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And we’re free.
I move to his side, unsure of how to move, how to touch him, how to make sure I don’t hurt him when all I want to do is crawl in that little bed and snuggle in and reassure myself that he’s here. He’s alive. He’s safe.
My hand moves to his jaw, a five o’clock shadow rough on my palm and a tear falling without my permission onto his nose. I bend forward as his free hand moves up into my hair, pulling me closer, and I watch his eyes that are still a bit glazed and unfocused go soft.
“Missed you,” he says, his voice croaky and hoarse after surgery, and I realize I was wrong.
Those are the most beautiful words I’ve heard in my life.
FORTY-FIVE
-Dante-
“Please, for the love of god, stop fussing,” I say, batting at my wife’s hands.
“Dante, I’m going to be fussing over you until you fucking die, so get used to it.” I glare at her, giving her a look that should say I’m over her dramatics, but I’m secretly fighting a smile.
She’s been like this since the paramedics came, originally to help out Tino. He ended up just with a concussion from hitting his head when Paulie knocked him back as they tried to restrain him.
Instead, I was the one who left on a stretcher. Somehow, my wife batted her eyes or showed her tits or maybe just demanded in that no-nonsense way that she be allowed into the ambulance with me, where she continued to berate me for moving in front of a bullet for her.
“I swear to god, Dante, you ever think of doing that kind of shit again, I’ll be the one to put a bullet in you,” she’d said through gritted teeth, mad despite the fact that there were paramedics working to keep the blood in my body.
It was a joke, something to keep her mind occupied, but I could see what was beneath it.
The terror.
The horror.
The panic.
The woman loves me almost as much as I love her, and knowing I put myself in danger to save her was killing her.
So to get that look off her face, I agreed, telling her I wouldn’t be using my body as a human shield from here on out. The look melted, just a hair.
I lied, of course.
I’d put my body in front of a goddamned firing squad, jump on an atom bomb, run into a burning building if it meant her survival.
If I die before I’m old and gray, it will be with the knowledge that my wife is safe, in one piece, and breathing fresh air.
The problem is, I think she feels the same way.
A lifetime of strife.
Upon being rushed to the ER, the doctors quickly informed my wife (who was attempting to scrub up and sit in the operating room with me) that I would be fine, that I needed a few stitches and to be put under to remove some kind of fragment, and that she’d be called to my bedside upon my being rolled out of the operating room.
She argued, of course.
There were tears that broke something so fucking deep in me.
I saw it on her face, the way she was gearing up to be the queen at battle, to argue with the doctors until she got her way. I saw Marco standing behind her, an arm wrapped around her middle to keep her back.
“Fiorella,” I said, my voice weak and tired, part from the exhaustion and part from the medication. “Fiorella, please. Let them fix me. You sit in the waiting room with Marco and when I’m all good, you come back and check on me.”
She stared at me for long moments, and it was all there—the fear and panic and hurt in her eyes.
“I promise, baby. I’ll be fine.”
