details, though; you have a good excuse to be a little muddled about the finer points."
I thought about it for a moment. "There are a few flaws in your story. First of all, there are no broken windows."
"Yes there are," he said. "Alice had a little bit too much fun fabricating evidence. She actually broke all the windows. It's all been taken care of very convincingly—you could probably sue the hotel if you wanted to. You have nothing to worry about," he promised, stroking my cheek with the lightest of touches. "Your only job now is to heal."
I wasn't so lost to the soreness or the fog of medication that I didn't respond to his touch. The beeping of the monitor jumped around erratically—now he wasn't the only one who could hear my heart misbehave.
"That's going to be embarrassing," I muttered to myself. "I hope they don't send me home with this strapped to me. Like, because then everyone would hear me coming, and they'd know your effect on me. Because it beeps my heart rate."
"Ha-ha," he chuckled, liking my joke. "Hmm, I wonder..."
He leaned in slowly; the beeping noise accelerated wildly before his lips even touched me. But when they did, though with the most gentle of pressures, the beeping stopped altogether.
Fredward had the power to stop hearts.
Mine.
He pulled back abruptly, his anxious expression turning to relief as the monitor reported the restarting of my heart.
"It seems that I'm going to have to be even more careful with you than usual." He frowned.
"I was not finished kissing you," I complained. "Don't make me kiss you from over here."

464

Chapter 24

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