35.
I suppress a gasp, having just gotten into a seating position, when the door to the ICU room slams against the wall after being opened with brute force.
Next to me, Marianne, the nurse in charge of keeping tabs on my health, lets out a high-pitched squeal of surprise, then marches forward as Dorran walks into the room with an air of authority that could put even the hospital’s HODs to shame.
“Mr. Ledger! How many times do I have to tell you that y–”
“ You …” he cuts her off, pointing a finger at her. “Shut the fuck up and leave. Now .”
She gapes at him as if he’s spoken in a language she didn’t understand. “I beg your par–”
“Ask for one someplace else, Mary, because I don’t exactly have the patience for you right now.”
“It’s Marianne, sir ,” she jabs, narrowing her eyes at him.
Dorran blinks at her. “Good to know.”
The two of them stare at each other – point blank. Marianne’s tall frame matches Dorran’s, but her level of expertise when it comes to swiftly ending a life? Yeah, she can’t beat my guy in that .
“Marianne,” I say her name softly, meaningfully.
She faces me, and her expression clears as she smiles at me. “Do you need anything?”
I shake my head, ignoring the leaden weight I feel pressing down on my skull. “Can you please leave Dorran and I alone for a little while?” I request. “I really need to talk to him.”
“You’ve been asked to rest, Miss Adler,” she reminds me.
I smile. “I know. Having Dorran here will help me relax better, though.”
She glances between me and Dorran, then sighs. “Fine, but I’ll come back to check in on you in an hour. And you…” She once again narrows her eyes at Dor. “Don’t stress her out, and do not touch any of the equipment. I’ll know right away if you have.”
“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” he muses, giving her a slanted, two-finger salute.
Marianne rolls her eyes at him, then nods my way before walking out of the room.
As soon as the door clicks shut behind her, I look up at Dorran and say, “Kiss me.”
The mattress under me rustles as he erases the distance between us and sits next to me on the bed. Cradling my jaw between his hands, he leans in and presses his lips to mine.
I sigh against him as the familiar, welcoming pressure of his mouth anchors me.
I part for him when his tongue demands entrance.
His callouses brush against my cheek as he moves closer to me still, inhaling every single one of my breaths.
The scent of his cologne – a combination of pine and leather – mixed with the smell of his sweat hits my senses, making me grin.
Dorran calms the rushing in my brain by tugging my bottom lip between his teeth, and then sucking it once. Placing a kiss to the corner of my mouth, he lingers there for a heartbeat, then traces a line down to my chin that makes a shiver run through my arms.
“Dor…” I touch my nose to his.
“I love you,” he tells me. “So fucking much, Cigs. So goddamn much.”
I smile, giving him a quick, chaste kiss. “And I love you , you freak.”
He chuckles as he kisses me once more, then moves back to sit on the grey, cushioned chair that’s next to my bed. His eyes slowly scan the room, so I decide not to interrupt him.
Dorran looks at the pale walls, floor, and ceiling, and the wide sliding window on the other side of the room.
He then glances at the heart monitor to my left that is displaying my heart rate, rhythm, and blood pressure, the pulse oximeter on my right index finger that’s measuring my oxygen saturation, and the IV catheter that is inserted into the back of my left hand.
And then he studies the black ankle splint that the doctors put on me, and his shoulders start slumping in on themselves.
There’s a brief stage of silence between us, with only the ticking of the wall clock filling the void where words should be. When Dorran finally decides to meet my eyes, I notice that his expression is one of complete defeat.
“So, what did the asshole doctor say?” he asks.
I can’t help but laugh a little. “Well, I have a minor concussion, for one, so I’ve been asked to take things slow.
They’re administering saline for hydration, and fentanyl for the pain through an IV.
As for the bullet wound…” I faintly nod towards my right arm.
“I’ve received a whooping five stitches for it, and Dr. Broome says he’s going to have to keep me in for at least a day to check my progress, etcetera.
” Said bullet wound is currently hurting and tingling like a bitch, but I try not to let it take my attention off Dorran.
“Cigs…” His throat bobs as he swallows.
My own throat tightens, and I’m momentarily stunned when tears start sliding down Dorran’s beautiful face.
“Cigs, I’m so sorry,” he whispers, then gently places a hand under my right one, pressing his fingers to mine.
“ Stop .” I squeeze his hand as I blink against the burning in my eyes. “I’m fine, Dor. I promise I’m fine.”
“Are you, though?” His jaw hardens as he once again looks at the machines around me. “Because this…” He gestures at the heart monitor with his free hand. “This does not seem fine to me, Cigs.”
“We knew what we were getting into when we agreed to take on this job,” I tell him.
“Besides, it’s not like a high stakes mission such as ours doesn’t have any casualties.
If anything, we should consider ourselves lucky for making it out alive, given the circumstance we’d been forced into by Fredrick and his men. ”
“ Lucky? ” Dorran spits the word in obvious distaste.
“I don’t understand how you could consider your injuries as luck.
I…” He sniffs, then rubs both his hands over his face before shaking his head.
“I could have fucking lost you,” he says, and a moment later, his chin trembles as more tears glimmer in his midnight-blue eyes.
“I think I’ve reminded myself of this fact more than once tonight, and still, it continues to scare the shit out of me.
The mere idea of it – of not being able to have you by my side anymore – it’s daunting .
I don’t want to live in a world where you don’t exist, Little Swan, because I would be absolutely nothing without you.
You’re my beginning and my end, and you damn well know that. ”
I quite literally forget how to breathe for a minute. Maybe it’s because in my head, I didn’t want to risk doing it, in case I accidentally missed any of the things he just said.
“ If you take me down, I’m taking you to hell with me ,” I whisper through my tears, then grin. “You’d told me that once.”
Dorran abandons the chair and comes to sit close to me on the bed again, his grin an infectious reprieve. “Sure did. And I mean it; I always have.”
I sniff and use the collar of my hospital gown to wipe the snot off my nose. “Well, then, if you aren’t afraid of dying, why would you give me shit for being the same?”
His brows crease as he looks at me. “Because I can’t imagine you in that state, Cigs.
Anything but that. Death doesn’t bother me, but only when it’s for me.
You and the crew – I don’t even want to think about all of you being taken from me.
Losing Jayce was a blow none of us expected, but if we lost more of us…
” He swallows, averting his gaze from mine.
“Makes me question if what we’re doing is worth it. ”
I stare at him as the shock of his words registers. “Dor, come on.”
“I’m serious,” he states, facing me. “Alex, Varsha, and I have Finesse , and you have your well-established YouTube career. Do we really need to keep doing what we do?”
His question is both a blow, and a splash of cold water.
I refuse to think too much about it, though, and instead cup the side of his face.
“Look at me.” I know he didn’t mean what he just asked me, and it kills me that he’s had to consider the idea of the four of us not doing what truly makes us feel alive, only because a few mafia bosses thought being masochistic dickheads would be a proud accomplishment for them.
Dorran seems confused. “I am looking at y–”
“No. Fucking really look at me,” I order.
He’s silent for a beat, and then he blinks before meeting my eyes.
“Now I want you to repeat what you just told me – without avoiding eye contact.”
His throat bobs. “Cigs, please.”
“Fucking tell me, you asshole.”
The corners of his mouth turn down just a little as his forehead pinches. “I…We…” He runs the tip of his tongue over his lower lip. “Um, what we…”
I scoff. “That’s what I thought.” I let go of his face.
“You know why you can’t get the words out?
It’s because killing isn’t just a job for you; it is an extension of you, and without it, you’d be nothing but a shell of who you currently are.
” I fist the collar of his shirt and tug him towards me.
“I want you to get something engraved into that thick fucking skull of yours, once and for all: you and I, Dorran, we are made of blood so cold that it can rattle the very bones of those who dare to cross us. So, while I appreciate you wanting to sacrifice such a massive part of yourself for me, I’m going to have to ask you not to. I’ll beg, too, if I have to.”
He briefly closes his eyes as he sighs, then reopens them and chuckles. “I guess it’s my fault for falling in love with someone who is twice as stubborn as I am.”
“It’s a privilege , methinks.”
He laughs. “Well, if we’re hellbent on convincing each other to do things, I’d like to ask something from you, too.”
I smile. “Anything.”
Dorran scans my face, his own a mask of serene severity. “If you die, I die,” he says plainly. “No negotiations.”
My smile vanishes, and I feel my entire body go cold. “Dorran, no , you ca–”
“You said anything , Cigs.”
“Anything but that!”
He grits his teeth. “Stop using my words on me. If you get to stop me from giving up on my ways of living, then I get to make a bargain with you as well.”
“Why are you doing this?” the question is barely a whisper as it leaves my lips.
“You know why,” he pushes. “I can’t live without you, Cigs. So, if we’re doing this, then we’re doing this together, or we’re not doing this at all.”
“You’re asking me to allow you to kill yourself if something were to happen to me. How do you think it’s fair to me, Dor?”
“And you’re asking me to continue putting you in danger every time we take on a mission. How do you think that makes me feel, huh?”
“Am I a liability to you, then?” I sneer. “You think I can’t keep my own during a kill?”
“That’s not what I meant, damn you,” he hisses. “Each mission we go on has high risks of failure, as you yourself just reminded me. I’m just asking for an assurance from you, because with how much I love you, I can’t even die if I don’t have your permission for it.”
I blink against the haze before my eyes. “Alright, then. We do this together, you and I, or we don’t do this at all. If I die, you die. And if you die, I die too.”
“What, no!” he says immediately. “Fucking no, okay? That’s not how it works!”
“You just said that if we’re doing this, we’re doing this together, or we’re not going to do it at all. I’m simply agreeing to it. And before you try to argue, no , it will not be a one-way thing. If you want this to work, then it has to go both ways.”
“And if I say no?”
“It’s adorable that you think you’ve got a choice, sweetie.”
His mouth opens and closes, but no words come out. And then he just laughs, making me do the same.
“God, I hate you,” he muses, leaning in to press a long kiss on my lips.
“Aww, I love you too, don’t you worry.” I kiss him back. “So, we’ve got ourselves a deal, then, right?”
He sighs as he touches his forehead to mine. “We do, yeah. But only because when it comes to you, I always think with my na?ve heart, and not my brain.”
I grin. “To whatever end, then?”
Dorran grins back at me. “To whatever fucking end, Little Swan.”
I’m about to ask him to kiss me again, but stop when I hear a subtle knock on the door, which is quickly followed by a voice saying, “Make sure the two of you are decent! The entire clan is about to barge in on your asses, dressed or otherwise…”
Dorran and I raise our brows at each other. “ Alex ,” we state in unison, then chuckle.
“Should we tell them about the bargain?” he asks me.
I shake my head, surprised that I barely feel any pain. Thank fuck the fentanyl has finally started working.
“What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” I tell Dorran.
“Fine.” He nods, then presses a kiss between my brows. “This deal remains between us, then.”
“Um-hmm, just between us.”
The ICU room’s door opens, and as Dorran and I look towards it, we see our friends walking in, which instantly puts smiles on both of our faces.
Sometimes, a family isn’t one you’re born into, but one that you build – stone by fragile stone – until it becomes the very shelter that shields you against any and every storm life sends your way.
And while I know myself to be strong, I don’t think I would have weathered the circumstances I’ve faced in the last two years if it weren’t for Dorran and the crew.
There’s strength in numbers, they say. But you know what I think? I think that love is the only, everlasting key to one’s fortitude.
So, hold those you care for close; tell them how much they mean to you, even if they aren’t bound to you by blood. Because at the end of the day, through love, everything is possible.