Page 34 of Sinful Reality

“Sleep first.” She draws a long breath until her chest expands, then exhales again with a tired groan. “I’m not hungry.”

“Babe—”

“If I eat, I’ll puke.” But she forces her eyes open and slowly crawls out of my lap. “You need to take your pants off and have a proper shower. You’re always so busy taking care of me, you forget you have needs too.” Stiffly, she sets her feet on the floor and releases a pained hiss as she slowly rises. “I’ll get you something to eat. Then we can go to bed and try human-ing again tomorrow.”

“Today, actually.” But I stand, too, and hold her hips when she sways. “If you fall over and smack your pretty head on the tile, you’re gonna end up in the ER. And your feet are still fucking blue, so if you give me even the smallest opening to have you admitted, I’ll take it. It’ll keep you from the New York case, and they’ll strap you to an IV pole anyway, which’ll keep you down while you fight this cold coming on.”

“I don’t have a cold coming on.” But she sniffles and stares down at the floor. “I’m naked, and we’re not having sex.”

“See how mature we can be?” I push my jeans down and kick them to the corner with a muddy splat, then I step under the hot spray and allow it to fight the goosebumps covering me from top to toe. I’m freezing, too, and need just a minute to warm up. But I keep Minka’s hips in my hands. Her trembling body in my sight. In under sixty seconds, I flip the taps off and grab a couple of towels. “Let’s go to bed. It’s nearly four in the damn morning.”

“Really?” Sad, she looks up with big, round eyes. “Almost four?”

“Mmhm. Which means you’re not gonna be at the office in time for nine o’clock rounds.”

“I need to sort through the bones we recovered tonight. There’s a lot and?—”

“After we sleep.” I wrap a towel around her torso and tuck it in between her breasts, then I do the same for myself, circling my hips with the thick cotton and tucking it in so I can walk hands-free. “No food then, since you’re basically already asleep. Aspirating your dinner isn’t on our bingo card for tonight.”

“Look at you go.” She sniggers, the sound coming out an almost delirious slurring. “Using your medical words like a real-life doctor.”

“Married to the best, learning on the side.” Opening the door and turning her right, though her feet angle left, I force her into our room and lead her straight to bed. “Get in.” I don’t attempt to dress her. I don’t even take her towel. I don’t dry her hair, though I probably should. I merely pull the blankets down and nudge her onto the mattress, then I tug the covers up again and go in search of more from the closet until she’s trapped under twelve inches of duck feathers and thick wool.

She’ll wake tomorrow in a world of pain and with a stomach screaming to be filled. But her eyes already flicker closed. Her cheeks are still pink from the burn of freezing wind and rain, and her lips are paler than they should be. Her very fucking existence terrifies me; her mortality, a dozen steps closer to death than the average woman.

Add in the fear of losing her to a cop on the other side of the country, and my soul aches at the battering it’s taken in the last twenty-four hours.

I lean closer and press a kiss to her temple—still cold—and sigh. But then I step away and switch the lights out.

“Stay with me.” Her voice is just a whisper in the dark. Her plea, a balm over the emotional burns I’m still nursing. “Please don’t leave.”

“I’m staying.” I move to my side of the bed and drop my towel, then I slide under the covers and drape my arm around her hip, yanking her back until our bodies touch from head to toe. Until her ass nestles in my lap and my lips rest against her shoulder blade. Best of all, her towel unravels, and my hand makes its way between her breasts until finally, I can be assured her core temperature is recovering and her heart beats against my palm. “I’m never leaving, okay?” I curl my legs up until we’re yin and yin, perfectly curled as one. “And I’m always gonna choose to love you.”

She sniffles.

I hear it in the otherwise silence. But it’s her tears I feel in the air.

I don’t have to see them to know they exist, nor do I have to feel them on my skin to prove they’re there. Her heart aches tonight, and though I know I’m not completely to blame for what went down, and neither is she, I know, collectively, we fucked up and lost a day we’ll never get back.

Right now, while we’re still young and healthy, a day seems inconsequential.

But in fifty years, or sixty, when the end is drawing near, and I would kill for just another, I know I’ll regret what we wasted.

“I love you,” she whispers tearfully, curling closer and hugging my hand to her chest. “I choose you.”

“Forever.” I close my eyes and wish for a happier tomorrow. “Visit me in my dreams, Minnnnka. I’ll be waiting for you.”

MINKA

Iwake to the pounding bass of a drum solo in the apartment across from mine. The thudding of footsteps stomping through a song. The heat must be on full-blast, because sweat trickles along my spine, and the air is surely made of razor blades because my throat aches with every inhalation I take.

But then I peel my eyes open and groan, which only hurts my throat more, and I realize there are no drums. No one is dancing. And chances are, the heating is fine.

It’s me. All of it, is me.

I whimper and breathe through my mouth, because my nose is stuffed full of snot, and if I relied on that blocked passage for air, I would surely die. But each time I inhale and my oxygen picks up the tang of phlegm, nausea follows and settles in the depths of my stomach. “I don’t get sick,” I groan. I really, really, really don’t. Germs are mere hitchhikers a clean adult canchoosenot to pick up, and sickness is nothing more than an unwelcome visitor and the unwanted delay of more important things, like work and life.

“Goddammit.” My body hurts, and my hip, most of all, aches. I’m not sure I’ve moved since I came to bed at whatever the hell time that was. But as I slowly turn to my back and hit the mattress with what feels likea thump of epic proportions, pain radiates throughout every limb I possess.

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