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His hand stills. Only for a moment. Resuming stroking, he quietly says, “Yes.”
I cry even harder for a moment, not sure if what he just admitted should make me feel better or not.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
“I don’t know.”
My father deserved to die.
But the guilt and the grief have got their vines winding hard around me now, and they’re tight, and they’re thorny, and I don’t know how to pull them loose enough to look at this situation with anything close to closure.
Elio’s hand feels so good on my back, but suddenly all I can see is his hand on that gun and the hatred in his eyes as he fires.
The vomit I’ve been holding back for so much of today suddenly comes rocketing out of me. Some of it gets on me, but I mostly just douse Elio’s chest with it.
“I’m so sorry,” I stammer, trying to wipe the horrible stuff off of his suit with my bare hands. Instantly, he seizes my wrists.
“Stop, Deirdre. Stop.”
Once again he’s carrying me, this time to the bathroom. He flicks on the light and the floor-heater with his elbow, then sets me gently on the counter, turning on the tap and tugging my hands beneath the warm stream of water.
“Not me,” I whisper. “Elio, you’re completely covered.”
“I’ll live,” he says flatly, taking off the bandages he worked so hard on earlier so he can wash my hands anew. He removes his leather gloves, making sure not to lose track of the platinum wedding band, which he sets carefully aside.
“Oh, that reminds me,” he says, focused on washing my hands and not looking at me. “I drafted a new will. Everything’s yours once I’m gone. So if anything ever happens and you need access to it, you can find a copy with Gabriel Hades at Hades, Mason & Gould.”
“Don’t say anymore,” I beg him as he gingerly dries my hands with a clean towel. “Please. I can’t think about you dying right now.”
And I can’t think about him taking care of me, either. I can’t think of him in such sharp contrast to my father, who never did anything but put me in harm’s way. First with the car accident, then selling me to Elio, then Bermuda. My father is dead now. I already know there’s nothing left for me in his will, if he even has one at all.
And here Elio is, putting his physical health and his body on the line for me over and over again. Taking care of me so fucking dutifully that I’ll be alright even once he’s gone.
He’s still trying to make this world safe for me. Even when he won’t be in it.
“I really want to clean you off,” I murmur miserably, lifting my hands ineffectually and then letting them drop onto my legs.
“No fucking way. Keep your hands clean. We’ve both seen the kind of shit a bad infection can do,” Elio says. He picks up a cup from the counter and fills it with water. He brings it to my mouth. “Rinse.”
I do, my mouth feeling painful and swollen, the water dribbling out messily into the sink as I lean over it.
“Now drink some of it.”
“I can’t,” I moan, trying to push the cup away. But he just brings it right back up to my lips.
“Drink.”
My stomach rebels, but it feels good on my throat, and I end up drinking more than I expected I’d be capable of.
Once Elio is satisfied with that, he undresses until he’s just in his underwear, depositing everything, including his gloves, into a foul-smelling pile on the floor. He works more soap and water between his hands, scrubbing the suds over his chest and under his arms before rinsing and roughly drying himself. He rinses his face and then leans his whole head down into the sink, letting the water soak through his strands. Some of the water turns dark as it rinses down.
“Your head,” I say. I want to reach for him. I almost do it.
“I’ll live,” he says again as he rises slightly. He stays mostly bent over the sink, letting his hair drip moisture into the bowl of it before scrubbing his head with a towel.
“You need to see Doctor Morelli!”
“So do you,” he says tensely. “I want to know exactly what they fucking did to you.”
