Page 119 of Between Love and Loathing
“And sometimes, there needs to be a little something to mess up all the perfection right?” Before he could answer, I ran fast into the snow and moved through it, spinning around and around. I dropped to scoop up a pile of it and threw it over my head giggling at how cold and light it was.
Dominic shook his head the whole time at me, but I just yelled at him, “Come run with me, fake boyfriend.”
He rolled his eyes and chuckled as he walked out into the field, his black suit a stark opposite of how I must have looked in my maxi dress blowing in the wind. “I’m not your fake boyfriend anymore, Clara.”
“Right. What are you then?”
“The real one.”
I looked down at my hands as my vision blurred, and it seemed like they were turning gray. I flexed my fingers, but color only came back to two of them. Everything turned gray and faded away. “I don’t feel right, Dominic,” I murmured, and then I passed out.
DOMINIC
She took one breath. It was a gasp, full of fear, full of surprise, and then her hand reached out before her body collapsed right as my heart about stopped beating.
I already knew that Clara wasn’t just an annoying piece of my puzzle that wouldn’t fit into my life, but this confirmed it. She wasn’t just a piece.
She was the whole puzzle.
My whole life.
I hadn’t been ignoring her in the SUV to work, I’d been planning how I was going to grovel and make her mine for good up in the mountains. I might have hated the way she infused her color into the black-and-white of my life and hotel, but I loved hating it.
Proving that to her didn’t matter in those moments though.
When the person who lights up your world has their life dance with death in front of you, the reaction is catastrophic. I crumpled with her into the snow as I caught her before she hit the ground. It was only seconds that her eyes fluttered closed, only seconds of loss, but they were the most important seconds of my life, the ones that imprinted on me forever, tattooed the feelings on my heart, and solidified that I’d never let her go.
She tried to brush it off as she came to and said she was going to the doctor this coming week, but I’d already called 911. I sat in the ambulance, helpless, as they checked her vitals, as they went over her prognosis saying something about Raynaud’s syndrome on top of lupus. I squeezed her hand the whole time.
Now, sitting in that hospital room, I wondered if she knew the risks she’d taken, if she was aware how fragile a life could be. Maybe I hadn’t been aware either until that very moment.
“Your person to contact in case of emergency, Ms. Milton is—”
“Me,” I cut off the nurse.
She glanced tepidly at me and then Clara. “And is he your—”
“Future husband,” I finished before Clara could clarify.
Her eyes narrowed like she wanted to fight me, but she didn’t when I waved to the nurse to get the paperwork. She was in a hospital bed and not supposed to be dealing with any of these things right now. “Some of her paperwork is in the system, but we’ll need an updated medical history as it looks like you’re from Florida?”
“I am,” Clara confirmed, but when the nurse left the room, she crossed her arms. “Stop telling people that!”
“Why?”
“Because we weren’t even together and we broke up.”
“Hm… I don’t recall being broken up when I fucked you on Valentino’s table.”
Her eyes flicked to the door of her room. “Dominic, now’s not the time for your mouth and—”
“I was there when you fell and fainted, okay?” I closed my eyes tight for a second, reliving how it felt like she could slip through my fingers now, how I had to make sure she didn’t. “I’m here now. I need you to let me handle this, because I know maybe your family didn’t in the past, maybe you’ve felt like an afterthought or undeserving or like an idea, Clara. But to me, you’re not. You’re myonlythought. Does that make sense? Let me have you for real now, okay?”
Her mouth opened once, then she snapped it shut. Another nurse came in during the silence and so it went. She smiled at the doctors giving her updates, nodded at the nurses, and even let them talk over her a few times when they asked about her symptoms.
I tried to let her handle it for the most part. A whole day of them doing it, and then they said she needed to stay overnight as they ran tests.
When she slept, I fielded updates from the doctor. “With her kidney damage, we most likely will be diagnosing her with lupus nephritis.”
