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"You challenging me, Sunshine?" He drawls.
And whoa, what’s with that nickname? I shoot Luca a glance and find him absorbed in something on his phone.
"I am not challenging you." I turn to Axel. "It’s just," I lower my voice, "I don’t want you to push yourself so hard that you end up hurting yourself."
"You took care of that already, didn’t you? Doubt I can hurt myself further."
My heart slams into my chest. I stare at him and feel the tell-tale pressure of tears behind my eyes.
"You really are a selfish prick, you know that? I was just worried about you—"
"Don’t be." He reclines further back into the pillows, looking for all the world like he’s the master of all he surveys. "I can take care of myself."
"I have no doubt. It’s just, you are hurt and—"
"I’ll mend. I have strong healing powers."
"I am sure, but—"
"I understand Xander is dead," he drawls. "Did you know him well?"
I nod. "He was, he was..." Truth is, I am not sure what he was to me. Not my boyfriend, not my lover... I am not even sure he reciprocated my affections, but since I had first set eyes on him, I had been sure that our destinies were interlinked. I had dreamt of the day that I would marry him.
"Did you love him?" Axel drums his fingers on the bed. "Is that why you want to take care of me, because I look so similar to him?"
"I... I did love him," I admit, "but that's not why I am here."
"Oh?" He tilts his head, "Why else would you spend so much time by the bedside of a perfect stranger taking care of him?"
"Maybe it's because you saved my life and this is my way of thanking you?" I tip up my chin.
He arches an eyebrow, "By spending every moment of the last two weeks at my side? I think not."
I open my mouth to speak, but he shakes his head.
"I am not him, Theresa. I never will be him, so if you think by hanging around me you can transfer the fixation you had on him to me, then you are mistaken."
A hot sensation stabs at my chest. My heart feels like it’s going to break into a million pieces. My stomach hurts and I fold my arms around myself. "You’re right. You’re not Xander. Xander would never have been this unkind to me." I swallow down the tears that threaten to overflow. "I must have been crazy to think that you could have ever held a candle to him. You…you’re a terrible man. You may look like him, but you’ll never be h…him." My voice hitches.Don’t cry, don’t you dare cry before this horrible man.I turn and rush out of the door.
4
Axel
"Couldn’t have toned it down, eh?"
I hear Luca speak, but can’t turn my gaze off her retreating figure. Goddam it, why did I have to say that? So what, if I had been feeling aggravated and angry and wanting to lash out at someone? It just so happened that she was there and she, apparently, cares for me, even if she doesn’t know me at all. She thinks she knows me, and that’s even worse. I am nothing like this Xander chap. So what, he was my triplet. We have nothing in common.
He didn’t know poverty, or what it felt like to see your mother whore herself out. She hadn’t been accepted into her own family because of me, and she hadn’t been very good at fending for herself. When you were a Mafia princess brought up in the lap of luxury, you had no idea how to take care of yourself, let alone your child. Despite her shortcomings, she had managed to put a roof over my head and food in my belly. By the time I was sixteen, she was dead. That’s when I began to carve out my own empire. Guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, in that sense.
My mother had never told me about my father’s side of the family or the insignificant fact that I had been one of triplets. Something she obviously knew, but for whatever reason, she kept hidden from me. All she’d told me was that she’d had a falling out with my father, had left him, and her own family hadn’t accepted her back. Not after having bedded their enemy and falling pregnant with his child. She had refused to go back to them for help, no matter how difficult it had been for her. Another reason I had been so clear that I was going to make it on my own. Without help from anybody. Definitely not my mother’s family. So, if they think I’m going to go all sentimental on them, they are going to be sadly mistaken. All I intend to do is play along until I am back on my feet and then… Well, I am going to get out of here.
"Axel, hey, you okay?" Luca calls out.
"Why wouldn’t I be?" I growl. "I am laid up in this bed with you for company. What more could I want?"
"You sent away the only person here who is sympathetic toward you."
And fuck, if I don’t hate myself for it. Why is it so difficult for me to accept her concern? Why do I feel threatened by the utter selflessness with which she wants to care for me? Why the hell can’t I remember stepping in front of her and taking the bullet as she claims I did? Why would I do that anyway? I’ve always put my survival ahead of anyone else’s… So really, it makes no sense that I would do that.
