to my face and asked warily, “What are you going to do with that? Shadow puppets?”
“I was going to get you to follow my finger, but I’m thinking I should probably get Parker to take a look at you. You’re weird normally, but you’re acting even weirder right now.”
That snapped me out of the Elijah haze. Narrowing my eyes at him, I lifted my foot and kicked him in the shin before he could take a step away. “You’re a dickhead normally, but you’re a complete and utter wanker right now.”
And with that, I walked around him, leaving him rubbing where I’d maimed him, and exited out of the room, thanking every God there was that I didn’t trip or walk into a door on the way out. No one wants their grand finale to include a bleeding nose or picking themselves up off the floor. Can you imagine having a moment of grandeur, an awesome exit with dignity, then you walk into a wall, your nose is broken and hanging off your face, and that’s it—fin. It’d be utterly humiliating and a total anticlimax, and I wasn’t going out like that. Not today, Elijah Satan.
So, with dignity, I followed the hall to where it opened up into the bar and took my place back at my section for the night. It wasn’t until ten minutes later that I realized that my anxiety was still deeply buried, something that’d never happened to me. Usually, once the monkey was out of the cage, he danced around, hid behind it, and then went on a rampage around my body.
And it was all thanks to the pain in my arse, Elijah Townsend-Rossi.
Oh, bloody hell, I was going to have to thank him, or at the very least say sorry for assaulting his shin.
That meant I’d have to speak to him, something that, again, would’ve usually had my anxiety running riot.
It didn’t, but my vagina almost did. The dirty bitch.
ElijahAnxiety recognizes anxiety.
Once you’ve had it, you become aware of what the symptoms are as they take over inside, so you’re able to notice it in other people.
With Sadie, it’d been the pulse in her neck, her pupils dilating, and the way she fisted her hands. Add onto that, whenever someone spoke to her, she looked like she was going to pass out… and I hated that she had to go through it. It’d taken me a while to get to grips with my anxiety issues, but I could remember losing control of them, and it hit hard that Sadie was experiencing it too.
I’d only followed her to make sure she got to a safe space without anyone cornering her to talk, but when we’d gotten there, I’d been unable to stop my feet from following her inside.
And what I saw wrecked me.
It was ingrained in me to respect personal boundaries, and I’d never been so appreciative of that before in my life.
And she’d let me in.
For someone who felt like they had no control, letting someone into their personal space was huge. That feeling only got better when what I was doing helped her.
Sadie Dahl was an enigma in many ways. She looked genuinely confident and had a smart, sassy mouth, but if you looked at her eyes, you saw the truth. She watched anyone who approached her with wariness and caution, and sometimes when men made sharp moves with their hands or arms, I swear she was doing everything to stop herself ducking and hiding.
I was still mulling over the riddle of Sadie Dahl as I walked back to where Archer was waiting for me at the bar when I heard my name being hissed by the riddle herself. Pivoting, I leaned on the bar top and waited, admittedly amused by it all because she was scanning the area around us like she was about to divulge top-secret information.
When she finally looked back at me, I grinned and raised an eyebrow, deliberately goading her into feeling slightly pissed at me so that she wouldn’t feel vulnerable while she was saying what she needed to.
“Okay,” she huffed, crossing her arms. “Thank you for the daisy. I really appreciate it.”