Page 12 of My Dark Fairy Tale
I was too out of it to control my impulses, so I wasn’t even embarrassed when Raffa surprised me by grinning slightly, a wolfish expression that should have been threatening.
“You will have the opportunity when you are better,” he quipped before stepping forward to pick me up again. As he adjusted me in his arms, he added, “You have a fever.”
“Mmm,” I agreed, pressing my nose shamelessly to the column of his throat in search of the warm scent. “Cold.”
He cursed softly but took me to my room and gently laid me back in bed. I shivered as he tucked the bedsheets in around me, then watched through slitted eyes as he retrieved another blanket from the cabinet in one corner. Before he left, he took up my phone, held it to my face to open the screen with the facial recognition, and then typed away at something.
“My number,” he told me, placing the phone by my hip on the bed so I wouldn’t have to strain to reach it. “Text if you need the bathroom or anything else,si? Do not be anidiotaand suffer needlessly.”
“Aye, aye,” I said, sucking in a wet breath before continuing, “Captain.”
He stared at me critically, then pressed the back of his hand to my forehead with a shake of his head. “If this does not come down by the morning, I will call the doctor back. And you must drink, if you can. A kidney condition is not something to fuck with.”
“’M fine.”
He ignored me, pushing a lock of hair off my brow when he’d finished taking my temperature. “Sogni d’oro.”
Sweet dreams.
“Not as sweet as I thought they’d be,” I confessed in a slur as sleep rushed up to meet me like a slap to the face.
“Not yet,” he agreed before I fell into slumber. “But they will be again soon.Prometto.”
I promise.
That continued for the next four days. Raffa was around whenever I texted, at all hours, to help me to the bathroom, to bring me medication and cool cloths he pressed to my forehead. He never lingered, but it was soothing to know he was so close, so watchful. Between the horrific cold I’d probably caught on the plane, which led too quickly to dehydration, and the bruises from the accident, I’d never felt so ill in my body before, not even after my kidney transplant, when I’d been dosed up on painkillers. It was enough to give me nightmares that meant I woke up with croaking screams, tears wet on my face, ribs so painful they burned like fire.
And Raffa was there by the side of my bed like a sentient shadow, with cool, soothing hands and quiet Italian words my muddled brain couldn’t process. There were hazy memories of his big hand cupping the back of my head to support me while he tipped a cold glass of water to my lips and the salt of his fingers against my lips as he forced me to eat small morsels of bread and sweet slices of peach.
The doctor came back and hooked me up to an IV so I could get proper fluids, which was a godsend, because otherwise I would have had to go to the hospital and try to explain, while I was in agony, what had happened to my money and ID.
On the fifth day my fever finally broke and left me as hollow as a dried weed. I slept for nearly a full day after that, waking on the sixth day feeling marginally better than I had in what felt like years.
There was a tray beside me on the bed holding sweet Italiancornetti, toast, a pot of hazelnut-chocolate spread, and a few ripe Italian plums. I pushed myself into a seated lean with gritted teeth, even though the pain in my ribs and hip was duller than it had been. On the tray there was a folded piece of notecard I picked up with shaky fingers.
Ragazza,
Eat. You were too skinny before this sickness. Now you make a very pretty skeleton. I will be back in two hours. Call if you need me.
RR
“Bossy even in absentia,” I murmured, shocked by the rough texture of my voice.
Still, I was ravenous because I hadn’t eaten more than broth, focaccia, and peaches for days, so I slathered a triangle of toast in chocolate spread and shoved it into my mouth.
Which was when, of course, the door to the room opened and a stranger appeared.
She was a small woman but clearly athletic, muscles evident in her shoulders and arms through her tight black T-shirt and black cargo pants. Though she was pretty, her makeup-free face was severe, her outfit stark and almost military.
“Bene, you’re up,” she declared, moving to the closed curtains to toss them open unceremoniously, yellow light piercing through the room and my eyes.
I shielded them in the crook of my arm so I could adjust, and when I opened them again, she was at the side of my bed, staring down at me.
“Now I understand,” she mused.
“Um, understand what?”
“Why Raffa picked up a girl on the side of the road,” she offered condescendingly, as if it was obvious.
