42. Daphne & Thayor Gavros Beats Per Minute
forty-two
Daphne he was yelling at the recruits in the kitchen.
Seriously. What was the point of being awake this early?
“I don’t want to get up yet,” I groaned against my guy, breathing in the smell of menthol lingering from the night before.
“This is going to hurt like hell,” he said, and my eyes drifted north to a blurry face I couldn’t quite understand.
“What do you mean?”
“I love you,” he leaned into me. “For fucking ever, Daph.”
The white of a new world stung my eyelids when they blinked into motion. I thought I was in Thay’s room, but this wasn’t right. My eyes strained, taking in the sterile walls, bright windows, and the unsteady pulse of a black boot shaking beside me.
“She’s been out for three days. Her body needed time to heal,” someone said before the door clicked shut.
I breathed slowly until the room settled. I was in the hospital.
“Ouch,” I moaned, trying to move. My chest felt like it was on fire, like every bone inside of me had been cracked open and shoved back together in a box.
“Thay?” I mouthed, but the words came out in fallen letters, like the air in my lungs had been trapped there for days. Before anyone could answer, I drifted back to sleep, and when my eyes opened, I took in the person sitting next to me.
It wasn’t Thay. He was tall, red-haired, and had a rope burn around his neck.
Wolfe? I blinked; something sharp scraping through my chest.
“Nate?” I choked out. “Nathem?”
His foot stilled when I peered up at the flash of terror beaming in his eyes.
“You’re alive,” I coughed, reaching for him. “You made it.”
Something like hope fluttered inside me as I sank back into the pillow. It was almost too much to feel, settling heavy behind my eyelids.
I don’t know. Maybe I should go back to sleep?
A muffled, dizzy feeling rippled through my brain, and I couldn’t quite piece this together.
Why was I in this bed?
“Where is Thay?” I asked again, but Nathem didn’t speak. His eyes only widened when he pointed to his throat and shook his head.
“You can’t talk?” I asked, and he nodded. “Well… is he in the bathroom?”
My friend shook his head, the rims of his eyes filling with water.
“Or?” I rubbed my temple. “He went to get something to eat?” A flash of Thay on the road in the rain tore through my mind. “No…” I said, mostly to myself. He had been shot. “Did they take him into surgery? Is he in recovery?”
Again, he shook his head.
“Is he in custody? Did the police get to him? We’re going to have to find him a lawyer.”
Nathem blinked, the muscle in his neck tightening, as if he were trying to force the words out but couldn’t.
“Where is he, Nate? Where is Thay?”
He pointed at me, his finger moving into the space between us. I turned, but there was only a wall.
“I don’t know what that means,” I snapped. “Can you write it down?”
He pointed again, and this time I followed it, looking down at the strange bandage stretched across the center of my chest.
“Nathem!” I mouthed, fatigue rattling through my bones. “Just tell me where he is.”
His eyes cracked, and his hand jerked toward my heart.
“Ms. Gavros. You’re awake.”
A woman in a white coat entered the room, scanning the monitors before sitting at the end of my bed.
“Can you tell me where my husband is?” I asked, hating the way her face paled at the question. “His name is Thayor Gavros. I am not remembering things well, but I think he was shot, and we should have been brought here together. I don’t know. I can’t…”
“Mrs. Gavros,” she said slowly, drawing in a calm, measured breath. “I am about to tell you something very difficult, and I need you to pay attention, or this will not make sense.”
I didn’t like the way she was talking to me. Thay wouldn’t let her speak to me like this.
“Okay.”
“Four days ago, you and your husband suffered fatal wounds in what we believe was an Underworld shootout. When the paramedics found you, you were both unconscious in the middle of the street.”
I blinked. Flashes of Wolfe, Jessie, and Blade moving between the lines. I blinked again.
“During transport, your husband had several moments of lucidity and overheard both his diagnosis and yours. Your heart sustained irreparable damage from a gunshot wound to your back. In his moment of clarity, he asked that when he finally drifted under, we would not resuscitate him. Instead, your husband requested…”
She took a breath, her eyes moving between Nathem and me before resting her hands over mine.
“That we give you his heart and save your life.”
I pulled my fingers out from under hers and shook my head.
“No,” I laughed. “Nathem, where is Thay?” I reached for his arm, moving around the black pain building in my chest. “Tell them I saved him. Tell them I got him out. Tell them.”
Nathem’s eyes cracked, tears falling into his days-old beard, but he remained silent as the gallows.
“Fucking tell them.”
“Mrs. Gavros,” the doctor cut in.
“I want my husband! Do you hear me? Go get him!”
“We cannot,” she said, reaching for me again, but I swatted her hand away.
“Don’t fucking touch me. I don’t know you.” She pulled back. “Nathem, please. Please. Fucking please.”
“Mrs. Gavros, Thayor is dead. His heart is in your chest.”
“Stop it.” I shook my head, turning away from her words. “No, it isn’t. He wouldn’t do this to me. Thay wouldn’t leave me here. He wouldn’t die.”
“It is the truth, and we need you to calm down. His heart is working very hard right now to keep you alive.”
“You shut the fuck up.” I pointed at her, nearly knocking her off the bed. “Take it out and put it back. I want Thayor. I want him. Do you hear me? I want him. Bring him back. Take it back.”
“I am going to need some help in here,” the doctor said into the speaker clipped to her jacket.
“Listen, I got him out of the window and into the street. I saved him,” my voice broke. “Please. Nathem? Come on. Tell the doctor that I saved him.”
I turned to my friend, desperate for someone to listen, hating the way he just sat there crying.
“Come on. Those goddamn ropes don’t get to win.”
Thay’s words jumped from my mouth, and he froze. I sounded just like him.
“Now open your mouth and tell her.”
A stream of nurses came running through the door, one of them holding a syringe of God knows what, and took a step closer.
“This is going to help you relax, Mrs. Gavros. We can’t overwork your heart, okay? I know this is hard, but we need you to calm down.”
The nurse came forward but paused when Nathem flung his body over mine in a careful shield. He didn’t speak, but the look he gave the doctor told her to back the fuck off.
“I want him back!” I pounded weakly on Nathem’s chest. “You hear me? He is not dead. He is not. Get him! Go get him and Wolfe!”
Nathem reached over and turned the heart monitor volume all the way up until the static drowned out my voice.
Beat.
Beat.
Beat.
Flutter.
Beat.
How many times had he watched Thay crawl onto my body and hold himself there until he could breathe again?
Beat.
Beat.
Beat.
Flutter.
Beat.
Oh, God. It was his. The flutters. The rhythm. The subtle way it drummed, all hard and perfect. It was his heart. His fucking heart was in my chest.
I fell into Nathem’s arms with a scream, holding onto him for dear life.
“No!” I cried out, the sound of Thay’s heart flooding my ears. “I want him back.”
Nathem’s hands fell into my hair while he held me against him, doing whatever he could to keep me from unraveling.
“Please?” I begged while everything slumped inside me, deadening into a hollow nothing that wrapped around my throat like a noose.
Nathem reached for something on the chair, but I didn’t bother to look. The only thing that made sense was to close my eyes and let them stay there. To cry until my body simply drifted away.
“Give us a minute,” an Irish, AI-sounding voice spilled into the room, and had I not been dying inside, I would have laughed at how similar it was to the real one trapped inside his throat.
“Okay, but if her pulse rises any higher, we will administer the medicine.” The doctor rose to her feet, ushering her team out the door.
“How could you let them do this to me?” I asked into his chest, needing someone to blame, someone to hate.
“It was done before I was conscious,” he typed the words. “But I wouldn’t have stopped them.”
Nathem’s hands continued to move through my hair and down my back, in steady, grounding circles that made me gag. Because I didn’t want him. I wanted Thay. I wanted Wolfe. I wanted… all of them.
“Why would he do this to me?”
“Daphne,” Nathem started slowly. “Thayor didn’t do this to you. He did this for you.”
Fucking semantics.
“If Thay had lived, he would have died as Threx. On death row or in a ditch, hunted for the rest of his life, while you both what? Ran? Together? Yeah right. Wolfe was careful about not implicating the club, but those two were in it too far to ever walk away.”
A shiver ran down my spine, sending a strange sensation through my nerves.
And then I remembered. Everything.
“Wolfe!” I cried, the dam keeping him alive inside me finally breaking. “I saw him, Nate. I saw his shoes!”
“Listen to me,” he pulled me closer. “Wolfe died a fucking hero, and he deserved more than the wall. Don’t remember him that way. You remember the man who loved you, got it? The one who stopped and picked flowers off the side of the damn road because you loved the way they looked in the sunlight.”
I nodded, reaching for him in my mind.
“Marianne drew a line. Told Wolfe that he either marry her and go along with her plans to turn Thay into her sex slave slash weapon while you watched, and send our club to work in trafficking… or we all die.”
“No,” I breathed.
“He thought you were in Maine, so he took the shot. He knew what it meant. He knew what he was dying for. And for the first time in his life, no one owned him.” Nathem shifted.
“And he left you everything, Daphne. All clean money. It is close to a million dollars. His lawyer’s been hanging around for days. You’ll probably see him soon.”
I didn’t want his money. I wanted him.
“Where is Thay’s body?” Another wave of tears hit, stealing the air from my lungs.
He couldn’t be dead.
“He asked the doctor to put your heart in his chest. He and the guys were cremated yesterday.”
That one nearly took me out, my vision slipping at the thought of him carrying me into the Undying Lands.
“They’re over there,” he said, pointing to four square tins broken up by color.
I reached for the ones that were mine, and Nathem didn’t ask. He just moved Thay and Wolfe to either side of me as I turned into him, letting myself collapse into his arms.
“I want his sketches. The things from his room.”
Lightning crashed. Blood filled my mouth.
“All in storage, babe,” Nathem said softly. “Listen… when you get out of here, I want you to come to Ireland with me.” He searched my face for something that wasn’t there anymore. “I think we both need time to heal, and I need to get the fuck out of Seattle.”
I traced the bruises and burns along his neck, wondering if it was the injury that took his voice, or something deeper.
“You know I can’t live without him,” I said, broken. Not even real.
“You don’t have to,” he leaned closer. “Daphne, he’s living inside you. Moving your blood. Keeping you alive. And he will keep doing that until your last breath, just the way he always wanted.”
I hated that he was right. Hated Thay even more for knowing I would never do anything to hurt him. That he gave me his fucking heart and no way to die.
“Don’t take that from him. This is his chance at a real life.”
“That is fucking Hallmark bullshit and you know it,” I sobbed, the taste in my mouth nothing but salt.
“No, it’s not,” Nathem said quietly. “Wolfe was the cage. He was the world we lived in, and in the end, he made sure yours was protected. And Thay…” his voice broke slightly, “Thay was your metronome. Your body. Your soul. He gave you a chance at a world without darkness. A chance he always wanted for himself and only ever found in you. No one gets out of the Underworld, Daphne. And he did.”
He held my gaze.
“Don’t shit on that because you’re sad, babe. All three of you died that night. And maybe this isn’t the ending you wanted… but it’s the only one where all three of you live.”
“I hate you,” I breathed into his chest.
“That’s okay. I hate me, too.”
I peered up at him from the wreckage of my soul and wondered why God chose for us to survive. It didn’t seem fair that we had to be here alone, lost forever in what that night made us.
“I love you,” I said, changing my mind.
“I love you, too. Oh, and Thay told the paramedics to tell you something when you freaked the fuck out.”
I braced, not sure I was ready for Nathem to make this all real.
“He told them to tell you not to pray.”
Beat.
“Because he wasn’t going to heaven or hell.”
Beat.
“He wanted you to know that he was coming home.”
Beat.
I threw my arm over the wound in my chest and closed my eyes, picturing his face, the steadiness in his smile, the way he looked hunched over a sketchpad in the middle of our mattress.
Flutter. Beat.
“I love you, Thay,” I whispered. “I love you forever. I love you for always.”
Beat…