Page 49 of Savage Love

I want to ask him to stay with me while I fall asleep, but as it turns out, I don’t have to. He helps me out of the hospital gown that they changed me into, balling it up and tossing it on the other side of the laundry hamper to be thrown away later, with a particular amount of force that tells me just how closely he’s hanging onto the thread of his own stress and fear in order to keep calm for me.

“Do you want to take a shower?” he asks, and I bite my lip. I’m so tired, down to my bones, but I also feel very much as if I need one, especially before slipping into a clean bed.

“I don’t know if I can manage it,” I tell him honestly, and Levin nods.

“I’ll help,” he says simply, and gently guides me out of the bedroom and to the hall bathroom, where he turns on the hot water and helps me into the shower. “I’ll go get some clothes for you to change into. Just be careful until I get back.”

I’m not sure exactly what could happen to me while I’m standing in the shower, but his concern makes me feel soft and warm, soothing away the fear that seemed to settle down into my bones since I woke up in the bloody bed and left me with a constant chill. I stand under the hot water, arms wrapped around myself, closing my eyes against the flood of emotion that threatens to overwhelm me.

I want our baby for more reasons than just to keep Levin with me. It was never intentional, and it was never meant to be a trap. But I can’t deny that there’s a part of me that’s terrified that if I lose our baby, he’ll have no more reason to stay. That he’ll divorce me or simply go back to New York, and that will be it. There won’t be any of that time that Caterina talked about, no more chances for me to be patient and wait to see if he can slowly come around to the idea that he can be happy again.

That I’ll lose him for a second time, and there will be nothing I can do about it. That I’ll loseeverything.

It’s the same thought that rattled in my head on the way to the hospital. It does so again, repeating until I feel like it might drive me insane, all the way until the door opens and Levin comes back in.

I hear the rustling sound of him undressing, and a moment later, he gets in the shower with me, concern written all over his handsome face. “I’ll help you wash up,” he tells me firmly, stopping any protest that I might have. “You’ve taken care of me before; it’s my turn to do it for you.”

I’m so tired that I can’t argue. I let him wash the blood off of me, stand there numbly while he washes my hair and scrubs every inch of me gently, getting the hospital smell out of my hair and off my skin, until there’s nothing but the soft honey-almond scent of the shower gel and the tropical aroma of my shampoo perfuming the warm air. Then he helps me out of the shower as he dries us both off.

He helps me into the soft pajama pants and tank top that he brought me, putting on clean clothes for himself, and then we go back to the room. He gets into bed with me without a word, lying close next to me as I close my eyes, knowing I’ll be asleep in moments. The exhaustion is all-encompassing, and I want to tell him to wake me up if anything happens, but I already know he will.

Thankfully, I sleep without dreams.

—

When I wake up to bright daylight, it’s with the other side of the bed neatly pulled up, the blankets tucked around me, and breakfast waiting for me on a table tray next to the bed. I take a breath, momentarily wondering if it was all a bad dream, but as I realize I’m in the guest room and feel the tender soreness still in my abdomen, I realize that it wasn’t.

Levin is already awake and dressed in dark grey chinos and a fitted v-neck shirt that tells me he has somewhere to be.

“Where are you going?” I manage, pushing myself up a little against the pillows. “Can you stay—”

“I have a meeting with the Kings.” There’s a crispness in his voice that makes my heart sink, because I’ve heard it before, and I know what it means. I can see the wall that’s gone up around him as if it were a physical thing, a manifestation of what I already know is happening.

Last night, I needed Levin. Ialwaysneed him, but he’s best in a crisis, when everyone else is on the verge of falling apart, and one person needs to keep a cool head. Now that that’s past, I know he’s putting up his defenses, because what happened last night budged up far too close to what happened before.

Whatever progress we might have made—and it was small, maybe not even there yet—has slipped away. I’m almost certain of it, and I blink back tears in the morning light as I look at the breakfast waiting for me.

“I need to go.” He clears his throat. “I wanted to make sure you were awake and alright before I left, and had breakfast, but I’m already running late. So I’ll–I’ll see you when I get back.”

He doesn’t kiss me goodbye. He pauses, looking at me once more, with an expression almost as if he’s making certain I’m still there, but he doesn’t cross the room to the bed. He leaves, and the all-too-familiar ache in my chest settles back solidly where it was before as I watch him go.

I understand, and I don’t, all at once. I manage to hold back tears until I hear the front door close, and then I press my hand over my mouth, my shoulders shaking as I start to cry. All I can think is that he’ll never let go after this, that this reminder of what he stands to lose if he lets me too close will be the thing that cuts me off from him ever loving me forever.

I’m afraid of losing you, too,I want to shout at him, if I could make him come back into the room this minute.But I can’t help but love you. Why can you help it?

I don’t have any answers, and I don’t even know if I want them. I’m almost sure that they would hurt too much. But I had thought, ever so briefly, that he was trying.

I don’t know how I’m going to stand it if he’s stopped.

Levin

“What are we doing to stop Diego?”

The question is out of my mouth before the three of us have even fully settled into our seats—Connor, Liam, and I. “I need Elena and our child to be safe,” I tell them sharply, my tone brittle. “So whatever needs to be done, tell me what it is. I’m not willing to let this drag out any longer than it has to.”

“He’s not backing down,” Liam says, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “We hoped that he would see the futility in it, but the man has pride, I’ll say that. And he considers it gravely wounded from what’s happened with both Isabella and Elena. He wants the Santiagos and anyone associated with them brought down. He seems to be willing to do whatever he needs to—risk whatever and whomever—in order to facilitate that.

“So what can I do?” My jaw is clenched so hard that it hurts. “I need them safe. I need this threat to be finished. Give me something todo.”

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