AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He doesn’t say a word, but I can feel Taylor collapse in on herself. “No…” She whispers it so softly. So heartbreakingly hopeless.
She takes a shaky breath and her legs give out underneath her. I grab her before she can even falter, plucking her up into my arms. She’s weightless and limp. Her head lolls against my chest like a newborn fawn.
“Let me check her,” Dr. Baranov says to me with concern. “The stress can’t be good for the baby.”
“No…” she mumbles weakly. “Please, no…”
The faint hint of hazelnuts and vanilla lingers in my nostrils as I give the doctor a nod. “Tomorrow. For now, keep an eye on Celine,” I tell him. “Make sure someone is with her around the clock.”
I turn and leave the medical bay, carrying Taylor with me. I take the last flight of stairs up to the third floor and settle her onto the bed. Her eyes flutter open when I place her on the soft duvet cover, but they’re glassy and unfocused.
Her clothes are raggedy and covered in the grease and grime of battle. The speckles of blood make me wince, but I quickly see none of it’s hers. She’s okay.
She’s okay.
“I’m going to have one of the maids come up and help you change,” I murmur.
She doesn’t respond. Doesn’t even acknowledge that she’s heard me.
Sighing, I straighten up and turn to go, when Taylor’s hand jerks forward and grabs my wrist. “I don’t need to change. Just…stay with me. For a little bit.”
It’s the first time I’ve seen her this vulnerable. No, that’s not exactly true. The first time I saw her vulnerable was the night I almost ran her over. That ended in disaster, which is why I’m more than a little reluctant to agree to her request now.
She meets my gaze. “Please?”
Fuck.
“Okay.” I sigh. “I’ll stay. Don’t move.”
I leave her on the bed and dip into the bathroom. I splash some cold water on my face, then I do the same with the white hand towels hanging next to the bath sheets.
I walk them back to the room, sit down on the edge of the bed, and gently rub them over Taylor’s skin. She lets a sighing little gasp escape past her lips. As the towels come away dirty and stained, one after the next, the last of the tension in her body eases until she’s melted into the blankets.
Her voice, when she finally speaks, takes me by surprise. “Celine used to give me massages when I got sick as a kid.”
I let my hand come to rest against her hip. The blankets are between us, bunched up and tucked around Taylor’s frame, but I still relish the heat of her body where it seeps through.
“I had bronchitis all the time. All the other kids in the neighborhood used to go swimming in the public pool, but I couldn’t. I’d try, I’d want to hold my breath and play with them, but it gave me these crazy asthma attacks. Celine could’ve gone with them. She could breathe; she could swim. But she didn’t. She’d stay with me and rub medicine into my chest until I could finally inhale again.”
Taylor cracks open an eye to look at me. I’m holding my breath—partly out of some kind of bizarre sympathy for the air-starved little girl she once was, and partly because I see where she’s going with this and I already know it can’t possibly end without more heartache.
“She was always so selfless. There weren't very many things she asked for. It was enough for her to be of service. To be there for me…for all of us. Do you know what she did with her very first paycheck? She spent a whole summer scooping ice cream, and as soon as she had money, she took the family to dinner.”
“Taylor—”
“It should have been me,” she concludes, a sob escaping her lips. “It should have been me.”
“She is going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that. And you have no right to promise me that.”
“I think you need to rest now.” I’m barely resisting the urge to touch her face. It feels alien and uncomfortable to sit here with my hands so close to her but not close enough.
“It should have been me,” she says again. “It should have been me. It should have been—”
“Stop!” I snarl. “ Stop, Taylor.”
Her eyes meet mine, lit from within by a fever only she can feel. “Why? Am I wrong?”
