by P. Dangelico
“How do you feel?” His voice was gentle, the restraint in it unnatural.
“I’m fine,” I answered, trying to allay his concern even though somewhere inside of me I wanted to burst out sobbing. I wanted to rail and break things. I wanted to beg him to forgive me. But I didn’t do any of those things, I couldn’t, because my feelings were locked behind an iron door.
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
Reluctantly, my eyes climbed from the blanket I was busy picking lint off of, to his face. I took in every detail. The dark half moons hanging under his eyes, the hollow cheeks, cheekbones sharper than ever…the exhaustion dimming the bright sparkle I loved to see on his beautiful face. This had taken as much a physical toll on him as it had on me.
All I could say was, “I’m fine.”
Staring back into those world-weary eyes, my concern for him overrode everything else. I caressed his jaw, covered by a week old beard. It pulsed with tension under my fingertips. I thought he would pull away, put distance between us, but instead he leaned into my touch. His eyes fluttered, his long lashes throwing shadows as my fingers skated over his angular features and traced the lines of worry across his face.
“I need you to come closer,” I murmured. After a beat, he moved, pinning the chair he sat on to the side of the bed. “Closer than that,” I whispered. His russet colored eyes opened and searched mine. He was that wounded creature I had met so long ago. No sudden movements…talk softly. When he hesitated, I patted the spot next to me.
“I’m too big. I’ll hurt you.”
“No,” I countered, my head shaking at the irony, “You won’t. You wouldn’t.”
I shifted to the far side of the bed to make more room for him, and patted the mattress again. In his gaze, glassy from exhaustion and stress, I could see the silent war being fought. I knew I’d won when he exhaled deeply. Right then I found that I could still feel something because the defeat I saw in the sloping lines of his broad shoulders dug its fingers into my heart and squeezed viciously.
He kicked off his shoes and lay down next to me. Face to face, we were on our sides, inches apart. He studied me for a long time without making a sound, his fingers brushing petal-soft up and down my arm. I wanted to kiss the caution and apprehension on his face away, soothe every hurt I had inflicted. Knowing that I had put it there heaped more guilt on a pile as high as Everest.
“Closer. I don’t bite,” I ordered softly, repeating the words he had once said to me. The side of his sensual mouth tipped up for the briefest moment. Then his head dipped down, close enough that we were almost nose to nose. “Closer,” I mouthed. His sweet lips descended onto mine so carefully I barely felt them brush back and forth in a dry, chaste kiss.
I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck and felt him shudder under my touch. Ragged, broken pieces of air rushed out of him as I deepened the kiss. Sweet, tender kisses meant to soothe, meant to tease. My tongue traced the seam of his closed lips, begging him to join me.
His resolve failed. His nostrils flared and his hand lifted to my face, hovering, trembling with pent up emotion. It must have taken the strength of Atlas himself to hold him in check, to stop him from crushing me with the violence of his passion.
“I love you,” I whispered again and again, in between more kisses and caresses. A little at a time I could feel the words soak into him and unlock some of the rigidity from his muscles. When all of the fight had left him, he pulled back.
“Right now your health is my only concern,” he murmured. “But I need to know what happened.” Cupping my face gently, he forced me to meet the anticipation in his eyes.
Fragments of images, a jumbled mess of nonsequential events flashed in my mind’s eye. The effort it took to organize those thoughts into coherent order made my head throb, a painful reminder that thinking was not a good idea following brain trauma. Especially since what I really wanted to do was forget everything that had happened. Unfortunately, there were no blind spots. I remembered it all too well.
“Bear said he saw you talking to Paisley outside the doctor’s office.”
“Yes. She knew…” I braced myself for the next words, the heavy pounding of my heart threatening to split my chest in two. “That I was pregnant. She told me that Isabelle had overheard my phone conversation with the doctor.”
The more I spoke the more static his face became, cementing into an emotionless mask. I debated for only an instant whether to tell him the most damning piece of the story. “Isabelle told your mother.”
I couldn’t hold the eye contact. My eyes descended to the corded side of his neck, the tendons taut with anger; the only outward display of what was going on in his mind. He placed his index finger under my chin and gently lifted it. “What else did she say?”
“She said that if I didn’t leave without a word to you, she would go to the newspapers, the tabloids. She would tell them I trapped you––that I was after your money. She said she would publicize every detail so that investors would lose confidence in your ability to run the bank.” My voice grew more anxious with every spoken word. “Sebastian, she meant it. I’m scared of what she might do––to you, to the bank.”
A heavy silence followed. His fingertips traced the contours of my face, reading the angles and depressions so delicately I thought I would shatter from the exquisite sensation.
“This is why you left?” he said. It was less a question and more a statement of fact. His expression softened. The information I’d just shared didn’t seem to concern him. “You were trying to protect me?”
I replied with a slight nod, my voice deserting me.
“Do you know what scares the shit out of me?” His brow furrowed, a deep v chiseled in the middle. His chest heaved as he fought to control a tide of emotion. “A life without you.” What I saw in his eyes made me want to shrink away. “I thought you understood that.” The last sentence held a hard edge, a note that hinted at betrayal.
“I do but––”
“No. No but,” he said, cutting me off. “Life without you is…” He shook his head, his Adam’s apple rising and falling as he struggled to find the words. “Pointless.”
There was an abyss of despair in his eyes. As I stood on the edge of it, I fully grasped how deep his feelings ran, how necessary I was to his peace of mind. The question was––whether I was strong enough to carry that burden.
Chapter Two
When the body experiences an overwhelming trauma, the brain shuts down, slips into a coma as to conserve energy and direct it at the healing process. Only later would I come to realize that the soul behaves in much the same manner when it needs saving, when it experienced a pain so great it shocks the system. The most vital part of me remained in a coma, while the rest carried on without it.
In the subsequent days, I moved through life completely detached, all my senses disengaged. And the more disinterested I became, the greater the palpable tension surrounding Sebastian grew, its tentacles reaching out to everyone and everything within his radius. With each passing day he grew more overbearing and more remote––apparently this was not incongruous––not to mention, more intolerable.
If I needed to use the bathroom, he was by my side in an instant, lifting me from the bed and carrying me there. If I wanted to stretch my legs down the hall, he was at my side acting as a human crane. He undressed and dressed me as if I were a two year old––he officially crossed the line with that one. By day four of this, I was ready to conk him over the head with the chair I always found him in when I awoke.
“Why aren’t you at the office?” I did nothing to conceal my irritation.
He looked up from scrolling through his cell phone, a scowl hardening his perfect features. “I’m not going anywhere until you’re home––where you’ll be handcuffed to my bed, and barricaded behind a steel wall fifty feet high with a hundred armed men guarding you.”
I crossed my arms over my chest because, lying in bed, I couldn’t very well stamp my fo
ot and scream the way I wanted to. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re not joking.” The raised eyebrow he returned was his unequivocal answer. “What about the audit by the DOJ? The bank will suffer if you keep dancing attendance on me.”
“Dancing attendance?” he repeated, smirking. “I’m not dancing attendance on you. I’m making sure you don’t sneak out of here on some fucked up, misguided attempt to help me.”
“Language,” I said with a grimace.
His long fingers raked through his hair. It was getting so long he could’ve pulled it into a ponytail. Reaching over, I sifted my fingers through it.
“Shit…keep doing that,” he purred, his eyes briefly falling shut. After a deep sigh, he added, “The audit’s postponed. They were reasonable about it, considering I wasn’t in the best state of mind when I spoke to them.”
How long would the unintended consequences of my actions haunt me? Then again, the alternative had been unthinkable. And the risk hadn’t lessened. I still didn’t know what damage Paisley could inflict. I had been literally in the dark for weeks.
“I’m sorry,” I said, a pathetically inadequate phrase that would be ever present on my tongue in the weeks to come. His eyes returned to me, assessing, searching. For what, I wasn’t certain. The only thing I was certain of anymore was that I didn’t want to cause him another moment’s worth of pain as long as I lived. “What are you going to do about Paisley?”
The look that flashed across his face made the fine hairs on my arm stand up. “I took care of it.” His eyes narrowed into two golden slits, unfocused and far away––the predator always lurking beneath the surface of his civilized demeanor. My instincts warned me not to ask any more questions.
“You need a haircut,” I said, while I continued to pet him. “Between the hair and the scruff, you look more like a sexy pirate than a banker.”
His sensual mouth twitched and twitched until finally lifting up on one side. It was the first time since I’d awoken in the hospital that I could detect even a small measure of humor in his expression. I would’ve done anything to keep that smile on his face. “My sexy pirate,” I murmured suggestively.
All at once his expression sobered. He looked me squarely in the eyes, and said, “I love you.” It sounded like an admission I had coerced out of him. As if defeated, he reluctantly surrendered his feelings. It never occurred to me that hearing those words from him could make me feel bad. The urge to close the distance between us grew overpowering. I was out of bed and onto his lap so fast it took him by surprise.
Wrapping my arms around his neck, I said, “I was wondering if I would ever hear those words from you again…although it doesn’t sound like you’re happy about it.”
Nothing felt better than being in his arms again. The sense of relief I felt was beyond words. It had been years since I’d called any place home. And even then the feeling had been a fleeting one––almost, but never quite right. I knew then why…because nothing had ever felt like this, like being close to him. He was the home I’d always longed for.
My fingers dung into his rock solid trapezius muscles, working the stiffness out. The love and doubt dueling inside of him could be felt under my fingertips. He was the last person I wanted to hurt. And yet, I had. Knowing I was the cause of all that stress stung. He hugged me tightly, and I kissed him gently, brushing my lips against his until he surrendered not just his feelings, but his body, too.
A forced cough coming from the doorway sought our attention. Bear stood just inside the room. “Mrs. Redman is here.”
Underneath me, Sebastian’s entire body turned to stone. A second later I was unceremoniously dumped back onto the bed.
“Sebastian––” I pleaded warily.
“Don’t,” he grunted, his alert gaze pinned to the open doorway.
On cue, an enormous bouquet of white peonies and lilies appeared. It obscured her face completely. Only her long legs, balancing unsteadily on four inch, nude colored Louboutin’s, were visible. Her bright blonde head shifted to the side, into view, and with a brittle, forced smile she drawled, “Hello.”
I’m surprised Sebastian’s gaze didn’t pulverize her on the spot.
“Sebastian––” I implored, not in any mood to witness a murder.
But it was in vain. He was lost to everything other than the presence of his fury, the emotion emanating from every fiber of his being. I could have set myself on fire and he wouldn’t have noticed.
Rising out of the chair slowly, he suddenly looked four inches taller, his countenance grim as he walked up to her. Every muscle in my body instinctively braced when he reached her. Without any acknowledgement, he gently took the vase of white flowers out of her hands.
And then…an explosion, the violence of which resonated throughout the room and down the hallway. I jerked in surprise. Diana screamed, her bony fists flying to cover her mouth. What remained of the vase, which had shattered against the wall, now lay scattered all over the floor. I sat there slack-jawed while my gaze climbed from the shards of crystal, broken stems, and petals strewn about, to the two of them.
“I need to apologize to Vera,” Diana feebly insisted, her voice cracking and breaking. Her plea went ignored. He dug his fingers into her flesh and roughly yanked on her arm, maneuvering her out the door. Her wide, frightened eyes met mine for a brief moment before he had her turned around.
“Outside!” he half growled, half shouted at her while he shoved her into the corridor.
“Make sure he doesn’t kill her, for goodness sake!” I hissed at Bear, who was gone before I even finished my sentence.
The shouting commenced immediately.
“How dare you come here,” he said in a hair raising growl.
“Scout…baby––” Diana sobbed, interrupting what was sure to become a litany of swear words and accusations.
“Don’t you ever call me that again. If you were a man, I’d knock your fucking teeth out.”
The shot of adrenaline made me lightheaded, my heart thundering inside my chest. I had to put an end to this––for all our sakes. I didn’t exactly have sympathy for her, however, for better or worse, she was his mother; something I never had.
The one-two punch of weakness and fatigue clung to my limbs, acting like weights strapped to my ankles. Despite them, I still managed to crawl out of bed and shuffle to the doorway, clutching onto the wall for support.
“I just want to apologize to both of you,” Diana wailed in a juvenile voice.
“I didn’t think you could stoop any lower.”
“You don’t mean that,” she managed with a pronounced tremor.
“You’re the reason Vera lost the baby. My child is dead because of you! Do you understand that?! Do you understand what I’m fucking telling you?!!” he raged.
I implored my legs to move faster. It took all the strength I had just to make it to the doorway, my hospital gown soaked with sweat from the effort.
Orderlies and nurses ran by the open doorway, headed straight for the bloodbath. With the last drop of strength I possessed, I pushed through the crowd clustered around them and watched as Bear stepped in between Sebastian and Diana, his wooly mammoth sized body the only thing keeping it from turning it into a crime scene.
My knees turned soft and the little muscle I had left in my legs trembled.
“Sebastian,” I tried shouting; only a weak imitation of it came out.
“Crawl back into the hole you came out of and stay there––or I’ll make you wish you had.” Hurtful words were coming hard and fast now.
“Sebastian!” I shouted, louder this time.
“You are fucking dead to me. Do you hear me!” I was pretty certain they could hear him at the North Pole. “Dead!” he roared, his voice rising to a savage crescendo.
“Sebastian, please!”
My knees buckled. I was overcome by a sinking sensation, a fainting spell imminent. Sebastian’s head snapped in my direction. His gaze slammed into mine, and the color in his fac
e drained.
“Jesus,” he mouthed, before he bolted for me, catching me just in time before I collapsed on the ground. Hooking his arm under my legs, he lifted me easily to his chest and held on tightly.
“I got you,” he murmured, and placed tender kisses on my forehead, my temple. “I got you.”
I could feel the violent beat of his heart as he pressed me closer. Reluctantly, he tore his eyes away from me, and directed a vicious glare at Diana. His anger now locked away behind a wall of ice, he said, “I won’t be responsible for what happens if I ever lay eyes on you again.”
Diana’s face had suddenly aged ten years. Her green eyes were two wide, vacant orbs underscored by tracks of melted mascara that ran down her cheeks. Before she could say another word he turned and carried me back into the room, the crowd behind us lingering in stunned disbelief.
I couldn’t help myself, and I couldn’t live with another moment of regret. As he gently tucked me back into bed, I cupped his face in my hands and forced him to meet my eyes. “Sebastian, she’s the only family you have left.”
His sharp gaze met mine, and I was immediately hit with the intensity of his thoughts, of his convictions. The slashes of his masculine eyebrows pinched together. “She’s not my family,” he stated unequivocally. “You’re my family.”
And with that decree, the topic was summarily closed for further discussion.
Chapter Three
As soon as the catheter and IV were removed, I was itching to be released from the hospital. Thankfully, I didn’t have long to wait. We never discussed what had happened with his mother and it bothered me. In a way I felt responsible for the rift between them, and something told me I was going to pay the price for it with interest at a later date.
“Why are we going out this way?” I asked over my shoulder while he pushed my wheelchair down a dark, deserted corridor.