Page 107 of Five
A pang of remorse so sharp it shocks me has me cutting her off. “I upset you? I’m sorry. I know I’ve been a bastard.”
In that moment, I realize I don’t want her to hate me. Well, I realized it before, back in the abandoned ambulance garage, but I haven’t had a chance to say anything. It tears at my guts to know I’ve hurt her.
“No! Because you’re injured, you big idiot. I’ve been worried about you.”
She’s worried about me? The thought balls in my chest and starts to unfurl, warming my heart as it does so. “Really?”
“Of course, really. You’re important to us all, Jesse. When I thought I’d lost you…”
She trails off, pulling in a tremulous breath that’s the precursor to the sob that she’s desperately trying to suppress. I’m conscious that the blood’s drained out of her face, leaving her pale and fragile-looking, but there’s no doubting her sincerity.
She’s crying for me.
The knowledge breaks something loose inside me.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she whispers, kissing the tips of my fingers again. “I was so scared, Jesse. There was so much blood, and when you passed out, I thought…I thought…”
She can’t continue and this time a sob does escape. She closes her eyes, but tears are streaming down her face, wetting my hand, and soaking into my bandages where she clasps it to her cheek.
I want to kiss her tears away.
I do my best to wipe them, though it’s pretty ineffectual, then wind a lock of hair around my fingers and exert a light pressure to pull her towards me.
Neve shuffles forward, doing her best to avoid all the wires and monitors I’m hooked up to, but I don’t care about any of them.
She thinks I want to whisper to her, but she’s wrong.
Her eyes lift to mine, the green exaggerated from crying and her nose red, but she’s never looked more beautiful. I give a last tug on the lock of hair I’m holding and bring her lips to mine.
She sighs against my mouth, and her taste, sweet and salty from the tears she’s spilled for me, burns through the last fetters that have held me prisoner all these years.
“You saved me,” she murmurs against my lips before pressing closer.
The words resonate inside me like they’re my redemption. As if with that act I bought my freedom and cleared the debt of guilt I’ve always felt towards Maria. Even though I know it was her own actions that drove her out of our home on that dark and dreadful day, I’ve always regretted her death. Always wondered if there was something I could have done differently that might have changed the outcome.
I couldn’t save Maria, not even from herself. But I saved Neve, and somehow that makes a difference. Like a huge weight has been lifted off me. The weight of guilt, and resentment, and bitterness that has stopped me from forming a meaningful relationship with any other woman.
And I know just as surely as I saved Neve, that she has saved me, too.
Saved me from a lifetime of loneliness and given me back the ability to love.
I slump back, exhausted, as a nurse comes bustling in, exclaiming about the rapid beeping of my monitors and how my heart rate and blood pressure are raised, and it must be because of the pain.
Oz snorts.
The nurse shoos everyone back while she increases the dosage of my intravenous painkillers, and I feel an instant relief. But I still have hold of Neve’s hand, and before the morphine takes me under, I pull her to me again.
This time I do whisper. “Pretty sure that didn’t have anything to do with the pain,” I tell her with a wink.
I see a tremulous smile on her lips before I close my eyes, and the rest of the guys move to surround her, expressions of gratitude and relief easing their strained features.
There’s something so incredibly right about the image I’m left with as the drugs start to take effect, and I know that the next time I wake up it’s going to be to a bright new future.
Thirty-One
Neve
Mood:I’vegotloveon the brain.
