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‘What do you mean there’s nothing wrong with her? My wife is in a hospital bed. She won’t talk or eat more than a few bites of food!’
Seve was aware his attitude was terrifying the staff. Prowling up and down the halls of the private hospital sent people scurrying for cover.
He didn’t care.
All he cared about was Genie. Who’d been hospitalised for a week and had barely spoken a word to him. Or Lita. Or her doctors.
When she’d finally opened her eyes, the sheer misery and desolation in the blue depths had taken him out at the knees. Hell, he’d half wished she’d remained sleeping because he never wanted to see that expression again. Especially knowing he was the cause of it.
But any attempt to talk to her had been met with silence and apathy. It was the apathy that was driving him insane. The woman he knew fought tooth and nail for the smallest cause.
That he was responsible for her dejection terrified him more than he was willing to admit.
It didn’t help that Lita, keeping vigil outside Genie’s room, glared at him with unabashed recrimination every chance she got.
‘We were a little worried about her blood pressure but that’s stabilised in the last few days,’ the doctor said.
‘So what’s wrong with my wife now? Why can’t I take her home?’ he pressed, that ever-growing stone of terror in his gut crushing the life out of him.
The short, bespectacled doctor squirmed for a minute before sighing. ‘We’ve already discussed this with Mrs Valente. She’s aware she can leave but she...indicated that she would rather remain here.’
A lesser man would’ve reeled from the shock. Seve clenched his gut and called on every ounce of self-control, past, present, and future, to keep him from crumbling.
‘If there’s nothing else,señor?’
The moment he dismissed him, the doctor scurried away, leaving Seve staring at the swinging door to the private waiting room.
He faintly registered that the hand he was dragging through his hair was shaking. Hell, his whole body was shaking.
Genie would rather remain within the soulless grey walls of a hospital than return home?
Grey walls...like her tech dungeon? Had he ruined things so spectacularly that his wife preferred the desolation of her past life?
Before unwanted answers could eviscerate him, he was striding down the hall.
He’d just reached her room when his hand was snagged in a firm hold. He glanced down at his grandmother, impatience rifling through him.
‘Lita, I need—’
‘I know what you need,’ she said in a firm, urgent voice. ‘AndIneed you to understand that the only way forward is to truly open your heart. Show her who you truly are. I want to go home,mijo, and I’d really like to take my family with me.’
Seve nodded, the rock in his throat preventing him from speaking.
Resolution pounding through his blood, he opened the door to Genie’s room.
She’d showered recently. Her drying hair was brushed and hung around her shoulders, and she was propped up by several pillows. The scent of her shampoo hit him and he curled his fingers against the desperate urge to stride over to the bed, scoop her up in his arms and bury his face in her throat until the world stopped its insane spinning.
Instead, he stood there, enduring her dismissive silence, until, perhaps sensing his intent, she angled her head towards him.
‘Seve.’
His name on her lips punched him hard in the gut. ‘Yes. You want me to go away. But I’m not leaving. Not today, not ever.’
She stiffened and cast him a look filled with misery and a fraction of the fire she usually showed. But it was fire, nonetheless. And it gave him much-needed impetus.
‘I screwed up. Big time. I know. But,mi amor—’
‘I’m not youramor. If you care even a little bit about me, you’ll stop calling me that.’
