“I will, darling. I will.”
She waves me away and it’s my permission to leave.
The inside of the estate is distinctly cooler than the conservatory, so I wrap my arms around myself while walking the walls in search of Falco.
Maybe leaving the estate isn’t such a bad idea.
Falco’s in the gym, the one place he spends his time when he’s not following me like a shadow.
I approach him slowly, studying the way he plants himself on the bench and raises a bar above his head.
It’s weighed down with more weights than I can calculate without seeing the plate numbers, and my heart lifts slightly as I watch.
No wonder he could pick me up like I weighed absolutely nothing. Everything that happened at the safehouse was terrifying in its own way, but there are moments I cling to.
Being carried in Falco’s arms, his trust in me to poorly drive, his hands on mine as we washed together.
Small things that surely mean nothing but when stacked with what he did to me in the shower, meaning slowly forms in my mind.
I wait silently until he slams the bar back down onto the safety hooks, his arms falling down to the floor while he pants heavily.
His torso, a patchwork of scars, gleams with sweat and heat coils low in my gut as I stare at him.
“Falco?”
He rolls his head back to look at me, then slowly sits up. “Everything okay?”
“Mhm.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I…” My words catch in my throat as he turns and I glimpse the fresh, still healing wound on his flank from the second bullet he took from me.
It rises and falls as he grabs his towel and my heart rate picks up.
Just below it is the second scar from the bullet he took for me in the restaurant. “Does it hurt?”
“Does what hurt?”
Stepping forward, my hands move before my mind catches up. I light touch the fresh pink scar.
Falco immediately spins around to face me, patting his neck and chest dry.
“Those scars.”
“A little.”
“Is it safe for you to do all this so soon? I mean… There was so much blood when you uh…” I can’t even say it.
“It’s safe as long as I don’t do anything drastic,” Falco replies. “It’s not the first time I’ve been shot.”
“I thought bullets always killed people.”
“No.” His chest rises slightly. “If you aim with precision, then yes. And sometimes if you don’t then you can get lucky. Butthese? It’s just meat that they hit. Painful and heavy bleeders but everything important is fine.”
“That’s lucky,” I murmur as a soft rush of relief washes through me. “For a while I was worried it was only adrenaline keeping you alive.”
“Adrenaline and determination.”
