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The orderlies are the voice of reason, but I can’t see either one of the speakers. Only Aria, backlit by the harsh fluorescent lighting behind her, like an angel.
“You better survive. Survive so we can figure this out together,” she continues. She’s got my hand pressed to her cheek, and I want to caress her. I want to cup her face and prove to her that I want the fantasy, too.
I swallow, and the lump in the back of my throat is a little smaller than it had been before. The gurney pulls to a stop, and a sharp sting of a needle prick at my elbow sharpens me.
“If I make it out of this,” I get out, “I want you…to be…mine.”
She squeezes my hand, and the hope in her gaze is too much to handle. “Be your what?”
The cot veers around another corner and slaps against a door. “Ma’am, it’s time to let go. We need to get him into surgery now.”
“What, Devan?” Aria presses anyway.
“My girlfriend.”
The sharpness disappears almost as soon as it hits, and soon I’m swimming in a completely different way.
“I’ll not only be your girlfriend, Detective Bishop, but I’ll take care of everything.” Her voice comes to me down a long hallway, distant, but warm. “You just have to pull through. Promise me.”
I reach for her, only to fall short, but the cold is gone, and so is the pain.
TWENTY-FIVE
devan
It’sa slow ascent up to madness and chaos.
The kind that always greets me when I open my eyes except for a single, stolen moment days ago. A moment which is inevitably bound to be unrepeatable.
Or maybe it’s the drugs making me loopy.
I lay with my eyes closed, the bandage around my torso and shoulder keeping me bound and secure. Aria is there in my head, flashes of memory where her face is contorted with pure joy and her red hair slicked back from her head with sweat as she rides me.
Does it go further than sex?
Does it cross the line from infatuation to something a little deeper?
Yes, yes.
I shift slightly, just trying to get comfortable, and the small movement sends a flash of pain from my newly closed wound.
“Ah, try not to move too much. They said you’re going to risk a chance of tearing your stitches.”
I swallow, my mouth dry and my throat scratchy. “Did we catch him?”
Aria chuckles and peppers my face with dew-soft kisses. “Your partner will be better able to answer you. She got called away, an urgent text from somebody she called Cap, but she’ll be back soon.”
Her hands are on either side of my face, still gentle, more so to hold me in place than to check me.
She has no idea how good it feels.
“I need to know if we did it.” Every word is a struggle to form and release.
“If you want to know about Stevens, I’ll tell you his body is cooling on a slab in my morgue.” Jasleen sounds downright cheerful about the fact. Cheerful and a little tired, and when I pry my eyes open, she’s sitting in the visitor’s chair while Aria perches on the side of the bed. “You got him, Dev. You got him good. Right between the eyes.”
Both of them smile at me, and it’s a thing of beauty. Contentment settles in my chest, and a part of me relaxes. Until her words become clear.
Shot through the eyes?
