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When he doesn’t say anything in response to that, I smile softly.
“The wedding, Elio,” I explain gently. “I’m not fighting you anymore. I agree to everything. You get well. And we’ll get married.”
“I…” His voice croaks, and I grab water from beside us and ease it up to his mouth. But he ignores it, never taking his eyes off me, his gaze weak but somehow just as intense and arresting as ever. “I thought I dreamed that.”
For some reason that makes something inside me feel like it’s cracked. To know that, while he was burning and in pain, my voice actually got through. I put the water back down, taking a moment to steady myself before I respond.
“No,” I say, “It was real.”
“I thought I dreamed you,” he says, his voice getting stronger with each word. “All of you. Everything.” He raises his hand, lifting it as if trying to reach my face. But it’s too heavy. It falls back to the bed. I reach for it myself, grasping it and stroking along his scarred palm.
“You’re here,” he says again, so softly I almost can’t hear.
“I am. Although, I really should go get the doctor…”
I move to rise, but his fingers fasten themselves around mine.
“Don’t go,” he says. And I want to fucking weep with relief, because there’s the Elio I know. He’s not begging me to stay.
He’s commanding.
I don’t weep, but I do beam tearily at him as I ease my hand out of his grip.
“Just because I’ll be your wife doesn’t mean I plan on giving into your every demand and whim,” I tell him. “You just lie here for a minute and I’ll be right back with Doctor Morelli.”
I rise fully from the chair this time, making sure Elio can’t grab any random parts of me to try to haul me back down. He tenses as I move away, his dark eyes eating into me like he’s starving for something, like there’s an empty ache inside him that food could never even hope to touch.
I feel that soul-hungry gaze, hard as teeth against my skin, even as I leave and close the door behind me.
Chapter 27
Elio
This fucking blows.
Maybe not eloquent, but it’s true. I haven’t been this busted-up and out of commission since recovering from my burns when I was fourteen. Morelli’s got me pumped full of all kinds of shit, fluids and antibiotics and I’m certain there are some painkillers in the mix, because the agony has receded far quicker than it should have just based on my own healing. For more than a week all I do is lie around, and that doesn’t even include those first blurred days when my fever was raging at its worst.
But I’ve avoided having all my organs shut down on me, so at least there’s that.
And there’s her. My Songbird. My fiancée. She flits and flutters and hovers, running cool fingers over my skin, giving me prim, cute little commands about resting and drinking water and yadda yadda yadda. She plays for me every night without being asked, then crawls like a kitten into bed beside me. It takes a lot of cajoling, and the eventual threat of dragging myself out of bed, before I can convince her to start attending her classes again with Enzo and Curse alternating as her chaperones.
By February thirteenth, after more than two weeks of doing absolutely fuck-all, I decide I’m sick of this shit and leave the bedroom after showering and getting dressed in some real clothes. There are no more tubes in me, nothing keeping me stuck here.
“Are you supposed to be up?” Curse asks as soon as I emerge from the bedroom.
“I’ve got shit to do,” I tell him.
“Not quite what I asked.”
My brother and I head down the stairs together. I can tell I’m still recovering, but I feel a hell of a lot better than I did. My ribs are still healing, and my kidney isn’t back on track yet, but the infection has cleared and I can feel some of my old energy returning.
“What do you need to do?” Curse asks as we reach the main floor. “I can take care of it for you.”
“You can come with me. But I have to do it myself.”
Deirdre’s at school right now, so I figure now is as good a time as any to get this done. Might as well, since she’s not here to distract me.
“What is it, then?”
