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“What?” K demands as he rushes to us.
“When Dad was shot, he fell into her, both of them crashing to the ground. She must have hit her head on the stone fire pit.”
His glacier eyes darken. “That doesn’t explain why my door was open.”
“We don’t have time to figure that out.” Snatching the bloody towel from the floor, I fold the cloth, press it against the gash, and apply pressure to the wound. Jumping to the other side of her body, I firm my grip under her neck, slide my other hand and forearm under her knees, and then stand with her. A moan slips from her lips, the sound penetrating my chest wall so easily and quickly I don’t have time to throw up a shield. “We have to get her to the hospital. Now.”
“Let’s go then.” He steps past me, grabs the laptop from the counter, and heads for the open door.
I follow up, quickening my pace because I know she needs medical attention immediately.
And for someone to get her away from me as soon as possible.
There’s just one problem with that—if anyone tries to take her, I will throw their very much alive body over the edge of the tallest building I can find and then take pleasure in knowing I was the last person their terror-filled eyes saw as they took their last breath.
“Ciera,” I call again, hoping she can hear my voice. “Open your eyes. Stay with me, sweetheart.”
CHAPTER 26
KRISHNA
He called hersweetheart.
I doubt Domenico has uttered one endearment in all his twenty-six years until tonight. Neither have I, for that matter, but I thought we were built the same in that regard. Both of us are hard; maybe not emotionless, but at least hard enough that the rest of the world believes we’re uncaring bastards who wouldn’t blink at the sight of someone we care for being hurt, or worse, dying.
Earlier tonight, when he knew his father had seconds to live, it took his anger being directed at Ciera for the unshed tears not to fall. When I walked down the hall after hearing his voice and watched him lay her still body on the hardwood floor, I saw panic in his dark eyes. He may not be in love with her yet, but she’s somehow burrowed her way inside his chest cavity.
If I’m honest, my chest deflated when I stopped at the living room opening, thinking he’d killed her like I knew he planned to do. I’ve been around Dom enough to recognize murder in his eyes. Hedidwant to harm her, or at least he thought he wanted to end her life until he saw she was hurt. And maybe I did too until I saw her lying on the floor in a pool of blood.
“Can one of you tell me what happened?” the triage nurse asks, her eyes on a computer screen instead of the patient she should be assessing.
“Someone fell into her, knocking her backward. She fell to the ground and hit her head on concrete. She has a nasty cut behind her head. She may have lost a lot of blood too. It happened two hours ago,” Dom relays, but every word that comes out of his mouth is a guess.
Ciera hasn’t woken up to tell us, though the assumption is the only logical explanation. Why she didn’t say anything about it earlier is not. She could have told me when I dragged her from the Caputos backyard and through the house. She could have mentioned it on the car ride to my apartment, or when I ordered her to take a shower. At any time since shots were fired, she should have told me it was her blood she was covered in and not Tony’s.
Luckily, upon arriving at the ER, we were taken immediately to a room. I chalked that up to the lady at the check-in desk recognizing one or both of us because there wasn’t a vacant seat in the waiting room. Now I’m starting to think she didn’t give this chick a heads-up. Then again, it could’ve been Ciera’s head trauma that got her bumped up the waiting list.
“What’s her name?” she requests. She’s a tall, slender, white woman in her mid-to-late twenties, dressed in teal blue scrubs and white tennis shoes. Her brunette hair is pulled back and twisted with a scrunchy ponytail holder securing the strands to her head in a makeshift bun.
“Ciera Caputo,” Domenico answers, his tone lower than his recount of what possibly happened to her tonight, telling me that he too is losing his patience over the fact that not one physician has come into the exam room, nor has the nurse checked any of Ciera’s vitals or taken a look at the gash that Dom is still applying pressure too with a towel.
“And how are you related to the patient?”
“I’m her husband, and her name is Ciera, not the patient,” he snarls.
“And I’m her boyfriend,” I bite out, getting irritated that she’s wasting our time when Ciera should be getting medical attention. “Let’s hurry this up. She needs to see a doctor, now, before I go looking for one.”
Her fingers stop typing, then the nurse’s head whips around, first looking at Dom, then at Ciera, and finally to me. Her lips are parted, and I think she’s breathing through her mouth, but it’s the way her eyes widen that I see it finally clicks for her as to who we are.
“He’s his boyfriend too,” Ciera adds, her left hand finding Dom’s face, pawing his cheek. It’s the first words she’s spoken that hasn’t been a groan, and even if her claim is false, it’s music to my ears.
The nurse stands, her stool flying back into the dirty beige wall behind her. “I’ll go get the doctor right away, gentlemen.” Then she power walks from the room, not even shutting the door behind her as she exits.
“Coherent looks good on you, little pet,” Dom comments, the first signs of life coloring his face since I witnessed his father die right in front of me, in front of us.
There has never been a label to what Domenico and I were, what we are, and until recently, I thought that was the way I wanted it. Now I’m not so sure. Now I’m not sure what the fuck I want anymore. Or maybe I do, but I’m too afraid to admit who it is I want.
Maybe I want more than just one person. Maybe I need to be hit in the fucking face to knock some sense into my dense brain. Dom has never looked at me like he can’t live without me, which is precisely how he’s been looking athersince last night, even before his father was shot.
