I watched him fidget and stir in his sleep, the hold of his hands on me tightening a bit before deep, gorgeous pools of hazel opened and took me in, my breath completely faltering. I was stunned into silence -that was how much I'd missed those eyes on me- and appearently so was he, his mouth even gaping a little.
"Pinch me." He muttered after a while, his hazels still scanning my face carefully, his voice all raspy and adorable. "You're awake." Gabriel breathed, his back straightening, his head dropping to my hands again, his lips placing soft, lingering kisses all over my knuckles. I was literally in tears while trying and failing to express any coherent thought. "I should get the nurse. I'd been told to go get the nurse whenever you woke up." I slowly nodded and tried for a smile. "I'll be right back." I watched him stand up to his full height, my eyes feasting on the sight ahead of me. For God's sake! He really was just as amazing as I remembered him to be.
The sound of the shutting door followed by the shuffling noises coming from the hallway made me close my eyes in pain. My head was still killing me and I had no idea if it was the drugs I'd been fed by Marco, the time I'd spent into a hospital bed, or Gabriel's presence doing that to me.
The door opened again and a nice-looking, rather old lady started for my bed, her hands already fumbling with a stethoscope. She gave me a nice smile while placing the cold end of the damn thing to my chest and quietly listened to my hearbeats for a while. My arm was then quickly captured, the nurse swiftly checking my blood pressure and then sticking a sharp needle into my skin. I couldn't help the hiss escaping my lips, my eyes immediately scanning the room for Gabriel. He was leaning against the wall, his entire body taut and tense. He looked like he was barely containing himself from strangling the poor woman trying to perform what I knew to be the usual checkup for patients like me.
"Your vitals look alright so far. We'll run some blood tests and then get back to you with the results, but I'm pretty optimistic about this. You appear to have made a good recovery." I slowly nodded, feeling like my head could burst from that simple action, my face bunching up in a pained grimace. "You might feel a little dizzy for a while and your head is going to hurt a little, but other than that you should be fine. I'll let the doctor give you the further details of your condition." I smiled and the nurse nodded swiftly before turning toward the door and starting to exit the room. "She can have some soup now, but that's all. Her stomach won't be able to hold anything solid down for a couple of days." The nurse said on her way out and I wondered idly who she was talking to before realising her words were meant for Gabriel's ears. "You can also go have some rest now. She's in the clear, trust me." My brows shot up in surprise. I thought doctors were only supposed to give medical information about a patient to the family of said patient.
Gabriel smiled kindly at the woman, his eyes then shooting right back to my face. "Thank you, Glenda, but I think I'm gonna stay a little longer." Glenda? So he was now on the first name basis with my nurse, huh? Who the fuck did he think he was?
"I expected nothing less of you, my boy." The amusement lacing her voice made my brows lift further. Was I missing something? As if sensing my confusion, the woman turned on her heels, giving me a gentle smile. "This boy hasn't budged from your bedside since you were brought in here. We even had to come and force feed him." She scoffed a little and then out she was, leaving both me and Gabriel staring at eachother.
"You didn't have to do that, you know?" I mumbled after a while and his eyes softened up, his feet taking him back to the chair next to my bed.
"Yes, I did." He sighed, lowering himself onto the chair and reaching for my hand once more. I just let him have his way and he softly took it to his lips, kissing my knuckles just as gently as I'd expected him to. "These days have been like hell to me, Julia. Don't ever do this to me again." My brow furrowed this time, my eyes quietly scanning his face.
"Do what?" I asked after a moment and watched him lower his head, the pain so very obvious in his eyes making me cringe and want to run and hide just so that I wouldn't have to face it anymore.
"Make me think that I lost you." His voice was barely above a whisper's level and I found myself wanting to hug and kiss him. I wanted to comfort him somehow. "I'm so, so sorry about everything... You have no idea how it killed me to know you were here because of me." Oh, I had an idea all right. I'd blamed him for it myself and right now I hated my treacherous mind for thinking that way. It wasn't his doing. He hadn't been the one to put me in a hospital bed.
"It wasn't your fault." I whispered in a feeble attempt to ease his guilt. His eyes found mine once more, the look on his face one of pure horror. "I mean it. I asked you to leave and you did. What happened next was none of your fault." His eyes clenched shut in agony this time and tears started prickling at my own. I couldn't bear seeing him like that.
"If I hadn't... I killed his wife, Julia. It was all my fault." I swallowed hard while thinking of how his words had sparked millions of other questions in me, but this was neither the time, nor the place for asking them. An image of Ginger popped into my mind's eye and I forced myself to ask the question that was plaguing my heart at the moment.
"Ginger. How is she?" My voice was nothing but a breathy whisper, but a look in the direction of my murderer convinced me that it didn't matter. Judging by his currently ticking jaw, Gabriel had understood what I'd said just fine.
"She's alive." He stated shortly, his eyes closing breafly. I wanted to know more about her. I wanted to know that she was fine, not only alive, but I simply couldn't find it in me to utter the words.
A gentle knock at the door had both of our attention, a young looking doctor making his way inside the room. I blinked back the tears starting to form at the corners of my eyes and gave my doctor a small smile.
"I see you're feeling better today, Ms Groves. It's a pleasure to finally get a good look at those gorgeous eyes of yours." Gabriel's hand tightened around my own and I shifted uncomfortably while trying to free myself. "Now, Mr Shaffer, I need to talk to my patient for a minute." My murderer's face turned blank. He wasn't going to make this easy on me or the doctor.
"Go ahead, doc. I'm actually quite anxious to find out when I can take my lady home." His words made me scowl at him, but he didn't seem to take notice of me, his eyes refusing to break contact with the doctor's.
"It's actually against our pollicy that..." Gabriel stood up abruptly, instantly silencing the man in front of us.
"I'm not going anywhere doctor, so you might as well start talking." I knew for a fact that those words had stunned my doctor into silence. The internal fight he was putting up at the moment was written all over his face. And then he gave me a confused look, so I gently smiled, nodding for him to go on. It would've been useles to try and argue some sense into my murderer.
"Well, the good news is that the bullet's trajectory has been quite clean, making it pretty easy for us to take it out and care for the wound." I finally let out my held breath, thanking God for that small piece of good news. I knew for a fact that I couldn't have stood another complication at the moment. Gabriel smiled down at me, his eyes alight with something new -an emotion I'd never seen reflected in them before. "The bad news is that the bullet went straight through the left side of your uterus, causing a small internal bleeding that we succeeded in stopping, but..." He didn't have to go on. He didn't have to say those words I feared he would and I actually prayed to God for him not to. "I'm sorry, Ms Groves." My eyes closed, my heart breaking a little.
"What does that mean, doctor? What are you sorry about?" Gabriel asked, his anger emanating through every single pore on his perfect body.
"What I meant to say was that... This little complication will make it really hard for Ms Groves here to have any children." My teeth clenched, my ears refusing to aknowledge the doctor's words. I didn't want any children yet, but I knew that I would at some point. And what then?
"Will it make it hard or impossible, doctor?" Gabe's harsh words snapped me out of my stupor. He was just as mad as I was. Just as hurt by this piece of information as I was...
"I can't say anything for sure, Mr Shaffer, but it will certainly make it hard." I hated that statement. I hated it because it gave me hope. I hated it because hard was almost as bad as impossible.
"Would that be all?" His voice was cold and distant and it didn't help me in the slightest. If anything, it made me realise that Gabriel had put on the mask I hated so much. The mask he used during business. That wasn't good though, because I sure as hell didn't need the Mob boss with me at the moment. I simply needed my murderer.
"Yes. Um... Except for that, everything seems to be perfectly functioning, Ms Groves' recovery seems to go quite fast and we haven't found anything wrong with her blood tests, so you should be able to take her home in three days at most. We just want to keep her under observation some more before that." The doctor explained and then Gabriel thanked him, dismissing the poor man.
I was slightly aware of the door being closed behind the good doctor, by the time I found mysel staring straight into deep pools of sad hazel. My heart sank further.
"We'll make it through this." He gently mumbled, his thumb brushing a tear away from my face. "We'll find a way to make it through. Do you hear me, Julia?" I nodded, even though I could see no way of making it through this. "Don't cry, dea. It's killing me." And so I stopped. I stopped crying and I stopped thinking and I stopped doing every single thing that hurt right then. Instead, I just closed my eyes and drifted into a distraught sleep.
$$$
"She's my daughter, son and I want to talk to her privately." I could hear my father's harsh whisper, but kept my eyes closed in the hope that he would just leave. The feel of Gabriel's hold of my hand increasing gave me all the strenght I needed to endure his presence though, my mind coming to peace with the thought that I didn't have to face him alone. I knew for a fact that my murderer was going nowhere.
"With all due respect, sir, I'm not leaving this room. You can talk to her all you want, but I'm going nowhere." I sighed softly, a satisfied smile already pulling at the corners of my lips, and decided it was about time I opened my eyes. I didn't want my father bursting a vein.
Bright green eyes stared right at me, as I slowly blinked and sighed. It was good to see Miranda again and the broken pieces of my heart stopped hurting so damn much for a brief moment.
"Guys, she's awake." She sweetly mumbled in my father's direction and he immediately bent down to look at me. Watching Lewis Groves crouch next to my bed and risk getting his suit all wrinkled up was just like watching a cat toying with a mouse instead of eating it. It simply wasn't natural.
"Hey there, sweetheart." I managed to smile at my father, all anger and fury vanishing as his eyes bored into my blues. "How are you feeling?" I smiled again while giving him a small nod of my head. I felt like crap, but he didn't need to know that. Nobody needed to know that.
"The doctor came by earlier." Gabriel said, drawing everyone's attention except for mine. I already knew what he was going to say and I was going to let him try and explain everything to my parents since I appeared to have lost all abillity of speech. So I listened to him quietly reproducing everything the doctor had told us and my eyes started prickling with unshed tears again.
Risking a glance in my parents' direction I noticed Miranda crying and my dad's face turning into a mask of hard edges and sharp angles. They hated this situation just as much as I did and I felt sorry for them for a brief second. Then I remembered it was me who had to face and deal with everything, so it was also me who I should've felt sorry for.
"So she..." My dad seemed to choke up on his own words and all I could do was stand there and watch him drown.
"I'm sorry, sir. I wish there was something I could do about it." Gabe mumbled, his face showing just as much hurt as my father's.
I chose to close my eyes, only opening them again when dad sighed heavily.
"I'll take Miranda home. I'll come check on you again tomorrow." I nodded, knowing fully well that he blamed me for everything that was transpiring, just as I had blamed Gabriel. It wasn't fair of him, just as it hadn't been fair of me, but there was simply nothing I could've done about it.
My father and Miranda both exited my room, without so much as looking back at me, but I was thankful for that. I wasn't so sure I could've dealt with the pain their faces were dispalying. I'd disappointed them -first by falling in love with a murderer, and now this.
"I'll make it better, Julia. I will." Gabriel mumbled, his hold of me as tight as ever.
"I don't think you will, Gabriel. It's too late." His face which had morphed into a mask of pure horror caught my eyes. He was staring deeply into my blues, something inside those pools of hazel making me want to stop talking. Making me want to leave things just as they were.
"Don't say it, Julia. Don't say something you don't mean." I swallowed hard and closed my eyes, breaking the eye contact before it was too late. I'd made my decision. Now I just prayed to hang on to it.
"We can't go on like this. I'm just not sure I could ever look at you again and see the man I'd fallen in love with." My voice was simply gutural and I had to choke each and every single word out. "I mean look at this mess we'd gotten ourselves into." He shook his head violently.
"I don't care about this mess. I only care about you, Julia." It was my turn to shake my head, my eyes pleading with him to stop talking. To stop fighting for me -for us. "I'm not letting you go, Julia. Not now that I just got you back."
"It's not your choice to make." He almost laughed at that.
"Of course it is my bloody choice. I'm not letting you give up on us." His loud voice was making me cringe. My ears pratically hurt.
"What us, Gabriel? There is no us." His fist collided with the small bedside table next to him, making me jump slightly.
"Stop talking nonsense Julia, or so help me..." I closed my eyes again and breathed in deeply. I'd never expected this to be easy.
"You should go back to Italy, Gabriel. You don't belong here anymore." I was already crying by now, but I couldn't help it if I wanted to. This was even harder than I'd imagined. His large hands captured mine and forced me to look him square in the eyes.
"You are simply insane if you think I'm leaving you again. As about me belonging here... I belong with you, Julia and you with me. It's gonna take a lot more than this to make me leave you again, dea. It's gonna take a bullet straight through my fucking heart." And this time, his words really choked me. I started to desperately cry, tears streaming down my face and sobs making my body shudder.
My murderer simply straightened up and sat down at the edge of my bed, his strong arms pulling me into his body and enveloping me into a tight embrace.
"It's ok, dea, I'm here. I'll always be here." He sighed, his arms keeping me pressed to his body and that was it. I allowed my thoughts to drift, my nose burying into his chest, his scent intoxicating me. "Everything's gonna be ok." He said and at that moment, I believed him. At that moment I no longer wanted him to leave me again. At that moment he was all I needed. And yet I knew that I couldn't let myself fall for him again. I knew that I couldn't let myself be sucked back into his life, because that would've been the end of me.
Then Gabriel slowly dropped his lips to my hair, kissing the top of my head and taking me by complete surprise. These weren't the actions of a lover. These were the actions of a man very much in love with a woman. And that was an even bigger surprise. He was incapable of love. I remembered him saying just that. My head started pounding in time with my heart and I had no other choice but to stop thinking altogether.
I wasn't going to let Gabriel Shaffer snake his way into my life again and I wasn't going to allow my heart to fall any deeper either. But I was going to let him hold me while Jamie Lawson's sweet voice took me to that very nice, quiet place called oblivion.