Page 120 of A Love Most Fatal

Mary’s gaze falls to Cillian and her eyes narrow into slits. I didn’t know a scowl could look so satisfied.

“Good fucking riddance,” Mary says, her voice wobbling. She swipes a tear from beneath her eyes and starts down the short ladder, a feat with only one arm.

“Vanessa?” Another voice calls, high pitched and panicked. “Is she down there?”

Willa’s face comes into view; she follows Mary down the ladder before she drops to her knees beside her sisters and me.

A steady pool of crimson seeps beneath us, soaking the hem of Vanessa’s white gown, but Willa and Mary just fuss over their sister, dropping kisses on her hair and wiping blood spatter from her cheeks.

Vanessa doesn’t let us take her from the room until she’s very certain Cillian is dead. She watches his body with wide eyes like he’ll rise again and shoot one of us, even with two bullets through his brain.

When Leo confirms that there’s no heartbeat and has us cover our ears while he shoots Cillian in the chest for good measure, she finally lets us lead her out through the tunnels, still holding tight to my hand, her nails digging crescent moons into my skin. Her other arm hangs limp and I tell the EMT’s to be careful with it.

They snip the puffy sleeves from around her arm and sure enough, her shoulder is dislocated. Her eyes are vacant as they assess her for other injuries and lie her back onto a gurney.

Her makeup from last night is smeared with blood around her face. Mascara surrounds her eyes and runs in black lines with Cillian’s dried blood down her cheeks and jaw. She’s alive, and she is beautiful.

They let me ride in the ambulance with her and she grips my hand the entire way.

I brush her hair off her forehead murmuring into her ear about how it’s alright now, she’s alright, everyone is alright.

Eventually, she closes her eyes. The paramedics sedated her; her heart rate was through the roof, and her muscles tensed.

She drifts into unconsciousness before we even get to the hospital.

45

VANESSA

As soon asI wake up, I know I’m in a hospital room because the lighting is godawful and there’s a hazy heaviness over all of my limbs. I force my eyes open, though they want to sink back closed, and within a moment of this internal wrestling to stay awake, my sisters are there.

Willa, Mary, and my mother all crowd around me, showering me in kisses and hugs and brushing their hands over my hair, my cheeks, my arms. My mom weeps and mutters in Italian. It helps wake me up.

The relief I feel is so sudden and intense that I can’t help but cry with them. I thought they were going to die—that Cillian was going to kill them. I thought he was going to kill me, too, his hands wrapped around my neck and ire in his eyes. Part of him knew he would never possess me, and I think the knowledge might have made him snap and kill me himself if not for Nate.

Nate.

I can’t see him as my family fawns over me—a nurse comes in and scolds them for startling me after just waking up, but I see him. He leans against the wall near the door, watching with steady eyes. Not an ounce of the anxiety I know so well from him, just a still confidence in eyes that hold mine.

The nurse takes a few minutes checking my vitals, then checking for hearing in my left ear, which Willa reports was bleeding when we got here. The second time in as many weeks that my ear bled from the trauma of a loud shot—I’m lucky I can hear out of it at all. It’s muted, like I’m listening through water, but there’s something at least.

The nurse assures that they’ll do more tests later. She then props my pillows, checks the swelling of my shoulder, and administers more pain medicine through the IV in my arm, leaving an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

My eyes trail back to Nate, and don’t leave him, not when the nurse shuffles out of the room with promises to return in thirty minutes, not when my sisters and mother file out in a line, and not when he approaches my side.

He’s a beautiful man. Grass green eyes watching mine, a strong unshaven jaw, curly hair that’s mussed and unruly like he’s been raking his hands through it.

I want to keep him.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Horrible,” I say, and we both let out a semblance of laughs. It feels good, smiling with him. “Nate?—”

“Please, can I go first?” He sits on the side of the hospital bed and wraps both warm hands around the one of mine that isn’t held to my chest with a sling matching Mary’s. “Please.”

I shut my mouth and nod for him to continue. I want to keep him, but maybe this is it. I won’t force him to be with me.

“I love you,” he says, pauses, then rushes on, “I am criminally, fatally in love with you, and you can try to marry someone else, but I’m not going to leave. I like your house too much and I like you too much to ever be away from you.”

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