“If you do not mind staying with me a little longer, you might permit me to live with you in the hospital for the foreseeable future.”
“Of course! Of course I would!”
“Good. Tonight, we will sleep here. Tomorrow, Rivven and I will get the roof on the hospital. We will also need to return to get Bart and Berta at some point. We can examine the damage, and check if any of your things survived.”
“I don’t see how any of it could have,” she said sadly. “Except…”
“Except?”
“Except the ring. The diamond, anyway.”
“And if we do find that ring unblemished among the wreckage,” I asked her, “what will you do with it?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a human shrug. “I hadn’t decided yet.”
She hadn’t decided if she’d forgive him or not. Perhaps I yet had a chance to sway her. It was selfish of me to do it. But it turned out I was capable of great selfishness when it came to her.
“Do not accept it. Do not wear that ring.”
“P-pardon?!”
“Go from this world if you must when it is time.” My jaw hurt. My words hissed between my fangs. “But do not go back to him.”
She blinked wet eyelashes at me. “Why do you care if I go back to him?”
“Because he does not deserve you!” I barely kept it from being a shout. “I do not think that any man alive does deserve you, in all honesty. But of those available, he has to be at the very bottom of the list!”
“Of those available?” She swallowed, and I needed so badly to palm her throat. To feel it happen. “Who else is available, then?”
Me!I wanted to scream it.
“Well, there is Xennet and Dorn…”
“I don’t want Xennet or Dorn. And I don’t want Bryson, either.”
Those words were like salve on a wound.
“I want someone else.”
A terrible, poisonous hope seized me then.
“Who?”
“He’s a big, kind of grumpy guy. Crazy about rules and tidiness.”
The hope grew.
“I thought he had a big stick up his ass the first time we met.”
And the hope promptly deflated. For I had never put such an item up my anus.
“Who the blazes are you talking about?” I asked when I could stand it no longer. “Who would put a stick up his-”
“It’s you, Hallum! Who else could it be?”
“But I do not have the stick.”
“It’s a figure of speech. It just means you’re not the relaxed type.” She took a shaky breath. “I love you, Hallum. I’m in love with you. I was going to tell you tonight when you got home…before…”
