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Her eyes fill with more tears, and she blinks them away. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I do. I know you think I’m donating my kidney because, well, who wouldn’t in my situation—”
“There are many who wouldn’t, and—” She begins to speak, but I hold up my hand.
“Please let me speak. Let me do this. Please, hear me out, baby. Please.”
She bites the inside of her cheek, then nods.
“I know I treated you horribly. I shouldn’t have accepted Nikolai as my investor. Shouldn’t have agreed to pretend to be engaged to his rival’s daughter. Shouldn’t have planned it so you walked in on us. Shouldn’t have broken your heart. Shouldn’t have decided for both of us that it was the right thing to do to alienate you, so you’d leave me. I broke your heart when I did that. I should have trusted you enough to share everything with you. And then, after finally coming clean to you, I shouldn’t have left you and gone on the shoot.”
“Why did you do that, Declan? After you told me about your deal with the Bratva, and how being beaten up by my brother’s men affected not just your physical appearance but also your emotional state-of-mind, after sharing how the BDSM lifestyle helps you get in touch with your feelings… After all of that, you still left me. How could you do that?”
Pain slices through my chest and spreads to my extremities. My stomach heaves, a pressure drums behind my eyes. It’s as if every part of me is slowly coming alive. The sensations that have been suppressed inside me for so long seem to be clawing at my insides and tearing their way out.
“I’m so sorry for what I did. I’ll do anything to make it up to you. I’d burn the world down for you, if I could. I’d go to the ends of the earth, I’d... Give up my career just to see you happy and healthy and safe. Let me do this for you, baby, please. I beg you.”
“And then what? You’ll give me your kidney, and then things will go back to being as they were? We’ll recover, and you’ll take off again without telling me?”
I wince. The pressure behind my eyes builds until I’m sure my eyeballs are going to burst. “Never. I’m never going to leave you again. I’ll never forget how it felt to see you collapse on that stage. To see your prone body and be so far away and not be able to do anything to help you. I’m never going to put myself in a situation where I’m not there for you." I take a breath, then continue pushing out words through a throat that's constricting. "You’re the most important thing in the world for me. You’re more important than the very air I breathe. You’re it for me, baby. And I won’t let even death take you away from me.” I blink, and her gaze widens.
She reaches up and touches a finger to my cheek. When she holds it up, moisture clings to her fingertip.
“Declan, you’re crying,” she whispers.
Another tear joins the first. I touch my other cheek, and my finger comes away wet. I'm speechless. All I can do is nod.
“After what you told me about your feelings being dulled… I didn’t think you could express your emotions, let alone shed tears.”
“Neither did I," I whisper. "I’ve never felt as deeply as I do now, on my knees in front of you, begging you to give me a chance to save your life. Please, baby, let me do this for you, please?”
68
Declan
“She refused you?” Cade gapes at me from where he's seated opposite me. We’re at the cafeteria in the hospital. After she turned me down, I was too shocked to say anything. Yep, the man who’s known for delivering impactful one-liners on screen found himself dumbstruck. She turned me down and it was as if someone had struck a red-hot knife through my chest and twisted it. And I felt every second of it.
Emotionally, there's still that familiar screen between me and what I feel, but everything seems sharper, more in perspective. Like someone wiped the screen so I can sense everything with more clarify. The therapist I worked with over the years me told me if I received an emotional blow intense enough, it might kickstart the breadth of sensations I'd be able to express. And perhaps that’s what had happened.
Perhaps the shock of her denying me this opportunity to come to her aid caused a trauma intense enough to rival the blow I took to my head. The pain in my chest deepens, and I rub at it. I wanted to stay with her, no matter that she didn’t want to look at me, but the nurses came in to check on her and shooed me out.
I wandered out of the room and found Cade waiting for me. He took one look at me and hustled me down the stairs and to the canteen, where he pushed me down into a chair, then placed a cup of coffee in front of me. Now, I wrap my hands around the cup and stare into the murky depths.
“You okay?” Cade frowns.
No, I’m not. I never will be. I’m going to lose her, and there’s nothing I’m going to be able to do about it.The pounding at my temples intensifies. A drop of moisture plops into the cup and I stare at it.Apparently, I’m crying again.
A flash goes off somewhere off to the side, but I don’t look up. I don’t fucking care if a pap takes a picture of me crying and splashes it all over the internet. I don’t care if it’s bad for the action hero image I’m going for. I don’t care if it ends my career. I don’t care... About anything but her.
“The fuck—” Cade jumps to his feet, but before he can head for the pap, I hear the sound of a scuffle, then the pap’s voice protesting. His voice fades, and silence envelops me.
I glance up to find Finn hauling the journalist away. Rick jerks his chin at me, then follows them to the entrance of the cafeteria where he parks himself. I look around, noticing, for the first time, that the place is virtually empty. Except for a lone doctor in scrubs who’s on his phone in a corner, and two nurses who are eating at another, there’s no one else. One of the nurses watches me with empathy in her eyes. She gives me a small smile, then goes back to her food.
“Fucking paps. They must have been tailing me, which is how he tracked you down here,” Cade growls.
I go back to contemplating my coffee.
Cade clears his throat. “It won’t be long before news of Solene’s condition gets out to the press,” he murmurs.
