I turned back around at the sound of water hitting skin. Dammit, didn’t he ever listen to anything I said? The bastard got right in the shower with me.
I shoved him hard. "I told you to leave!"
Lorenzo stumbled backward but didn't go down. His hand shot out and caught my wrist, fingers slipping on wet skin but holding on.
"Let go of me!" I tried to wrench free, but he held tight. We went down together, with me landing on top of him.
Lorenzo didn’t fight back. He just stared up at me, eyes unfocused. His hand shook as he lifted it. I flinched as he gently placed his palm against my cheek. “I remember you,” he said, voice almost a whisper. “You were with him… You…saved me.”
Then, his eyes rolled back, and he went limp beneath me.
Shit!
I pressed two fingers against his throat. His pulse beat steadily. The wound in his side had torn open completely, fresh blood mixing with water and soap, turning everything pink.
This is my fault.
"Help!" I called, lifting Lorenzo by his shoulders. "Hey, need some help in here!"
His head lolled against my chest.
Diego flung the door open and took one look at Lorenzo before uttering a curse in Spanish. "What the fuck happened?"
"He passed out. His side's bleeding. He needs—"
"Keep pressure on the wound. I'll be right back. Jasper!" He backed out the door shouting for Jasper to bring him the medical kit.
I pressed my palm against Lorenzo's side, applying pressure.
Lorenzo made a small sound, and his eyes fluttered back open. "Rafael?"
God dammit, why did the sound of my name on his lips sound so good? "Shut up. Don't talk. You're bleeding everywhere."
His hand closed weakly over mine. “Don’t let me die alone.”
I froze and stared at him. His face had gone slack again. The words had come out so quietly. Why would he say that to me?
He had Diego, Jasper. People who'd actually chosen to stand by him. People who weren't related to the man he'd just killed. And yet he'd looked at me and asked me to stay.
Don't let me die alone.
I'd spent twenty years in the Order surrounded by brothers who would have watched me hang without blinking. I'd knelt in chapels full of men who called me brother while teaching me that touch was sin, that wanting was weakness, that my body was something to be controlled and denied.
I'd been alone my entire life.
Maybe Lorenzo had too. Caged as a child. Sold. Forged into a weapon. Had anyone ever stayed with him when it mattered? Or had he learned the same lesson I had? That survival meant standing alone?
My hand pressed harder against the wound. Blood pulsed hot against my palm, his heartbeat steady under my fingers.
He'd killed my father. I should hate him. Part of me did. But another part recognized something in that quiet plea, in the way he'd reached for me even as consciousness slipped away.
He didn't want to die alone, and I understood that in a way I didn't want to examine too closely.
I wasn't leaving. I didn't know what that made us. Not enemies, not anymore, but not friends either. Something undefined and dangerous and probably stupid.
But I wasn't leaving.
I woke to painradiating through my back from sleeping on concrete and the acrid smell of cheap weed.
