Page 181 of Devil Mine

“You don’t love me?” she asks softly, her voice breaking on the pain of a thousand sorrows.

And I marvel at what a beautifully complicated thing it is to be human that sometimes we can hurt more with our words than we can with bullets.

She’s cradled in my arms, held tightly against my breast, bleeding all over me while I’m losing my mind and she thinks I don’t love her? Didn’t she hear me when I told her she was my heart walking free from my chest?

And look how I took care of it.

“Of course I love you,” I say heartbrokenly, the first tears falling down my face.

Her eyes flutter open and I watch as her pupils dilate like they have so many times in the past when she’s looked at me, when I’ve kissed her, when I’ve made her laugh.

A thousand tiny, insignificant memories of our life together flashing through my eyes.

Except this time, it’s different.

This isn’t a look of lust or laughter or longing.

Her pupils continue expanding, growing bigger and bigger, until the black of them could house the whole night sky in their depths. And within them shines a bright light that she aims at me. No, this is a look of love and it glows for me.

It’smine.

My heart fractures and I choke back a pained breath. Why didn’t I tell her before? Why didn’t I tell her the moment I felt it and every single second after that? I don’t want to have loved her too late.

One of my hands presses against her wound, the other holds her against me. But I want to push her hair behind her ear and wipe the tear cresting past her waterline and brush her cheek and cup her face. I need so many more hands to communicate the love I have for her.

“I love you so much that I can’t breathe. I think I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you. You…” I can’t speak around the sudden obstruction that closes my throat. There’s a swell of emotion that jams the passage. If I jimmy it loose, everything will come with it, including the raw pain and anguish splintering me to my very core. “You came into my life and turned it upside down. You changedeverything.”

The word rips from my throat on a jagged sob. Tears pour from my eyes. They roll down my face, over the curve of my jaw and fall onto her cheek. Her pale, almost translucent cheek, devoid of its usual pink color that makes her look alive.

“I love you,” she repeats, and there’s a serene smile on her lips.

Another grief-stricken howl tears from me.

I bring my forehead down on hers, washing her face with my sorrow as my body racks with tortured sobs.

She’s so cold, so unbelievably cold.

Where the fuck is the ambulance?

“You’re not allowed to say those words to me as a goodbye. So you wait, okayamor?” I say, kissing her forehead. “Tell me you love me when we’re at the hospital, when you’re better.”

“I think… I think I have to tell you now,” she murmurs, face fracturing as tears slip down her own cheeks. “I don’t want to die without having told you how much you mean to me.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head again, refusing to listen to this. “You’re not goinganywhere. You wait. Youliveand you tell me then,amor. Please.”

“I’m dying, Thiago,” she whispers, voice breaking.

“No you’re not! You’re not.You’re not.” My mouth comes down on her face, covering her cheeks, her lips, her eyelids, her nose, every available inch of her skin in kisses. “The love of my life doesn’t bleed out in my arms, Tess. That’s not something I survive. You have to live for me.”

I whip around to look at Arturo. He stands mutely off to the side, surrounded by a dozen of my cartel, men and women who rushed to help me, to save Tess. They have stricken expressions on their faces as they look down at her, then at me, ten steps beyond sanity and falling faster and faster into madness.

I look back at Tess, at the way her pupils have contracted back down to the size of a pinhole. That light that shined so brightly in them moments ago is quickly dimming. Her eyelids flutter, closing and reopening.

She’s just tired, that’s it. That’s it.

I’m not losing her.

“Stay with me,amor,” I beg, rocking her in my arms back and forth. “If you really love me, you’ll stay with me.Stay with me.”

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