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His breathing was labored.
Way too labored.
And his heart was pounding so hard I could feel it against my cheek.
He chuckled, his hand coming out to pat my ass lightly.
I licked my lips and tried to find the will to sit up but couldn’t muster any effort.
My vocal cords still worked, though.
“So does this mean you’re not mad at me?” I whispered into the muscled chest I was using as a pillow.
He grunted out a laugh and pulled out of me, rolling us until I was on my stomach in the bed, and he was between my splayed thighs.
His hand came down hard on my ass, and I squawked.
He fell onto the mattress beside me, and I closed my eyes, listening to his labored breathing.
That’s when my heart started to pound for an altogether different reason.
He was sick.
I knew he was.
“Murphy…” I started.
“Don’t ruin it,” he whispered gruffly. “I’ll tell you. Just not right now.”
I felt my heart squeeze tightly, my lungs constricting.
“Okay,” I whispered.
I’d give him until the morning.
That was all.
“Tonight, we’re going to pretend,” he whispered gruffly, pulling me in tighter to his side.
My head went against the large wall of his chest. His chest hair tickled my nose and lips, but I didn’t pull away.
Instead, I listened to his heart and closed my eyes. I stayed like that for so long that Murphy’s breathing finally evened out, and his body stilled to the point where he seemed asleep.
I couldn’t stop myself from voicing my words, even if I’d wanted to. “What if I don’t want to pretend?”
He didn’t answer, so I knew he was asleep.
But the intensity that hit me at the knowledge of how serious I was about not wanting to pretend nearly knocked the breath out of me.
I wanted this to be real.
I wanted this to be mine forever.
I wanted Alessio more than I wanted my next breath.
But I was afraid that it was too late for that.
He was already halfway gone.
I was proved right only eight hours later.
CHAPTER 12
I’m not superstitious. I’m minorstitious.
-Mavis to Murphy
MURPHY
I woke up to Vlad crying.
I hadn’t really thought Vlad was that bad around his mother until I watched him refuse to take a bottle from Mavis’s hands.
“Please, buddy. I just want to hold you,” she begged.
Vlad all but threw himself backwards in his desire to get away from her, and my heart sank.
The look of sadness on Mavis’s face had my heart twisting in my chest.
Defeated, I watched as she placed Vlad in a donut-shaped pillow, then handed him his bottle.
He took it, then happily fed himself.
Mavis’s shoulders slumped as she stared at her son.
I walked back to the bedroom, not wanting to intrude on her time with her son. Nor did I want to go in there and prove all her thoughts right about how her son hated her.
If I went in there, and he took a bottle from me, that would make her sad.
And after last night, after seeing her break down? I wasn’t up to seeing her sad anymore.
Heading to her shower, I turned it on and waited for it to heat up before stepping inside.
I’d have to put my old, dirty clothes on, but it would have to do.
I needed a shower after dealing with yesterday.
That, and I had a doctor’s appointment this morning.
I needed to get home and get a change of clothes that I could work in.
I also needed to get to work.
I was so focused on getting through my shower, thinking about the monumental task ahead of me—IE telling Mavis that I was dying—that I didn’t hear her come into the bathroom, nor open the shower door, until I felt her two small arms encircle my upper waist.
Her head pressed against my back, right between my shoulder blades, and I sighed.
“Your mom called,” she whispered into me.
I turned around in her arms and pulled her in closer, looking down into her eyes.
Except her eyes were closed because the water was bouncing off my chest into her face.
I grinned and shifted, making it so that the water hit my back and didn’t get anywhere near her.
Which caused her to shiver.
“That’s worse,” she giggled.
I turned us all over again until her back was the one getting hit, and she shifted her head backwards so that her hair became saturated.
I reached for the bottle of the shampoo that was on the shower caddy in the corner, likely pouring way too much into my cupped hand, and then started to lather up her hair.
She groaned and tilted it sideways so that her hair wasn’t in the way of the water stream, and then waited until I was finished working it into a rather large ball of white before I pushed her head into the water.
She snorted out a giggle as the water did its job and rinsed away the evidence of my amusement.
