Page 40 of A Vow So Soulless

“Oh?” he says. He starts undoing the buttons on his shirt, and my stomach leaps like a rabbit in response.

I take a prim step back.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” Elio says, finishing unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it over the back of the chair he moved aside. The back of my chair. The one in here, in my room. I stare at the black fabric in my space, and it feels like an invasion. An invasion I don’t know how to defend against. A further blending of our boundaries. No longer him and me, but us.

But then again, he’s the one who bought me that chair. He’s the one who put me in this room, inside his own house.

Was it ever really mine? Was it ever somewhere I could expect to escape from him?

“You’re welcome to join me,” Elio says with a crooked smirk. “You can come chat my ear off all you like without your clothes on.”

“That the only way I’ll get you to listen to me?” I ask, bristling.

“No,” he says. “In fact, I’ll probably be too distracted to listen properly in that scenario. So maybe it can wait.”

Oh, hell no. He just left me here, bleeding and sore in his bed, without even telling me he was going anywhere this morning. Now he waltzes back in like everything between us is hunky dory? He doesn’t even think he owes me five minutes before his shower to explain himself over the fact that every news outlet in the city, no, the country is proclaiming our engagement to the masses? Our engagement that doesn’t even exist?

My lungs burn as I prepare to expel all of those angry words.

Except Elio turns to head back into his room, putting his bare back to me, and any fury dissipates, strangled in the cold grip of concern.

“Elio,” I gasp, my fingers automatically reaching for him before I close them into a fist and let them drop. “What happened?”

His back doesn’t look like it’s in great shape at the best of times. Oh, the shape and musculature is akin to a fucking carved statue of a god in a museum, but the skin has seen better days. Various scars, including the burns up at his shoulder and neck, mottle the tissue.

But that isn’t what’s making the contents of my stomach feel like they’re rising up into my throat.

It’s the bruising.

It’s focused mostly at his sides, around his ribs and below, in the kidney area. It looks like he let somebody very, very angry use him as a punching bag.

Which makes no sense. At all. Because I’m pretty sure he could flatten just about anybody with a single punch to the head.

“Had a meeting with Darragh,” he says, turning back to face me. Now that I’ve noticed those injuries, I can’t help but notice others – swelling and bruising along his forearms.

“A meeting?” I ask. My eyes prickle. Seeing Elio all banged up like this is getting to me. It’s making me hurt. And if it was with Darragh, then…

It had to be because of me.

“You shouldn’t have,” I whisper. I blink as fast as I can, but I’m not able to stop a single tear from slipping out from my eye and down my cheek.

Elio comes back and bends, kissing the wetness on my skin.

“Don’t cry for me, Songbird,” he murmurs before kissing me again. He draws back, running his thumb back and forth against the delicate bone beneath my eye. “I told you before that this body ain’t worth shit and that I’d put it between you and a bullet any day of the week. And if I have to put it between you and Darragh Gowan, then I sure as shit will do that, too.”

“I don’t understand!” I cry. I grab the hand that’s caressing my face and lower it a bit. Yup, his forearm is already hot and swollen. When my fingers touch his knuckles through the gloves, he gives a slight hiss of pain.

That sound, barely audible, splinters something inside me. I don’t bother asking or waiting for permission. Before he can stop me, I move my grip to the ends of his fingers and pull the glove off.

He tenses instantly, and goes to pull his hand away, but I don’t let him, I grasp his hand with both of mine, and he stills.

The scarred skin on his knuckles has torn beneath the leather, and the wound has been bleeding freely into the lining of the glove. It’s hard to tell with the reddish scarring all over, but it also looks like the whole back of his hand is slightly swollen and inflamed.

“Darragh’s got a hard fucking head,” Elio says by way of explanation.

“What the hell happened? What kind of meeting did you two have?” I mutter. I tug him by the hand towards the chair. “Sit down.”

“It’s fine,” Elio says, standing and staring stubbornly down at me.

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