Page 99 of The Saint

“You know we tease because we love you, right?”

“Rolly.”

I didn’t let her say more. Instead, I gripped her cheeks and pressed a kiss to her lips. She leaned into it as she reached for me, fingertips brushing against the hair on my face. When we broke free, I whispered to her, “I’ve got you, carina.”

“I won’t let you go.”

I tugged her against me, content to hold her there in my arms and steal away some of the comfort and calm she always brought me.

Penny sighed, and Jael looked up, a playful gleam in her eye. “You thinking about your new boyfriend?”

Her eyes widened and her cheeks flushed with color. “Jael!”

Laughter shook Jael’s shoulders. I tugged a strand of hair, tucking it behind her ear.

“What boyfriend?”

Penny shook her head as Jael laughed. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” Jael responded before turning to me. “I introduced her to Lev downstairs, and he asked her out.”

“He asked for my number.”

“So he could call and ask you out!”

Penny turned her head and raised her cup to her lips. But there was no hiding the smile that made her cheeks rise.

Jael stood from my lap, reaching for the windowsill where she’d set her coffee cup. When she turned back around, the smile on her lips dropped. I followed her gaze and found Zio Paulo standing in the doorway.

“Zio.” I stood, instinctively hiding Jael behind my body as if we’d been caught doing something wrong. The smile on his face did little to slow my racing heart.

“Rolly.” He lifted one of the two coffee cups in his hands. “May I have a word?”

Jael’s hand sliding into mine was a comfort I wasn’t sure I deserved.

My uncle was here, in Mrs. T’s hospital room. One of the most dangerous men in the world was here, standing in the room of this sweet old woman who’d become one of my best friends.

As if he didn’t have more important things to do.

As if his world wasn’t light years away from hers.

Jael nudged my side, loosening her grip on my fingers as she gave me a small push forward. “Go.”

My gaze dropped to her. To her smiling face, the bright gleam in her mossy eyes.

Damn, I loved her. And I didn’t want to leave her side. But that smile… something about it told me I needed to do this alone.

Giving her a small nod, I bent to press a kiss to her lips, then looked up to find Penny still beaming at us like us being together was the most wonderful thing to ever happen to her.

My uncle dipped his head at the two of them as I approached, saying, “Ladies,” as he did, excusing his interruption with that single word. He handed me one of the coffee cups, but as I followed him down the long hospital corridor, the cup felt like it would slip straight out of my clammy hands.

This was wrong. So wrong. Zio was here, in this hospital. Mrs. T was in this hospital. Their worlds were never meant to come together. Dread filled me and my stomach went sour when we stepped into the waiting room at the end of the hall, and I found my parents sitting there.

I stopped in my tracks. I wanted to run. To hide. To flee this situation and never, ever be here again.

But I knew I couldn’t.

I couldn’t do that anymore.