Page 24 of Dead Set on You
“Okay!” Feeling a surge of hope, I spin to face him. “Would your subconscious know that I have a birthmark shaped like a wing?”
Rafael opens his mouth, then clamps it closed, as if he’s running through his catalog of All Things Evie, but the birthmark is nowhere he’deverhave access to or knowledge of. Until now.
“Or that it’s on my right thigh?”
He shifts uncertainly from one foot to the other, but I can’t lose his focus, not yet.
“Well, it’s there,” I say, reaching for the blanket covering my thighs. My hand slides through the polyester material like it’s sifting through frigid sand. I come away with nothing. Disappointment stabs through me, but I fix my features before I turn to Rafael.
He hovers by the door like a brooding Horseman of the Apocalypse.
I beckon him with a finger. “I’m going to need you to look.”
“No fucking way.”
“Get over here,” I demand, breathing through my impatience. Rafael doesn’t budge, and I swear the man can infuriate me by simplybeing. I take a step toward him and plant my hands on my hips. “I swear I will haunt you for the rest of my days. I won’t let you sleep. I won’t let you eat. I won’t let you have another peaceful date in your life.” So much for doing this the nice way.
With each threat, the pulsing in his cheek intensifies. Rafael has moved from level-four angry to level-nine pissed, but hecan’t even begin to fathom the variety of pissed I’m experiencing at the moment. “Now get your ass over here, lift the damn blanket, and look!”
Infuriatingly, he doesn’t listen. He gapes at me like I’ve asked him to help move a dead body.
Fury propels me forward.
Rafael moves too.
He casts another glance toward the ceiling, shoves from the door, and slowly approaches, grumbling too low for me to hear. He stops beside the bed, close enough I can see the beauty mark beneath his left ear or run my palm over the scruff on his chin.As if.
“I’ll be supervising, of course,” I say, gesturing to physical me.
Rafael throws me a scorching look. “How do you manage to make me do the craziest shit?”
I roll my eyes at that ridiculous assessment, because it’s him who makes me participate incrazy. “No higher than the thigh.”
Rafael inhales. His gaze fixes on the gown, but he doesn’t do or say anything.
Beeping and hissing fill the silence.
Impatience trills through me.
Before I detail more ways I’ll make his life miserable even as a plasma whatever-I-am, Rafael reaches across the bed. I swear his hand trembles as he lifts the blue-and-white hospital blanket aside, and I find myself holding my breath, prepared for the worst. Horrendous scars. Missing limbs. Overgrown toenails. But when he removes the blanket, the hospital gown covers my thighs, grazing the tops of my knees.
I exhale, relieved I still have two legs with no disfigurement to speak of.
Rafael stalls again, pushing air out through his nose. A shadow of doubt flits across his features.
“Rafael,” I urge, needing him to get this over with already. “The gown.”
His eyes collide with mine. “Your bossiness might be enough to convince me you aren’t a hallucination.”
“Then lift the damn gown.”
“I will.”
“Before I decompose.”
“You’re morbid.”
“Realistic,” I correct. “Do it already.”
