Page 12 of Meet You Half Way
Why didn’t Nick care? Had our six months together really felt like nothing to him when to me they had been everything?
Those good feelings and nice endorphins soon seeped out of my system as I focused on Nick and where things had gone so wrong with us. About why he’d stopped looking back at me that day Ajay had stepped onto our beach.
I was feeling all sorts of glum when I finally found the room that Dante had been transferred to overnight. Giulia was there too, fussing around her husband as he rested propped up against the bedrest. But he was awake and talking and his skin looked a far healthier colour than it had when I’d left him here last night.
“There he is,” Giulia cried, tears in her eyes as I knocked on the doorway. “Our very own hero, Mateo.”
I chuffed at that claim. “I’m not the hero,zia,” I dismissed. “It was the paramedics who saved his life.”
“No. If not for you our Dante would not be here at all,” she returned sagely, pulling me into a surprisingly firm hug against her large and pillowy bosom. Something about that hug made me want to stay there a little longer, needing that bit of contact filled with love this morning.
“Thank you, my friend,” Dante said to me, his expression serious as he looked at me over his wife’s shoulder.
“Of course,” I replied.
Giulia hustled me into the only seat beside Dante and I knew better than to fight her. She caught me up on what had happened overnight, the tests that had been done confirming a severecardiac arrest but more tests were still being done to work out why.
“Looks like I’m going to be stuck here a while,” Dante sighed.
“This is for the best,” I returned, knowing how much Dante would hate being cooped up here.
“We’ll have to get those blueprints for the Atlas project out by tomorrow,” he continued. “And the Saint designs will need to be updated after yesterday’s meeting.”
“I’ll take care of all of that,” I assured him. “Don’t worry yourself about work.”
“Did you make it home okay last night, Mateo?” Giulia cut in as she smoothed Dante’s hair from his forehead on the other side of the bed.
“Yeah, I did,” I told her, shifting uncomfortably in my seat.
“Was Rob able to come and get you?”
“Ah, no,” I hesitated, eyes darting to the wall. “One of the, um, paramedics gave me a lift home.”
“Oh, which one? The handsome one?” Giulia gushed just as a nurse stepped into the room on her rounds.
“I don’t know which you mean,” I murmured, sure that flush was spreading along my cheeks.
“Oh what was his name? Jimmy? No, Jamie,” she quipped, pleased at her recall. “He was quite the looker.”
“Do you mind?” Dante huffed while his wife just laughed.
“Don’t worry, darling. You’ll always be my number one.”
“Jamie is quite the favourite among the staff here,” the nurse decided to helpfully cut in as she scribbled something on Dante’s chart. “Has all the nurses in quite the flap over him. More’s the pity he’s gay. Broke quite a few hearts when that news came out.”
I felt Dante’s eyes on me, one artfully peaked eyebrow pointed skyward as I shuffled in my seat and hoped for the ground to open up beneath me.
“Oh that is a pity,” Giulia said, shoulders deflating. “Do we know any gay men, Dante? Maybe we can set them up.”
“How about we leave the handsome paramedic be,” Dante returned, patting his wife’s excited hand. “I’m sure he can arrange his own love life.”
“No doubt when he looks like that,” she agreed.
Fortunately that seemed to put an end to our discussions about the hot paramedic and his preference for men and I felt my heart rate start to moderate.
How ironic that of all the people in the room right then, it was my heart rhythm that was of most concern rather than patient currently hooked up to all the heart monitor machines. The irony was not lost on me one bit.
CHAPTER 6
