Twisted Fate (Dark Heart 2)

A minute later, I get a new text from Dani. I just told her. She’s not mad. She took it fine.

LOL- yeah?

My eyes tear up at that, because that’s something Luca says a lot: “Yeah?”

I can see his wide eyes and the funny twist of his lips.

And so begins another tear-fest. I’m mopping my face with a tissue, packing away the remnants of my dinner trash, when a nurse steps into the room. She’s a kind-looking woman with white hair, but I think she looks tired, which makes me worried.

“Hello there…Mrs. Galante?” My stomach does a brutal dip as I nod. “We’re ready for you.”

She leads me through a steel door into a large open space with smaller, glassed-walled rooms and patient areas partitioned with green sheets. It smells like a hospital, but there are bulletin boards with brightly colored posters and small touches like rainbow stickers on the floor, which I guess are supposed to make the area feel cheery.

The nurse slides open a door to one of the small, glass rooms, and I find Luca elevated in a railed hospital bed, covered to his neck with white blankets and wearing a plastic mask over his mouth and nose. His face is gray; I think his eyes look swollen, but I’ve never been so glad to see him.

“Look who we’ve got here,” the nurse says, and his eyes peek open—barely.

I can tell he sees me, though, because after his eyelids shut, he drags them back open. He makes a hoarse sound and then squints his eyes, as if he’s wincing.

“May I—”

“Yes.” The nurse nods, and I walk closer to his bedside.

“Can I touch him?”

“Sure. Looks like he’s okay everywhere but under the blankets.” Tears fill my eyes, because his whole body is under the blankets.

I stroke his hair, and his eyes shut again. Then I lean down, kissing his cheek.

“I love you.”

His eyes peek at me, but his face looks numb.

“He just started waking up. As he wakes more, we’ll pull the mask off, swap it for oxygen tubing, or even just remove it altogether. Anesthesia for the heart-lung bypass is a little more intense.”

I rub a finger over one of his brows. “Ciao dolce tesoro. Ti amo tanto. Starai bene.”

Then I realize I don’t know which language was his first. If it was English, he might be too loopy to translate right now.

I lean near his ear, the bed’s railing poking me in the ribs. I stroke his hair back from his forehead. “The doctor told me you did so well. She said it’s okay to be sleepy. You’ll wake up more in a little while. For now, just sleep.”

His eyes move toward me, like he’s trying to look up to where I’m leaning over him, but they shut again.

I stand by him, playing with his hair, until the nurse pushes a chair in my direction.

“It’s okay. I want to touch him,” I say with an awkward laugh.

“We can let the rail down.” She does that, and she says, “You can pull the covers back and touch his arm.”

So that’s what I do. I stroke his arm, and it feels so familiar, like he really is my husband. I’ve loved him forever, and I know he’s mine. Somehow, some way…he’s going to be mine. But it’s so strange, because he still seems new, too. Grown-up Luca. I don’t know the secrets of his heart.

I know so little about his life the last ten-plus years. It’s like…the way they find new planets. Scientists can’t see the planet; they just see the way the planet’s gravitational pull makes its nearest large star wobble. I know only the side effects of who he is: that he got a degree in philosophy and then applied it to real life in a way almost no one else would, trafficking drugs to free trafficked people. I don’t think he likes his job—he doesn’t seem to—but there’s no sign he would have left if not for me…and little bean. (I don’t know why I’m calling our baby little bean. It’s something generic I saw on an app when I was six or seven weeks along, and it just stuck).

Anyway, he’s so, so loyal. And principled. He’s a classic self-sacrificer, always putting everyone else first. He’s stoic, never complains. I remember how he hugged me right before we stepped into the garage, and my eyes start leaking again.

I love everything about this man. That’s what I focus on—just that—for the next eight hours. How he would do anything for me, so I’ll do anything for him. I tell myself if we’re found out, I just can’t let it matter. We’d still have each other and little bean. I’ll still have my friends. If people trash talk me from the angle of me being a female D.A., so what? I’m not single-handedly responsible for the fate of feminism.