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I hear her intake of breath, then the pitter-patter of hurried footsteps.
“What do you mean, dying?” she demands, coming to a hard stop beside Morelli and me. She plants her hands on her hips.
“Like the sound of that?” I enquire blandly. I heave myself into a standing position. My erection has subsided, but my whole side feels like somebody’s stuck a bunch of hot spiky coals in there. “Don’t get your hopes up, Songbird. Like I said, I don’t plan on actually doing it.”
“What?” she gasps, and she looks so fucking affronted by my comment that I actually think I might have misunderstood her. There’s honesty in that kind of outrage. “How dare you?” she hisses. “You think I ran out here all excited because you could be dying? I’m not a monster. I’m not like you.”
Morelli’s gaze pings back and forth between my beautiful, furious fiancée and me.
“You told me she got scared of somebody knocking at the door. But she stands up to you like it’s nothing,” he remarks softly in Italian. He gives a soft chuckle of disbelief. “Never thought I’d live to see the day that a woman spoke to you like that. Fiery, that one.” He gives me a long, probing stare. “A fiery woman for Elio Titone. I can’t tell if I’m surprised or not.”
“What’s he saying?” Deirdre asks me in a tight voice. When I don’t immediately answer, she turns her attention to Morelli.
“Doctor? Could you please tell me what’s going on with Elio?”
“Hey, how come you’re so much more polite to him?” I mutter.
“You be quiet,” she snaps at me, and if breathing didn’t currently feel like somebody ripping a hole in me I would laugh out loud. She’s so fucking cute. I can’t stand it.
“Please, Doctor,” she says to Morelli again. She’s got her usual armour of anger wrapped around her, but it cracks a little bit. Literally. I actually hear a crack in her slightly shaky voice.
Holy mother of God.
She’s actually worried about me.
My reaction to that is almost as painful as my imploding kidney. It twists a hard knife inside me – in my guts, my chest. It’s wrenching something open that I don’t know how to deal with. I know how to handle her obstinance, her arousal, even her hate.
Her actually worrying about me? Caring for me like that?
My jaw works as I stare at her freckled profile. I want so many things at once I can’t untangle it all. I want to deny the severity of my injuries. I want to exaggerate them, see just how worried she might get. I want to hug her knees like a fucking child and bury my face in her thighs. I want to rip down her leggings, pin her to the bed, show her that nothing can hurt me enough to keep me away from her.
She fears my death. She can hate me and hurl angry words at me all she wants, but ultimately she doesn’t want to lose me.
I should tell her that she won’t. That there’s nothing that could tear me from her now, or her from me. Not Darragh, not death. Hell, somebody could stab me through the heart right now and I know with more certainty than I know my own mamma’s name that it would keep on fucking beating just so that I could drag myself back to her.
I don’t manage to get any of that up and out of my oddly tight throat. Instead, I just mutter a strangled, “Songbird,” while reaching for her with my uninjured hand. She mostly ignores me, pulling her hand away from my reach so she can focus on Morelli. I manage to pinch her butter-soft sleeve between my finger and thumb, though, and I hold onto it, caressing the fabric obsessively while pain slowly poisons my insides.
“Hands, OK,” Morelli says to Deirdre in thickly accented English. He see-saws his hand in a so-so gesture. “Kidney, not so much. Needs lots of rest. We go do a scan now.”
“Where? The hospital?” she asks.
“No, no. Downstairs.”
Deirdre tosses a glance my way. There’s no denying the worry in those wells of blue. My finger and thumb tighten on her sleeve.
“But shouldn’t he go to a hospital?” she asks.
“Surgery, eh, hopefully don’t need it,” Morelli replies with a shrug. “Scan first. See what’s what.”
“OK. Let’s go, then.”
“You’re coming?” I ask, surprised.
“Of course I am! I can’t count on you to actually tell me what’s happening with your injuries! God, I saw the bruising on your side. I should have never let you…”
Her face flushes, and she looks so guilty and ashamed that I want to soothe her somehow, but she’s already on the move, turning and tugging against my hold on her sleeve. When I don’t immediately follow, she lets out an impatient breath. Her arm moves, and I think she’s going to rip it out of my grasp entirely, and fucking hell that terrifies me, makes me want to fucking beg. Plead for her to let me keep holding onto this tiny little bit of her, let me keep plucking at her sleeve.
Pathetic. What the hell has happened to me?
