“Then what’s wrong?” I asked, brushing his hair out of his eyes.
“I’m ridiculously helpless with these casts on each arm. I didn’t think about what that would mean during my recovery.”
“It’s going to be ok, Dante. I’ll help you.”
“That’s just it. I want you to know you don’t have to take care of me. You’re not under any obligation—”
“Of course I’m going to take care of you,” I said.
“Maybe that’s not the best idea….”
“Sure it is.”
He hesitated for a long moment, and then he admitted quietly, “I’m so fucking scared of losing you, Charlie. I can’t imagine why you’d want me when I’m so pathetic and broken. And I’m worried about being a burden to you, that having to deal with me in this condition day after day is going to drive you away.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Dante. I love you. And it’s like I tried to tell you before – I’m all in with this relationship. That means in sickness and in health, in good times and bad. I’m going to help you heal, and we’re going to be together. Because it’s what we both want.”
“I do want that. God I want that,” he murmured, and leaned in and kissed me gently.
Chapter Eighteen
For the last five weeks, Dante and I and Christopher Robin and the zombie lap dog from hell had lived as one big, odd family in my little apartment. It had been…interesting.
When Dante decided to step down from his role as the head of his ‘family business,’ he also decided to move out of that big villa on Nob Hill. It was the headquarters for mob operations, and always crowded with family members and business associates. It made sense to turn it over along with the job. He had most of his personal belongings put in storage. And he held on to enough of his legitimate investment properties that money was never going to be an issue for him.
Dante and Christopher were adapting to their new role as roommates. It was a little awkward at first, but they were always unfailingly polite to one another. And Christopher was learning to address Dante by his first name, while Dante only occasionally called him Austin.
They had taken on the joint project of trying to civilize Peaches, a task I gave up on in the first five minutes of that little experiment. Dante mostly acted as consultant since he couldn’t do much physically, looking up dog training videos on his phone and coming up with ideas and theories. Dante and Christopher were bonding well against their common enemy.
Their biggest success to date had been managing to brush Peaches’ teeth, which had involved wrapping the dog up in a blanket like a big burrito, then using a toothbrush duct taped to the end of a broom handle to swipe at his teeth while he snarled and snapped. It was a total triumph in that everyone still had all their fingers at the end of it, and the dog’s breath actually improved slightly. Very slightly. (Christopher had actually tried to take the dog to the vet for a professional cleaning, but Peaches had gone so psychotic when they went to tranquilize him that they’d been asked to leave. I tried to tell him that would happen).
Dante had been in pretty bad shape for the first couple weeks following surgery, but every day he grew stronger, he healed a little more. He still couldn’t do a whole lot even five weeks later, especially with the casts on his arms, but he seemed to be in much less pain. He never complained, but I’d learned to read the quiet signs, the tightening around his eyes when he was suffering, the set of his jaw.
I had taken a leave of absence from work and was Dante’s constant companion, his nurse, his cook, his valet – whatever he needed. Jamie and Dmitri and Jess and Callie had worked out some sort of schedule, and one or more of them appeared every couple days with baked goods, DVDs, flowers, magazines – little ways to brighten our days, keep our spirits up. I was so grateful for my friends.
And my newest friend Christopher Robin and I bonded over, of all things, football. Turned out he was a huge Atlanta Falcons fan, and he and I developed a good-natured rivalry and watched every NFL game obsessively on the big new TV Dante bought for the apartment (while Dante tried and failed to pretend he was interested in the sport).
When Christopher gushed about the Falcons, he’d start to slip into a slight southern drawl – it only came out when he was really excited or upset or tired and forgot to reign it in. He finally admitted that he’d grown up in Georgia, but had spent all of his adult life trying to shake the accent. He didn’t seem to want to talk about his time in the south.