AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But she doesn’t pull her sleeve from my grasp. She does something about a million times more destructive, though I never would have guessed that something that small, that simple, could ruin me with such tender oblivion.
When she moves her arm, it’s not to get away from me. It’s not an attempt at escape.
It’s to reach back and take my hand.
I’ve held her hand before. At her mamma’s grave. But I made the first move then. This is the first time she’s actually reached for me this way. When she laces her fingers through mine, it feels more raw and intimate than fucking. Especially since I’m not wearing gloves this time. And goddamn, does my hand ever look mangled in contrast with that creamy, freckled skin, the elegant fingers. But she doesn’t seem to give a single shit. She tightens her hold on me and tugs, leading me forward.
I don’t think I’ve ever followed somebody else in my entire life.
Not the way that I follow Deirdre now.
Chapter 15
Deirdre
We head down to the main floor of the house, and by some miracle we actually make it there in decent time, because Elio is too stubborn to accept my suggestion that maybe we should get a stretcher for him. I swear, his pride will get him killed, and even just thinking about that possibility makes me feel like the floor is about to drop out from beneath my feet.
How the hell could I have let him get me onto his lap like that? Let him tease me, make me come, when he was this badly injured? I mean, I know he made a joke about internal bleeding when I was with him, but I didn’t think it could actually be real.
Elio has seemed entirely indestructible to me, for the entire time I’ve known him, and honestly even before that. His unkillable-ness has reached legend status in this city. The boy who walked through fire and lived. The man who took a bullet for me and barely seemed worse for fucking wear.
But Elio, even with his marvel of a body and his ferocious, finely-honed weapon of a will, is human. He’s fallible. He’s killable. Even if he doesn’t want to admit it.
He might be able to confront such things with a blasé attitude, but I can’t. I’m hot and cold all over, my palm sweaty against his. There’s a sick, pinching panic in my stomach and my mind won’t stop reeling from thought to thought. Thoughts of what could happen to him, then frantic thoughts about how I might prevent it, or fix it, or make it all better. Make him better.
And the most shocking part is that this goes far beyond just plain old guilt. There’s that, too, especially since he got this injury dealing with Darragh for me. But I don’t just feel bad about him getting hurt on my behalf the way I did when he took that bullet the very first night.
I feel really fucking scared.
Scared of what might happen if I lose him. It’s such a big, anguished, knot of a thing that I can’t look at it head-on. I self-soothe, think my way around the problem. If I can just get him to this scan, get him to do whatever Doctor Morelli says, then he’ll be fine.
For now. Until the next mess we find ourselves in. Until the next enemy comes crawling out of the woodwork.
One step at a time. Just focus on what’s happening right now.
The med room is a brightly-lit space I haven’t come across in my exploring yet. It’s well illuminated by the sun streaming in through the windows, though Doctor Morelli immediately pushes a button on the wall to lower blackout-blinds when we’re in there. He turns on a much dimmer lamp on a counter by the wall, then I’m pretty sure tells Elio to get onto an examination table, because Elio goes towards it. He doesn’t let go of my hand, though, so I stumble along with him.
“You can let go. Let the doctor do what he needs to do,” I plead on a whisper, and my voice sounds strangely broken.
Elio’s eyes swallow mine in the dim light.
“No,” he replies, the word so rough it’s like a growl. “He can do whatever he needs to. But I’m not letting go.”
“Elio…”
“It’s OK,” Doctor Morelli pipes up as he wheels over a big machine with a screen. “That’s his good hand, eh?”
Elio makes a guttural, possessive sound, holding my hand even tighter. He raises it to his mouth, grazing his lips across the slightly puffy spot where I bit myself earlier. His mouth twitches against my skin when the doctor smears some blue gel against his injured side. Doctor Morelli wastes no time, pressing the ultrasound’s wand to Elio’s bruises.
It occurs to me now that I’ve never truly seen Elio acknowledge or show pain before. I mean, I know his shoulder bothers him, and his hands. But he keeps it all so tightly controlled, so casual about it all that I sometimes wonder if he doesn’t feel pain like the rest of us.
But when the doctor presses the wand firmly against his side, he reacts like an animal in a cage being prodded with an electric baton. His teeth crash against each other, and every muscle on his massive frame flexes viciously. The tendons along his neck stand out in brutal contrast as he chokes back a groan.
I don’t think about what I do next. I react on pure instinct, my heart half surging out of my chest at the sight of Elio locked in this kind of misery.
“Shh,” I tell him, stepping closer, right between his thighs. I smooth my free hand over the thick dark waves flopping onto his forehead, finally allowing myself to tuck them back the way I so often want to. Elio’s eyes are closed, but he reacts instantly to the contact, groaning and leaning into my touch.
“Shh,” I say again, petting his forehead and his hair with tender strokes. He sags forward, pressing his brows to my shoulder, so I start caressing the back of his head and neck. Elio’s other hand – his injured one – moves around to my back and fists the part of my sweater than hangs between my shoulder blades.
