“That sounds like a threat.”
“It is.”
Good.
I take him back into my mouth and keep my eyes on his.
That does it.
His hand tightens in my hair. His head drops back. A broken sound catches in his throat, and then he’s coming, pulse after pulse, his whole body taut and shaking under my hands. I take all of it, every shudder and ragged breath, savoring the hot, vicious little thrill that goes through at seeing him so undone.
The taste is new, saltier and stranger than I expect, intimate in a way that almost hits harder than the act itself. But I swallow anyway, my pulse kicking at the look on his face when I do.
After, he pulls me up into his lap and holds me so tight I can feel his heartbeat hammering against mine. His face buries in my neck and he breathes me in. His arms are shaking, and I don’t think it has to do with the orgasm.
I press my lips to his temple. He doesn’t let go.
The cabin hums. Outside the windows, the world slides by far below, small enough to feel unreal, and somewhere ahead of us, Anna is waiting for me.
I rest my cheek against Luca’s chest and let my eyes trace the cabin. The jet he produced from nothing. The uncle whose face he sketched like he was trying to decode himself.
The way he apologized in the dark last night for something I still don’t understand.
I don’t know what it all adds up to. Not yet.
But Anna first. Anna and the forms and the imaging and the doctors who need my signature to help the only person who ever loved me without conditions.
I’ll hold these questions. Feel their weight and their edges.
And I’ll set them down for now. Not because I trust blindly.
Because I love Anna more than I fear the answers.
24
NATALIA
The wheelsof the jet kiss the tarmac in Las Vegas, and my whole body tightens.
I follow Luca off the plane with my stomach twisted so tight it feels knotted around my spine. A sleek black car waits outside the terminal, and Luca opens the door for me before sliding behind the wheel.
“Address?” he asks.
“Summerlin Medical Center.”
He nods and pulls away from the curb.
Vegas slides past in a blur of palm trees and hard white sun. It should feel good to be home. Instead, every mile deeper into it makes it harder to breathe. I need to get to Anna, and then I need to get back out before my father learns I was ever here.
I must drift off, because the next thing I know Luca is touching my arm gently and the car is slowing beneath the hospital entrance.
“We’re here.”
The hospital is all glass and beige concrete, the kind of building designed to look calming and accomplishing the opposite. The automatic doors part with a soft whoosh of recycled air that smells like floor cleaner and something sad beneath it.
The woman at the information desk directs us to the orthopedic floor. We take the elevator in silence, and when the doors open, I find the nurses’ station and ask for Dr. Okafor.
“Dr. Okafor’s gone for the day,” the nurse tells me. “But I can page the on-call physician to give you an update.”
