Page 121 of Deviant Need

“It’s okay,” the doctor says. “He needs to rest. His body is still recovering. This is normal.”

“Will he wake up again?” Mikhail asks, his voice tight with worry.

“Yes. He’s stable now and needs time to heal.”

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Exhausted,” I manage to rasp out.

“Okay,” he says softly, his thumb brushing across my cheekbone. “Sleep. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

My eyes snap open, and I stare up at the ceiling and the harsh fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. I’ve been here for over a week now, and I feel stronger every day, even if it’s only by small steps. The doctors still come in every hour to poke and prod, asking questions I can’t answer out loud.

Mikhail keeps snapping at them, telling them to back off, that they can write their questions down for me and he’ll ask me and then answer what he can.

We haven’t talked much about everything that happened, because he refuses to.

I’ve been too tired, too drained from losing so much blood. The transfusions kept me under for days, slipping in and out of consciousness. The doctors said it was a miracle I’m alive, that just a couple more minutes without getting to the hospital and I would have died.

Those hazel eyes and the burn scars on Mateo haunt me. I finally got all the answers to my lifelong questions, and they boil down to this: I’m a Nozares.

I don’t know what to do with that information. I’m too exhausted to process it anyway. Mikhail said Lina would talk to me once I’m out of the hospital because she doesn’t want to overwhelm me while I’m recovering. She’s busy keeping up appearances and handling funeral arrangements for Roman.

Everything happened so fast at the shooting that I wasn’t even able to check on Mikhail after he got stabbed. I was so focused on getting him to the hospital and making sure he stayed conscious that I didn’t ask if he was okay.

After what happened at that arena when he almost died, then the attempt after, then him getting stabbed and shot, and then watching me get shot, it’s been relentless. I don’t understand how he managed to keep himself together through all of it. The nurse told me he refused to leave my bedside, that he stayed next to me the entire time I was in a coma.

It hurts knowing what he went through. I just want to take him home and wrap myself around him.

He looks over at me and realizes I’m awake. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I manage back.

“There’s a nurse coming. They want you to try standing today.”

“Hell no. I’m not getting out of this bed.”

He rolls his eyes. “You have to eventually. You can’t just stay in bed forever.”

“Watch me.”

He sits on the edge of my hospital bed, his arm still wrapped in white bandages from the shooting. There are fading bruises on his jaw and around his throat, yellowish-green now instead of the dark purple. He looks better than he did, more rested.

“I’m so glad he’s dead,” he says and gives me a sad smile.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop him from hurting you, I⁠—”

He cuts me off before I can finish. “You couldn’t have done anything. It is what it is. I’m okay now.”

It hurts watching him try to play it off, like it doesn’t matter, like he’s fine when I can see he’s not. His own father stabbed him.

I’ve tried asking multiple times this past week whenever I’m awake enough to string words together, but he shuts me down every time. He changes the subject or goes quiet or tells me he’s fine when we both know that’s bullshit.

He’s always been like this though, ignoring the things that hurt and shoving them into some locked box in his head where he doesn’t have to deal with them. I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure he knows he’s my priority, that he comes first, that taking care of him isn’t some burden I’m carrying but what I want to do. I’ll prove it to him every single day if I have to.

“I’ve been keeping something from you. Because I was waiting for you to get better. She knows.”

My eyes narrow. “What?”