Julia
Chapter Forty One
Dante is finally out of the ICU.
The room he is in now has actual walls, which feels like a luxury I did not know how to appreciate until I spent a week watching nurses, doctors, orderlies, families, and strangers pass in front of glass while Dante lay still in a bed.
It's a private room, of course. Ricardo would have it no other way. But more importantly, it has a door that we can actually close and solid walls no one can see through.
It has a window, a small couch, and a chair that is still uncomfortable but better than the ones downstairs, although Dante still complains about it.
Which is how I know he is improving.
He is propped up against his pillows, still pale, still moving carefully, still attached to an IV pole and a few monitors, but the oxygen tube is gone.
His voice is scratchy, and his eyes get heavy sometimes in the middle of a sentence.
The effects of the pain medication irritate him in a way that would be funny if the reason for it were not so terrifying.
But he is awake and lucid.
He is Dante again.
Mostly.
Right now, he is staring at my stomach.
Again.
I lower my magazine.
“Do you need something?”
His eyes lift to my face with absolutely no shame. “No.”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m observing.”
“There's nothing to observe yet.”
“I know better.” He looks at my stomach again.
I roll the magazine and tap his blanket-covered leg lightly, far from any place that might hurt him.
“Stop being weird.”
“I’m not being weird. You’re pregnant.”
“I am aware.”
“With my sibling.”
“Yes, Dante. We’ve covered this already.”
“And that’s not weird to you?” he asks skeptically.
“Fine, yes. It’s a little weird,” I admit.
His mouth moves into a triumphant smirk. The pain medication makes it a little slower than usual, but he manages it.
His eyes settle on my stomach again, but this time the look is different. Softer and more curious. It makes my chest ache.
Yesterday, we told him.
We didn't make the mistake of splitting up the news this time. We told him together.
He had been quiet at first. Ricardo’s whole body had gone tense beside me as we waited for his reaction, though outwardly, he remained calm. I had been braced for anger, for hurt, for the return of that cold distance that had carved into me before the shooting.
But Dante only looked at me for a long time, then at his father, then back to me.
Then he said, “Well, that explains why you’ve been eating so much.”
I had sobbed instead of the laugh he expected, and a look of panic had crossed his face.
Ricardo assured him that it was just the pregnancy and that I’ve been crying at the drop of a hat lately.
I had hit him and cried harder.
But so far, Dante is taking it all right.
I do not know if that will last. I do not know if the hurt will come later, when he is stronger, when the medication is fully gone, and he is able to feel everything properly.
For now, I will take what I can get.
I will take him staring at my stomach like it might sprout something and attack.
“I don’t even look pregnant yet,” I say.
“I know.”
“Then why do you keep looking?”
He shrugs, then immediately regrets it. A tight breath leaves him, and his eyes close for a second.
I sit up straighter. “Pain?”
“Annoyance.”
“Dante,” I scold.
He opens one eye. “Some pain.”
I reach for the call button.
“No.”
“You’re in pain.”
“I hate that damn medication. Makes me feel all loopy and stupid.”
“You don't need the medication to be all stupid,” I shoot back at him. “You do that just fine on your own.”
His mouth curves. “A little respect for the man with a hole in him.”
“A sewn-up hole,” I say with much effort to keep the joking mood going when all I want to do is start crying again at his words.
Apparently, I don't do much of a job hiding it, though, because his smile fades.
Even half-drugged and recovering from a gunshot wound, Dante notices too much.
“What?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
“Jules.”
The name drags me back to every version of us that existed before this.
Naples, then years of long-distance calls and visits in different parts of the world wherever we could.
Then the distance. The first time I heard his voice in over a year when I called him from Connecticut with a bruised cheek and a shaking voice.
My apartment.
Blood under my hands.
I blink and force the memory back.
“It’s just good to hear you sound like yourself.”
He studies me for a moment.
Then he says, “I always sound like myself.”
“You absolutely do not. For days, you sounded like a haunted Victorian child.”
His eyebrows draw together. “Rude.”
“Water,” I imitated in a shaky, hoarse voice.
“I was shot.”
“That excuse is quickly losing power with me.”
“Already?”
“It’s been a week.”
“I nearly died.”
“You are going to use that forever, aren’t you?”
“I think it warrants a week,” he says indignantly. “Maybe two.”
“Two?” I say, bug-eyed. “Big baby.”
“Fuck off.”
I lean back in my chair, and for the first time in days, my laugh doesn’t feel forced.
Dante laughs too, but I can tell it takes a lot out of him.
He looks at me for another moment, and the humor fades.
“You okay?”
I look down at the magazine in my lap. I was reading some article about summer entertaining. Blue plates. Lemon desserts. A patio full of people who look like no one has ever bled on their kitchen floor.
“I’m okay.”
“Jules.”
I hate how well he knows me sometimes.
“I am,” I say, but quieter. “Mostly.”
He waits.
I set the magazine aside. “I haven’t gone back to my apartment yet. It’s been cleared but…” I shake my head.
His expression shifts at once into serious mode.
“I know,” he says.
I lift a brow. “How?”
“Those aren’t your clothes,” he says, looking down.
I look down at my outfit. I'm wearing a blue sweater this time and some comfortable leggings.
“They could be my clothes. I would wear something like this.”
“Eh,” he says. “It’s not quite you.”
I shrug. “I think Victoria and Marisa are coordinating to keep me clothed. I’m grateful,” I say.
“Really. I am. They’ve thought of everything.
Clothes, toiletries, food that doesn’t make me sick, books, chargers.
I think Marisa is keeping six kinds of crackers stocked because I made one comment about morning sickness. ”
“Good.”
“But I want my things.”
Dante watches me.
I keep my eyes on my sleeve. “I want my own clothes. My own shampoo. My laptop. My photos. My books. Stupid things. Normal things.” I swallow. “I want to decide what I leave behind instead of having Harrison decide for me.”
Dante’s face grows hard at his name.
He knows by now who those men were. Hell, he probably knows more than I do about whatever plan is in motion right now.
He would demand it.
His fingers flex against the blanket.
“I hate that apartment,” he says.
“Me too,” I lament. “I used to like it. That bastard has to ruin everything, doesn’t he?”
“That bastard will get what's coming to him,” Dante says darkly.
“But the damage is done,” I say. “It was the first safe place I had after him, and he made it unsafe. He made it the place you almost died.”
“Julia, look at me.”
After a moment I lift my eyes to his.
His eyes are clearer than they’ve been so far, even with the medication.
“He broke into your life,” Dante says. “You didn’t invite him back.”
“I know that in my head.”
“Then tell the rest of you to catch up.”
I huff a laugh, even though my eyes sting. “I’ll get right on that.”
“Good.”
For a moment, we are quiet.
Then he says, “We can go when I get out of here.”
My head lifts. “What?”
“To the apartment. We’ll get your stuff.”
“You are currently attached to an IV pole.”
“I said after I get out of here,” he says gruffly. “What do you think? They're going to make me take it home?”
“You’ll still have been shot.”
“I thought that excuse was wearing thin.”
“When you use it,” I say.
“You are going nowhere near my apartment when you leave here.”
He looks offended. “It’s not like we’re entering a war zone. My father would arrange security out of our asses.”
“You got shot in it!”
“Exactly. I know the layout.”
I stare at him.
He stares back, not backing down from the challenge.
“No,” I say. “And that’s final.”
“Fine,” he says. “Then suck it up and do it yourself.”
My mouth falls open, and I realize I went exactly where he wanted me to go.
There he is.
There is my best friend.
The man who held my hair in a rideshare after a donor boat made me seasick.
The man who came to Connecticut with no accusations, no demands for an explanation on where I’ve been and how I could cut him out of my life.
The man who slept on my couch too many times without me needing to ask because he knew I couldn’t bear to be alone yet.
The man who can tell me to suck it up in a hospital bed after taking a bullet for me.
“Were you always this much of a bastard, or am I just noticing it now?” I ask.
“I nearly died, Jules. You have to be nicer to me,” he says. “Those are the rules.”
“Show me where it says that,” I challenge.
Deliberately, I lift my magazine and continue reading the stupid article blocking his face.
It only lasts a second before my eyes fill.
And somehow, he knows.
“Hey,” he says softly.
“I’m fine,” I say, clearly not fine.
“Liar.”
I put the magazine down.
“Fine. I’m scared,” I admit.
“I know.”
“I keep thinking I’ll walk in and see you on that floor again.”
“I won't be,” he says simply. “I'll be here, eating shitty hospital food because someone won't sneak a burger in for me.”
“They caught me the last time I tried,” I say in defense. “I'm not very sneaky, apparently.”
“You put it in a big bag, Jules. How hard is that?”
I look at him for a long moment.
He is thinner than he was a week ago. Pale. Bruised under the eyes. Still too weak, still in pain, still here because of me, though he would scowl if I said that.
But he is here.
He is awake.
He is calling me Jules and insulting me, just like before.
His eyes dropped to my stomach again, and my hand moves there instinctively.
“Still weird?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Bad weird?”
He is quiet for a second.
Then he shakes his head.
“No.” His voice is rough again, and this time I do not think it is from the tube or the medication. “Just new weird.”
I smile through the sting in my eyes. “New weird I can handle.”
“Good.” His eyelids lower, then lift again with effort. “Because that's my sibling in there, there are a few things about the world that I have to teach him.”
I narrow my eyes. “You're not teaching my baby anything.”
But he's already listing things off. “I have to teach him how to cheat at cards.”
“You're not teaching my child to cheat at cards.”
“I'm teaching my brother or sister how to win at life,” he says.
“Ricardo will never allow this.”
Dante’s mouth curves wickedly. “Ricardo is the one who taught me.”
“Oh God. What have I gotten myself into?”
As I sit on the chair next to his bed and we bicker about what is or isn't appropriate to teach a baby, I realize that despite it all, despite Harrison, despite this hospital and its shitty food, despite the wires still hooking Dante up to machines…
Life is beginning to find its way back to us.
Dante is alive. The new life in me is safe.
And Ricardo... Ricardo is on his way here even now, ready to terrorize a doctor or two with his terrifyingly polite questions that demand answers.
Whatever happens next with Harrison will happen. We'll face it. All of us.
But right now?
Right now, I'm just going to enjoy the new weird.