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"Okay," Dylan answered, her voice thick. "I'll just stay here with you while you sleep."
"No, you won't." Her mother shook her head. "I won't have you sitting here worrying about me. I'm not going to leave you tonight, or the next day, or even next week - I promise. But you need to go home now, Dylan. I want that for you."
Home, Dylan thought, as her mother drifted off to a drug-induced sleep. The word felt oddly empty to her when she pictured her apartment and the few possessions she had there. That wasn't home to her. If she had to go somewhere now, somewhere she felt safe and protected, that pitiful hole in the wall wasn't it. Never really had been.
Dylan rose from the bed and turned to leave the room. As she wiped at her teary eyes, her gaze lit on a shadowed face and broad shoulders silhouetted by the hallway lights outside.
Rio.
He'd found her, followed her there.
Where her every instinct should have been to run away from him, Dylan went to him instead. She pulled open the door and met him outside her mother's room, incapable of speaking as she wrapped her arms around his solid warmth and wept softly into his chest.
Chapter Twenty-three
He hadn't expected her to run to him when she saw him standing there.
Now that Dylan was in his arms, her body trembling as she cried, Rio found himself at a complete loss. He'd worked up a healthy amount of anger and suspicion in the time it took him to track her across the city. His head was ringing from all the noise, and from the endless, overcrowded presence of humans everywhere he looked. His temples were screaming from the bright lights, all of his senses battering him from within.
But none of that mattered in the long moments he stood there, holding Dylan, feeling her shake with bone-deep fear and anguish. She was hurting, and Rio felt an overwhelming need to protect her. He didn't want to see her in pain like this.
Madre de Dios, but he hated seeing her this way.
He caressed her delicate back, pressed his mouth to the top of her head where it nestled beneath his chin, murmuring quiet words of reassurance. Feeble gestures, but all he could think to do for her.
"I'm so afraid I'm going to lose her," she whispered. "Oh, God, Rio...I'm terrified."
He didn't have to guess at who Dylan was talking about. The patient sleeping in the adjacent room had the same creamy coloring, the same fiery-hued hair as the younger version Rio was holding in his embrace.
Dylan tilted her tear-streaked face up at him. "Will you take me out of here, please?"
"I'll take you anywhere you want to go." Rio smoothed his thumbs over her cheeks, erasing the wet tracks. "Do you want to go home?"
Her sad little laugh sounded so broken, lost, somehow. "Can we just...walk for a little while?"
"Yeah. Sure." He nodded, tucking her under his arm. "Let's get out of here."
They walked in silence, down to the elevator and then out of the hospital to the warm night outside. He didn't know where to take her, so he just walked with her. A few blocks up from the hospital was a footbridge that led to the East River promenade. They crossed it, and as they strolled along the water's edge, Rio felt people staring at him as they passed on the walkway.
There were furtive glances at his scars, and more than one wondering look that seemed to question what he was doing with a beauty like Dylan. A damn good question, and one he didn't have a sensible answer for at the moment. He'd brought her into the city on a mission - one that sure as hell didn't allow for detours like this.
Dylan slowed at last, pausing at the iron rail to look over the water. "My mom got really sick last fall. She thought it was bronchitis. It wasn't. The verdict was lung cancer, even though she never smoked a day in her life." Dylan went quiet for a long moment. "She's dying. That's what she just told me tonight."
"I'm sorry," Rio said, drawing up next to her.
He wanted to touch her, but he wasn't sure she needed his consolation - wasn't sure she'd accept it. Instead he settled for touching a strand of her loose red hair, easier to pretend he was catching the errant tendril from blowing into her face on the light summer breeze.
"I wasn't supposed to be on that trip to Europe. It was going to be her big adventure with her friends, but she wasn't well enough to go so I took her place. I wasn't supposed to be there. I never would have set foot in that damn cave. I never would have met you."
"Now you wish you could undo it." He didn't ask the question, merely stated what had to be simple fact.
"I do wish I could undo it, for her. I wish she could have had her adventure. I wish she wasn't sick." Dylan turned her head and looked at him. "But I don't wish I could undo meeting you."
Rio was stunned silent by her admission. He brought his hand up to the soft line of her jaw, looking down into a face so fair and beautiful it stole his breath. And the way she was gazing up at him - as if he were a man worthy of her, a man she could love...
She exhaled a quiet, unsteady breath. "I would take it all back in a second, Rio. But not this. Not you."
Ah, Cristo.
