I didn’t. Nobody did.
But he still felt pretty fucking amazing.
If I had any body fluids left, I might have cried.
“I know this is probably hell for you, but you can count to three hundred and then push me off,” I whispered, feeling a violent shake go through me.
I was freezing.
He moved the arm I’d draped around my hip a little higher.
Maybe this was the end. Maybe this would be the last nice moment I’d ever have with another human being. I’d made my choice. If I could have had more of them, life could have been so different. But that wasn’t the case.
It never had been.
Life was what you made out of it, and I’d tried my damn best.
If I was going to die, it would be nice to not go alone. It wasn’t sex, but I’d bet it was just as good. And it made me regret so much that I’d never experienced this before. If this was half as nice as snuggling with a loved one, I totally understood why people who were happy lived longer.
At least I would have gotten to experience something like this once in my life.
At least someone other than my grandparents had cared about me for at least a little bit.
That was something.
I tried to hold back a groan as a wave of nausea rolled straight through me.
“What hurts?” he asked after a moment.
“Everything.” I tried to laugh but coughed instead, and damn, my lungs weren’t right. Since when had breathing been so hard? “Thank you… for this.”
“You’re not dying, but you are really sick,” that almost comforting voice said against my ear, his words slow and steady.
“I know. I’ve never been this sick before.”
The arm around my hip moved just a little.
I squeezed my eyes closed and took another painful swallow, trying to put my thoughts in order. “Hey… if something happens to me, if I don’t make it out of here…” I could barely say it. I could barely fucking think it, but I had to. It had been on my mind since I’d been in that room with those assholes.
His body tightened, and I didn’t imagine how gruff his voice came out. “Nothing is going to happen. You’re sick and you’re puny. That’s all.”
I let out a slow breath through my mouth. Me? Puny? “Says the man who couldn’t feed himself,” I mumbled, half expecting him to make a smart-ass comment in reply.
What I got was a chuff.
Did that count as a laugh? Had I made him laugh again? “I’m serious though,” I whispered. “Tell everyone I saved the world. Make it up. Let me at least go down a hero.”
His muscles stayed hard. “You’re not going to die,” The Defender grunted.
I pressed my forehead a little more against the column of his neck. “My last name is Castro. You can tell them my real name if you want, or Gracie, I don’t care. I wouldn’t be able to.” I shivered. “My grandparents never called me Gracie anyway, only people I met did. They usually called memi amor, that means—”
“I know what it means,” he cut me off. His chest rose and fell slowly against my cheek. “You talk in Spanish in your sleep.”
I did? “I do?”
“Yeah.” Neither one of us said anything for a moment until he asked, “Why do you pretend like you don’t know Spanish?”
“I don’t pretend. I’m just not speaking it now just in case they’re listening. I’m paranoid. And why would I have said anything to you when you barely talked to me in English?” I thought about it. “We, my family, never spoke it in public, just at home.” That was why I had never been allowed to call my grandma Abuela. So that no one could pinpoint their accents.
