“They were married two years ago in England,” Dante explained, perhaps purposely misleading them so they would think she had met me more recently than she really had. “If you press him, I am sure he will show you the marriage certificate.”
There was a discordant, staccato pause like a note hit out of tune.
“What the hell is happening?” Elena demanded again. I was beginning to understand why Giselle found her elder sister so bloody irritating. “First you, and now this maniac who claims to be her husband?”
“Stop.”
It was so soft, so hoarse, at first, we all thought it was just the rasp of the wind tousling the cheap curtains through the open window or the shift of my suit sleeve grazing the rough bedsheets.
But it was her.
Cosima.
My wife’s sweet voice like the sound of fucking angels singing.
With my heart thumping and swollen in my throat, I angled my head down to look into the golden eyes I knew would meet mine.
Even though I was braced for impact, the sight rocked me to my soul.
Those huge irises were the center of my universe, twin suns that I wanted to spend the rest of my life orbiting around. I catalogued the thick, black fan of her lashes and the deep bruising on the top of her cheeks. How could someone so broken be so goddamn magnificent?
“Cosima!” Giselle sobbed, lurching forward to clutch at her sister’s leg while Elena stepped up to silently take her other free hand.
“Bambina,” Cosima croaked, her eyes squinting against the pain in her head and the bright, hideous artificial lights. “Water.”
Before anyone else could react, I slid a gentle hand under her neck to help lift her head as I pressed the rim of a small Dixie cup to her lips. “Just a little bit, my beauty. You do not want to make yourself sick.”
Vaguely, I was aware of the other strange man in the room stating he would go find the doctor. I was grateful someone had thought of that. I felt as concussed as the woman in the hospital bed after the shock of seeing her wake from a coma.
Beside me, Elena vibrated with relief and lingering anxiety.
“You scared the shit out of me. You terrified me, Cosima. What would we do without you?” she beseeched in a voice like a little girl.
It seemed out of place coming from a woman I knew was on track to be the youngest partner in the history of her prestigious law firm.
“You would survive,” Cosima responded calmly, but her eyes were on mine, and they were filled with frantic, frightened questions.
What are you doing here? Why do I feel like death warmed over? Who did this to me?
It was only her mouth that gave away the extent of her relief. It softened the longer she stared at me, curling at the edges like burning paper as the air between us warmed with passion.
Elena was still spouting selfish nonsense. I decided to give her thirty more seconds before I kicked her out.
“You will survive,” Cosima amended, cluing into the strained tension between her two sisters that had permeated the air since before my arrival.
“Everyone needs to leave,” I demanded.
Thirty fucking seconds was more than enough.
I was a bloody saint for letting them breathe the same air as Cosima right now when every single instinct in my body told me to lock her away in a tower and guard her there like some kind of vicious monster against any and everything that might try to harm her.
Even if it was the emotional harm her sisters were unintentionally doling out.
Cosima shouldn’t have to deal with family drama ever again, let alone from the very moment she woke up from a fucking coma.
“We don’t need to do shit,” Elena snapped.
And essentially secured my everlasting apathy.
“Xan,” Cosima scolded me softly, finally ignoring her sisters the way we both wanted to. She gave my hand a weak squeeze and tilted her head so that all her black hair went sliding over the pillow to frame her beloved face. “You came.”
I swallowed painfully past the knife that was suddenly lodged in my chest. It killed me to know she would doubt me like that.
Wasn’t it ludicrously obvious that she was my everything?
Instead of struggling to convey the depth of my unrest, I let my voice go cold with rage and recrimination. “I am the only one who hurts you, remember?”
Her entire face suffused with peace for the first time since waking, and she leaned even farther over to the edge of the bed. I met her halfway, our faces so close I could smell the signature fragrance I’d had made for her so long ago. One of her sisters must have been brushing the oil through her hair while she slept.
She dragged a deep lungful of air into her lungs, closing her eyes as if the smell of me was as essential to her as hers was to me.