Chapter 23 Shiloh
Twenty-Three
Shiloh
As I pulled the Buick into my drive, the headlights lit up a dark figure sitting slumped on our steps.
“Oh my God.”
I slammed to a stop and killed the engine. My fingers fumbled to yank the keys from the ignition, and then I tore out of the car, leaving the milk and eggs from my grocery-store run on the seat. At the front walk, I stopped, my blood thrashing in my ears.
Ronan sat hunched over on the middle step, chin to chest, arms resting on his thighs.
“Ronan?”
He raised his head, and both my hands flew to my mouth to keep a scream from bursting out.
“Jesus Christ!”
One of Ronan’s eyes was swollen shut, a shiny mess of blue and purple. Blood stained his chin; his nose was horribly broken. He peered at me through one eye, confused. As if he were drunk.
I hurried to his side and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. He winced, and a groan of pain issued from his throat. I jerked my hands back.
“My God, what happened?”
Panic was lighting up my veins, and I fought for calm while my heart felt a sensation I’d never known—to see him in so much pain.
“Shiloh?” His voice was a croak. He sat up a little, looking around. “Where…”
“You’re at my house. You don’t remember? God, I’m calling an ambulance—”
“No!” He tried to get to his feet and sat back down. Fear lit up his good eye. “Are you okay?”
“Me? Ronan, who did this to you?”
He didn’t hear me or wasn’t listening. He looked around blearily. “I shouldn’t have come here. I thought they might… No. Fucking stupid. I shouldn’t be here.” He got to his feet, his body hunched over and wincing in pain. He looked around as if unsure what to do next. “I have to go.”
They hurt him. They hurt him so bad.
I gripped his arm through his denim jacket as gently as I could while still keeping hold of him. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re coming inside. Right now.”
I guessed he was too weak or confused to argue, because he let me take him inside.
Bibi was in her room, her door closed. I longed for her help and advice but didn’t want to scare her as badly as I was.
Quietly, I led Ronan to my room. He leaned heavily on me, his steps stumbling.
I sat him on my bed where he slumped over in the dim glow of the rainbow lights.
“Stay right there,” I told him, though he looked like he could hardly lift his head.
I hurried to my bathroom, keeping my focus on my task so my mind wouldn’t spin out into outright panic.
I grabbed a towel and the same first aid kit I’d used to clean his cut all those months ago, then hurried to the kitchen.
I took an ice pack from the freezer and filled a bowl with warm water from the sink.
In my room, Ronan was in the same position I’d left him. I set my supplies on my dresser, not knowing where to begin. With a shaky hand, I touched his bloody chin and gently lifted his head.
Tears filled my eyes. “Oh, baby.”
“Shiloh, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say that,” I said, sucking in a breath, willing the tears back. “I’m going to take care of you. But, Ronan, your nose is broken. Badly. You need a doctor.”
“No doctor. I’ll fix it.”
He tried to take off his jacket and winced.
I helped him out of it, scared to death at what lay beneath his T-shirt, and Ronan hauled himself to his feet.
In the bathroom, under the harsh fluorescents, he looked even worse.
His skin was pale where it wasn’t bloody, his puffed eye a rainbow of purples and blues, his nose flat against one cheek.
He raised his head and looked at his reflection. Beneath the blood and swelling, his expression was heartbreakingly sad. Hopeless. He propped himself up on the sink with both hands for a moment, head hung.
I wrapped my fingers around his arm and carefully rested my cheek on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” I whispered weakly. “We’ll make it okay. I promise.”
He inhaled, steeling himself, and then stood straight. Stoic. “You might want to look away,” he said dully.
“No,” I said, my voice hard. “I’m right here with you.”
He nodded and then turned back to the mirror, mentally bracing himself.
He huffed three breaths in rapid succession, gripped his nose, and set it with an audible crack.
A hoarse cry issued from his throat, and fresh blood spattered the white porcelain sink.
His nose was now more or less straight, though it was too swollen to tell.
“I’m sorry,” he croaked. “The mess…”
“Doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is making you better, okay?”
I opened the bathroom door and peered down the hall. Bibi’s door was still closed.
“Go,” I said, gently pushing him back to my room. “I’ll be right there.”
He went, and I rinsed the sink out, cleaning the spatters of blood off the faucet, the tears threatening again. In my room, Ronan was back on the bed. I shut the door and knelt in front of him.
“Who did this to you?” I asked as I unlaced his boots. “Tell me.”
“Grimaldi.”
“And?”
“No one else.”
“I don’t believe you. You could take Grimaldi one-handed.”
“He got the jump on me.”
“Ronan…”
“Doesn’t matter, Shiloh.” His voice was stronger now. Clearer. “I shouldn’t have come here. I thought…”
“What?”
He didn’t answer, and I let it go. For now.
“We’ll talk about it later. We need to get you cleaned up, and you need to sleep.”
I stood and carefully lifted his T-shirt—the first time I’d seen him with it off despite everything we’d done over the last few weeks.
Being naked was my last holdout against intimacy, though I’d wanted desperately to see him and touch him.
Put my mouth on his skin and the magnificent body I felt under my hands.
But not like this. Not like this.
Ronan was covered in bruises—dark shadows in the dim light—except for one angry splash of reddish purple on the left side of his ribs.
“Oh God.” I swallowed hard and pushed the panic down and worse, the terrible agony that squeezed my heart to see him in so much pain.
I dipped the end of the towel in the bowl of warm water and held Ronan’s face gently in my hand. I wiped the blood off his mouth and chin, being careful not to bump his nose. Then I cleaned around his eye carefully. He took my wrist.
“You don’t have to do this. I never wanted this. To bring this ugliness to you…”
“And I told you. You could never be ugly to me.”
I held his face in both hands, the towel cradling his cheek, and kissed him softly on the lips. His good eye fell shut, relief sighing out of him, and my heart broke all over again.
I gently swabbed the cut around his swollen eye with antiseptic, then laid him down on my pillow. He let out a half sigh, half groan—more relief to be lying down than pain, I hoped.
I sat beside him, my back against the headboard, and held the ice pack on his eye while my fingertips softly grazed his scalp.
My gaze trailed over his shirtless body, rigid with abs and the perfect broad planes of his chest. The compass pendant glinted against the tattoo on his right pec—a quote that was upside down from where I sat and unreadable in the dimness.
Beneath it, there was another tattoo I hadn’t known about.
A sketch of a man in medieval clothes with huge wings, barbed and webbed like a bat, his face turned up in despair.
He looked to be falling or flying away from something that chased him.
But it was the bruises that colored Ronan’s skin that absorbed my attention.
“I think your ribs might be broken.”
“Probably.”
I winced at his matter-of-fact tone. As if cracked ribs and setting his own smashed nose were ordinary, everyday occurrences. “I don’t know what to do. You should go to a hospital.”
“I can breathe okay,” he said. “They’re just fractured. Nothing to do.”
“This has happened before?”
He didn’t answer.
“It’s late,” I said. “Do you need anything else? Water? Aspirin?”
He nodded faintly.
I left him holding the ice pack and rushed to get a glass of water from the kitchen and the bottle of Advil from what Bibi called our medicine basket on top of the fridge.
I helped him sip water to wash the pills down and then moved to pull the blankets over him.
That was when I saw the bloodstains on his right thigh and the rip in his jeans.
I tore the hole wider and found two small, ragged gashes, as if a snake had bitten him and dragged its fangs down half an inch, tearing his skin.
“What the hell is this?”
Ronan shook his head from under the ice pack, and again I had to keep from bursting into tears.
“We’re talking about this tomorrow,” I said as I cleaned the fang-like wounds and dabbed them with antiseptic. “All of this.”
I quickly threw on pajamas—soft pants and a loose T-shirt. Then I tied up my hair in a scarf and climbed into bed with Ronan.
He took me in with his good eye. “What’s that?”
“Headscarf,” I said. “For my braids.”
“I like it,” he said tiredly. “Something I didn’t know about you.”
My chest felt heavy, and I trailed my fingers over his right pec. “This is something I didn’t know about you.” I read the quote tattooed there. “The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
“John Milton,” Ronan said. “Paradise Lost.”
“And is this an angel or a demon?” I asked of the winged person beneath it.
“Both,” he said. “It’s Satan being cast out of heaven. He was an angel first.”
“What does it all mean?” I shook my head. “Never mind. Tell me tomorrow. Sleep now.”
He set the ice pack on the floor, and I curled up next to him as gingerly as I could. My eyes started to droop, the adrenaline having run its course, leaving me drained. I started to doze, my thoughts drifting and scattering, but jerked awake at the vision of red blood in the white sink.
I looked up to see Ronan staring at the ceiling.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing. Everything.”
“Close your eyes, baby,” I said, the word slipping out again. “You need to rest.”
“I can’t.”
I frowned, remembering. “The nightmares? They come every night?”