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“Whoa,” Luca said, trying to reach for me, but I was already running toward the bathroom, dropping down on my knees in front of the toilet as my stomach emptied its contents. Over and over. Leaving me retching even when nothing else would come back up.
“Hey, it’s Luca,” a voice said as a hand pressed tissues toward me. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here,” he added after I blew my nose several times, then flushed the toilet.
“Judah,” I said, my heart suddenly speeding up, realizing he’d been alone in his crib the whole time I’d been dissociating.
Had he been crying for me?
Scared when I didn’t come?
“Hey, hey, hey,” Luca said, going to grab me, but then seeing the blood and thinking better of it, holding up his hands instead. “Lucky has Judah. He’s okay. Not hurt at all.”
“Was he crying?” I asked, lower lip trembling. “When you came in, was he crying?”
“Honey, no,” he said. “He was asleep.”
That didn’t mean he hadn’t been crying, though. Because I’d heard him when the gunshots rang out.
He’d been hysterical.
Had he cried himself to sleep?
My heart ached at the idea of that.
“He’s okay,” Luca insisted as another body moved into the bathroom, this one with his phone raised, and there was a flash of blinding light as he took a picture. “What the fuck, Milo?” Luca hissed.
“Aurelio will want to see this when he’s up. She looks badass.”
“Aurelio?” I asked, his voice a croak. “Is he… he’s…”
“He’s in surgery,” Luca said, voice calm, but I could hear the pain underneath. Aurelio wasn’t just his employee. He was family. “The doctors sounded optimistic.”
Somehow, those were the words that finally broke me.
I didn’t even recognize the haunting sob that escaped me then as I dropped down to my knees on the bathroom floor, cradling my bloody face with my bloody hands as the floodgates opened, and the tears poured down my face.
There was nothing subtle about the way I cried then. The wails that escaped me sounded like those of a dying animal. And I couldn’t seem to quiet them or slow the stream of tears.
To their credit, the men didn’t run from the room.
“She’s gonna fucking crack if she keeps on like this,” Milo said.
“Say something productive or leave,” Luca said, and I heard the cabinet open and close, then the water, before Luca was kneeling down in front of me, pulling my hands from my face, then mopping all the blood off of my skin, rinsing, then working on my hands.
As he just… let me cry.
Like he knew it was useless to try to offer me empty promises, or to tell me everything was alright.
It wasn’t.
If Aurelio didn’t make it, it might never be okay again.
By the time the tears finally stopped, my core ached from the intensity of my sobs, as did my throat, and my face felt raw from the salt.
“Okay,” Luca said, voice low. “I really wish I could give you as much time as you need here, honey, but I can’t. I’m going to need you to do some things for me, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, blowing my nose into the seemingly endless supply of tissues Milo kept thrusting at me.
“I’m going to have Milo get you a change of clothes. And then I need you to take a long shower. Scrub every inch of you. Your hair. Your eyebrows. Under your nails. Your toenails too. Everywhere.”
