A Love Most Fatal (Morelli Family #1)

45. Vanessa

45

VANESSA

As soon as I wake up, I know I’m in a hospital room because the lighting is godawful and there’s a hazy heaviness over all of my limbs. I force my eyes open, though they want to sink back closed, and within a moment of this internal wrestling to stay awake, my sisters are there.

Willa, Mary, and my mother all crowd around me, showering me in kisses and hugs and brushing their hands over my hair, my cheeks, my arms. My mom weeps and mutters in Italian. It helps wake me up.

The relief I feel is so sudden and intense that I can’t help but cry with them. I thought they were going to die—that Cillian was going to kill them. I thought he was going to kill me, too, his hands wrapped around my neck and ire in his eyes. Part of him knew he would never possess me, and I think the knowledge might have made him snap and kill me himself if not for Nate.

Nate .

I can’t see him as my family fawns over me—a nurse comes in and scolds them for startling me after just waking up, but I see him. He leans against the wall near the door, watching with steady eyes. Not an ounce of the anxiety I know so well from him, just a still confidence in eyes that hold mine.

The nurse takes a few minutes checking my vitals, then checking for hearing in my left ear, which Willa reports was bleeding when we got here. The second time in as many weeks that my ear bled from the trauma of a loud shot—I’m lucky I can hear out of it at all. It’s muted, like I’m listening through water, but there’s something at least.

The nurse assures that they’ll do more tests later. She then props my pillows, checks the swelling of my shoulder, and administers more pain medicine through the IV in my arm, leaving an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

My eyes trail back to Nate, and don’t leave him, not when the nurse shuffles out of the room with promises to return in thirty minutes, not when my sisters and mother file out in a line, and not when he approaches my side.

He’s a beautiful man. Grass green eyes watching mine, a strong unshaven jaw, curly hair that’s mussed and unruly like he’s been raking his hands through it.

I want to keep him.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Horrible,” I say, and we both let out a semblance of laughs. It feels good, smiling with him. “Nate?—”

“Please, can I go first?” He sits on the side of the hospital bed and wraps both warm hands around the one of mine that isn’t held to my chest with a sling matching Mary’s. “Please.”

I shut my mouth and nod for him to continue. I want to keep him, but maybe this is it. I won’t force him to be with me.

“I love you,” he says, pauses, then rushes on, “I am criminally, fatally in love with you, and you can try to marry someone else, but I’m not going to leave. I like your house too much and I like you too much to ever be away from you.”

For once, I do not interrupt because I can tell he has more to say, and I want to hear every one of his reasons.

“I know that Maxim is better for you, I get that on paper he is the perfect fit, but he isn’t. It’s me, Vanessa. It’s you and me, I can’t explain how I know it, but I do. It’s us. We’re meant to be, and I will not let some Russian mob boss come between that. If he tries, I guess I’ll just have to kill him,” he says.

There’s no holding back my tearful laugh.

“I never wanted you to have to kill someone,” I croak. It’s a heavy price to pay to be with me, one I never would have asked of him.

“I didn’t either,” he admits. “I never wanted to be a part of this world. But here I am and it’s my choice to make, and you can try to kick me out, but I’m not going anywhere.”

His words break something in me—a piece of me that I thought was unlovable dissolves, and all that’s left is love and relief. I’ve deluded myself into believing that the only people who could want me were the ones who had me by blood or the ones who were worse than me. I didn’t let myself hope that he could want me, or that I could let myself have him back. Not permanently, at least.

I weep openly for the third time today, and Nate lets me while he takes his turn kissing all over my face, slow kisses in a line across my forehead, on each of my eyelids, and finally against my lips.

“I love you,” I whisper. “I love you so bad, Nate. You challenge me and push me to be better, you make me laugh, you’re the brightest man I’ve ever met.”

He smiles against my mouth and kisses me deeper, it’s a tender and gentle kiss, but long. I’ve got snot running beneath my nose and Nate’s cheeks are wet with my tears and some of his own. We are a sappy, snotty mess. A perfect mess.

“I’m pitiful,” I say.

“You’re perfect,” he says. “And you’re stuck with me. When your arm isn’t swollen from being yanked out of its socket, I’m going to put a ring on your finger and marry you in front of every criminal in this city, and if anyone has a problem with that, they’ll have you to deal with, and clearly, you are no one to mess with.”

“Nate,” I whisper, and we kiss for a long time, until Angel and Artie barge into the room, Sean and Leo on their heels for another round of family fussing. Nate grins, and I do too, because I know that here with this family of loud, loving criminals, is exactly where we’re supposed to be.