Page 8 of Need Him Like Oxygen

Sobbed.

She fucking sobbed into my chest.

The sound came from some deep well, an almost animalistic sound, and it cracked something open in my chest as I listened to it, unable to do anything but kneel there and try to hold her together as she shattered apart.

I wanted to wrap her up tight, to squeeze her pieces back together, because the Cinna I knew would be mortified to be in pieces, but I was too afraid of actually breaking something with the shape she was in.

By the time the sobs subsided and she pulled against my hold, my chest was wet with tears and blood, mingling together into a pink color as it trailed down my stomach to catch on the waistband of my pants.

“I need to get you to the hospital,” I said.

And those eight words seemed to break through the emotional and physical misery she was in.

Her head whipped up, and I saw her eye unfocus as her head likely spun, then clear as she stared right through me, that cutting glance so familiar and somehow more welcome than the tortured one that had been there a moment before.

“No hospitals.”

“Cinna, baby, you’re… you’re not looking great,” I said, having to swallow back the sick feeling in my throat as I looked at her again, taking in more of the damage than I had a few moments before.

“No,” she said, voice fierce but fucking exhausted. Like she was barely keeping herself conscious.

I could grab her, lift her into my arms, carry her downstairs, and force her.

She was weak enough that I could get away with something that, on a better day for her, would have ended up with me sporting a couple busted ribs, a crooked nose, or a broken dick.

But something held me back.

Maybe it was as simple as knowing it would be a betrayal of the trust she was showing me by showing up at my door in this shape.

She could have gone to Renzo’s, the boss’s, house. Rico. Elian.

But she was there.

At my door.

Sobbing into my chest.

And, somehow, I knew that she wouldn’t have done that with anyone else. Not Renzo, the man who took an angry teenage girl and turned her into the first female mafia capo. Not Rico, who she’d fought side-by-side with. Or even Elian, who had a soft spot for women.

She came to me.

She trusted me with the soft side of her she never showed anyone else.

I couldn’t betray her by forcing her into something she didn’t want.

“I need to clean you up then,” I said, gut twisting at the idea of what that might entail. The kind of pain I’d have to inflict on her in an attempt to heal her.

I was nobody’s nursemaid, but when you worked in a dangerous field where people often got hurt and couldn’t go to the hospital and risk being reported to the cops, you learned a thing or two about battlefield medicine.

Christ, it was insane how many bullets I’d plucked out of people. Myself included.

“Okay,” she said, lower lip quivering.

“Okay,” I agreed, moving to stand.

As she tried to do the same, though, she fell back down with a ragged cry that had that cracking sensation moving through my chest again.

“It’s okay,” I said, voice soft as I bent down. “I’ve got you,” I told her, lifting her as carefully as possible into my arms. “I’ve got you,” I said again as she turned her head into my neck, taking slow, deliberate breaths to try to fight back the pain.

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