Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
ISABELLA
I can hear voices. They sound distant yet near, the way they do in dreams, present but unreachable, like trying to catch something through water. It's an odd sensation, like I'm floating but still firmly on the ground. At least I'm no longer in pain. That has dissipated.
I’m grateful for that in a way I don't have words for. The last thing I remember clearly is agony so severe that it overwhelmed all my senses. I never want to experience being shot ever again in my life.
I don't know what day or time it is. I hear Anthony. He's talking to someone. My doctor, perhaps. His voice has that low, measured quality it takes on when he's keeping himself composed by force of will. Controlled worry. I want to smile, but I can’t seem to move my mouth.
I need to open my eyes, but it's so hard to get them to do what I want. My body feels remote from me, familiar yet upgraded somehow, and I’m new to running the system.
My eyelids feel heavy, even though I feel rested enough to be awake.
"Bells?" Anthony is talking to me now. He takes my hand and squeezes it.
I focus everything I have on that point of contact.
The warmth of his hand around mine, and use it like an anchor.
I fight with everything I have to open my eyes, and finally, light spills into my vision.
The room starts to take shape around me.
White ceiling. The soft beep of a monitor somewhere to my right.
The particular antiseptic stillness of a hospital room that no amount of dim lighting can disguise.
"Anthony," I murmur, blinking several times to clear my vision.
The bed dips, and his face materializes before mine. He looks exhausted. There are shadows beneath his eyes that weren't there before, and a tension along his jaw that even now doesn't fully release. He's been here a while. I can see it on him.
"Bells, you're awake." He kisses my forehead, the softest kiss that makes warmth seep through my veins, before he leans back and looks at me. "I've been so worried."
"Where's Ivy?" I ask. It’s the first coherent thought I have.
"At one of the Moretti safe houses. She's with Maeve, and they've been terribly worried about you. They’ll be so happy to hear that you're okay."
I swallow the lump in my throat. She’s safe. She’s with Maeve, and she’s safe. I let that settle through me, reaching all the places the fear had been living. "You've met Ivy?" I ask.
"No, not yet. I thought you'd want to do the introductions. But I’ve spoken to Maeve, and I can see why you hired her to look after our daughter when you returned to New York."
Our daughter. He says it with such quiet certainty, no accusation in it now, just the plain and steady weight of a fact he decides to claim. My chest tightens with something I can't entirely contain.
Hope…
I nod. "She's the best. Like a mother to me." I try to sit up, and pain shoots through my body. "Oh," I say, which is a considerable understatement to what I really want to cry out.
Anthony stands and reaches under my arms, sitting me up gently against the pillows. "Better?" he asks.
"Yeah, thank you." I breathe through the residual ache and look around the room properly for the first time. I glance out the window. It looks like dusk, the sky outside bruised pink and gold at the edges. "How long have I been in here?"
"A few days, not too long. But you're so lucky, Bells." Something akin to fear moves across his face. “The bullet just missed your spinal cord, but you lost your spleen. The doctor will explain when he's in next."
"Have I been unconscious this whole time?" I can't remember much after the shooting. Fragments, mostly. Anthony's voice, human touch, and different smells. I do, however, recall Rodin going to kiss me, and Anthony losing his mind at the Russian.
I smile.
"You've been on some heavy drugs," he says, cocking his head to study me. "What's so funny?"
"You were jealous of me going to kiss Rodin."
He lets out a low, guttural growl and takes my hand. "The sight of him touching you… Yeah, that wasn't going to happen. He needed a good thumping to smash some sense back into the guy."
"I don't think the Russians really think the same way we do." I drink in the sight of him sitting beside me. The familiar architecture of his face that I’ve never forgotten. There’s nothing now between us that can stop us from being together.
Rodin has his money and his contacts. I don't want anything to do with the Romeros anymore.
That thought, which should feel like grief, feels instead like setting something heavy down after carrying it for a very long time.
"I didn't want to kiss him. I just wanted him gone and out of my life. "
"I know." Anthony leans over and kisses me softly. His hand comes up to cup my face, and I lean into it without thinking. God, I love him so much. "Your brother was shot also. I'm sorry he —"
"I'm not sorry," I say it quietly, without remorse. While I mourn the boy I grew up with and the young man I used to know, it’s been several years since I recognized who my brother has become. He’s disloyal and cruel and untrustworthy. Traits that didn’t make him a good person and, in the end, made him a dangerous one.
I think of him for a moment. Really think of him, the Alex of twenty years ago who used to steal cookies from the kitchen and bring them to my room at night, and I let myself feel the loss of that person, because that person has been gone for a long time and I think I’ve been grieving him quietly for years without admitting it.
I swipe at a lone tear and rally my thoughts. "What will happen now? I'm still a Romero who kept your daughter a secret from you when I could have told you." I hold his gaze, not flinching from the residual pain I can still see in his eyes. "Are you still mad at me?"
Anthony stares at me. The silence lasts long enough that I reach up and touch his jaw.
Partly to ground myself, partly because I can't help it, because even here, even like this, I want to remind myself that he’s mine.
I’m so in love with him, it hurts to think he might walk away.
I don't think I would survive it a second time.
I know I wouldn't. The first time nearly finished me, and I was a lot younger then, my whole life ahead of me, but it’s different now. Everything has changed.
He shakes his head, his mouth briefly pulling into a displeased line, which softens as I watch.
"I understand why you did what you did, even though I hope you wouldn’t make the same choice again if needed.
" He pauses. "I'm not angry at you, Bells.
I can't remain angry at the woman that I fucking adore and love. "
I gasp and my vision blurs, and I blink quickly to try to clear it.
“I’ve never heard you say that to me before.
Not even when we were together all those years ago.
" My stomach twists in the most delicious way, and I want to throw myself into his arms and stay there indefinitely.
I curse the Russians and their aim for making that currently impossible.
"I thought it was time I admitted the truth. I love you so much. You're everything to me. I want us to be together. As a family. I want to go where you want to go and try to build a life together. Get to know my daughter. Make up for lost time."
I press my lips together and lose the battle entirely to remain composed. I sniff and gesture toward the side cabinet. "Can you pass me a Kleenex?"
He grins. That rare, full grin I’ve missed without letting myself admit how much. He pulls out a tissue and hands it to me. I take it and dab it against my face. "I'd like that very much. I love you too," I say, for the first time in my life, to anyone.
It doesn't feel terrifying the way I always imagined it would, admitting such vulnerability. It doesn't feel like exposure or surrender. It feels absolutely right.
Anthony comes and lies beside me on the bed, carefully, mindful of the wound, and pulls me into the crook of his arm.
The monitor beside me beeps its steady rhythm, and outside the window, the last of the day fades away, and the city beyond sparkles into life.
"When you're better, we'll buy a new lake house together.
A family home, a new start, but where we both want to be and where no one can find us. What do you say?"
I think of Ivy. I think of a lake and a dock and the smell of woodsmoke and a man who builds fires and a little girl who has never had a father and a version of my life that I stopped letting myself imagine somewhere around year two of pretending I didn't miss him.
"I say yes."