Page 91 of Give Me What I Want

“I’m... I’m...” Mav was stammering, his eyes widening as he held his hand up to his glowing cheek. His eye twitched, and he stared at Bea in shock. “No. I did it. I... there was...”

“Youtried, and you failed. Thank fucking Jesus. If you ever pull anything like that again, Maverick Swift, I will personally follow you to the beyond and drag you back kicking and screaming.” Bea’s glare was terrifying, even from over here.

“Erm, Queenie, you wouldn’t be able to co... never mind, carry on.” Ro raised his hands as she turned her head, shooting him a look that could make any grown man piss his pants.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Bea asked, softening just like she always did for Mav. I never understood why she did it, but right now I was thankful for it. He was hurting, clearly, she needed to be softer.

“You really mean...” Mav looked past her at me. “You saved me, didn’t you?”

I shook my head. “I found you,hesaved you.” I glanced at Ro, who refused to look at Mav, muttering something about him doing the same if the roles had been reversed.

“Why?” Mav asked. “You’d have all been fine without me.”

“No, we wouldn’t,” Bea argued, perching on the edge of his hospital bed. “You complete us, Mav. So tell us, why the hell did you do this instead of talking to us?”

Mav couldn’t look at her, or me, only Ro. It was like he knew that if he looked my way, he might break but with Ro, he simply couldn’t.

“It was too much,” he began, dropping his attention to his hands as he flexed them, a look of frustration pinching his face. “Losing so many things. I’m always losing. And I thought that if I... Well... I couldn’t lose you if I wasn’t here anymore. I could keep you, and I’d be with Steve, and the...”

Mav sniffed, then rolled his shoulders and looked at Ro again. Ro finally stared back, then wobbled, his breath catching. I quickly guided him to a plastic chair, slipping it beneath him then moved to stand behind him, holding his shoulders and smiling at Mav, hoping he might look my way and feel strength instead of pain.

He didn’t. He continued to look at Ronan. “You should have just let me die,” he whispered.

“No.” It was all that Ro could seem to manage.

I stepped in, demanding attention. “Once upon a time, Maverick, you were a spiteful little shit who bullied me relentlessly, and you did that because you were scared. You didn’t know how to trust, so you pushed me away. Then you became a teenager who was even worse, and no one knew what to do with you, except for Steve. He took your fear, and he turned it into something good. He turned it into music. Then in college, you lashed out through fear again because you were coming to terms with your sexuality, but you had me. You never expected me to be the person who helped you, did you? But I did. I forgave your shitty behaviour back then, and I can do it now too, because you have always overcome your fears. This is the same, you will survive this, with us.”

Mav finally met my eye, his filling with tears as he looked at me, really fucking looked at me. I squeezed Ro’s shoulders, mostly for myself, and he held my hands, giving back what he had taken from me moments ago. Strength.

I might have been everyone’s joker, everyone’s joy. But I was also a vessel of strength, I knew that.

“How do we stop you from being scared?” Bea asked, breaking the silence between us.

He didn’t answer her, he just looked between us all and sighed.

“You give him—us—a future filled with certainty,” Ro said quietly, and I was certain I felt his body tense as together the three of us stopped breathing.

Bea’s brows furrowed, and then a moment later smoothed out in realisation. She licked her lips, then dropped her gaze. “All of you?”

“All of us,” Ro confirmed, still tense.

“Oh.” She blinked a handful of times, then with shaky legs, stood up from the bed and headed to the door. “I need a minute.”

We all exhaled loudly as she left the room, and tears filled Mav's eyes again. They didn’t fall down his cheeks, but I had a feeling that if she didn’t come back into the room soon, they would.

“She’ll come back,” Ro said as though reading my mind. “She wants this.”

“Does she? Because it didn’t look like she did.” Mav was glaring now, and I hated that my heart fluttered happily at the sight. He was feeling something other than sadness and fear. He was angry, and that meant that he wasn’t gone. There was hope.

“Of course she does,” Ro snapped. “She loves us, all of us, you should have seen her when you were laying on that chaise. That was not the face of a woman who doesn’t want you.”

“What if it’s only me she wants?”

Ronan laughed coldly. “Oh, come on, Top Gun. Do you really think she’s going to walk away from me? From Cole? She’s a pain in the ass, not a fucking idiot.”

“But I’m an idiot,” Mav muttered, looking down at his hands, balling fistfuls of pale green blanket.

“Yeah, my idiot,” Bea said from the doorway.

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