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“Mean,” she exhales.
Voices rise a little in the hall.
“That app’s probably going crazy. If you don’t want a family reunion in here for the night, you have to keep breathing.”
“Want,” Daisy manages. “Sex.”
“God. You’re such a slut for me.”
“Yeah,” she agrees on a high, strained breath, like a laugh.
“Try again tomorrow.”
“In.” I want to replace my lungs with hers. I don’t know what’s gone wrong. If she’s so damn tired that she can’t breathe, or if her body’s taking emergency measures to save her, or if it’s her brain—I don’t know. But she can have my lungs. She can have my life. I don’t care. “The—family—room?”
I let out a resigned sigh. “If you want me to fuck you in front of your dad, then…I guess I don’t have a choice.”
“Ew,” she breathes.
“I’m sure he’d close his eyes.”
“Ew.”
“Baby.” I hold her head close to my chest and wait for another wave of tension to leave her. “I’d fuck you anywhere.”
“Gross,” she whispers.
“Commitment,” I whisper back.
“That what you are? Committed?”
That sentence took it out of her. She settles onto me with a sigh, and it takes everything I have not to shiver underneath her. Not to let all my muscles shake. Because a small, cowardly part of me wants to get out, get out, getoutbefore I have to watch her die, and the much larger part knows that I won’t leave her until the bitter end, even if it makes me wish for a death I can’t have.
“Yes. You’re stuck with me. I took an oath. Plus, your uncles and your dad sent me to protect you. I’ll do whatever I have to do. I’ll do everything I can. Don’t worry, baby. Just rest.”
Daisy makes a soft sound.I.That’s what I think she says, and I brace for the rest. Please, don’t let it beI love you.Please, don’t let her love me when I can’t save her. Please, let her love me anyway, even if it’s only for one night.
She doesn’t finish the sentence.
There’s nothing to look at in the dark, so I’m fully free to concentrate on her breathing. On the feel of her in my arms. On her exact weight.
Jesus. I don’tneedto memorize these things. She’ll be okay tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.
But then—there’s never a guarantee, is there? One minute, your mom is alive. The next, her neck is broken and she’s never coming back. One minute, you’re still falling, still suspended. The next, you’re crushed on the ground. One minute, the woman you love—
Fuck me.
I memorize her in the dark. Her breathing goes back to normal as she falls more deeply asleep. The voices in the hall move farther and farther away.
All quiet now.
I catch myself dozing off, in that weird space between sleeping and dreaming. Not a nightmare—actually dreaming. It happens twice. Maybe three times.
The ache in my shoulder gets stronger. A similar ache starts up in my ankles and moves up through my calves and my knees and my thighs.
It’s not the first time I’ve been pinned in an uncomfortable position. This hasn’t lasted nearly as long as some of the bullshit ways I had to crouch in the Special Forces to stay alive.
It should be nothing.
