Page 132 of Contempt

Right?

“Lucia,” Renzo murmured.

“I was so scared,” she whispered.

Renzo swallowed hard, and nodded. “I know—I’m sorry.”

“Don’t … God, don’t apologize for doing an amazing thing, Ren.”

He tipped his head to the side, and chuckled. “You know, the police finally stopped hounding me yesterday, and your father explained the bits I was missing. Some of it came back, and some of it was still a black hole. I still can’t remember why I decided to let the wires go. I remember that I didn’t want to die.”

Oh, God.

Those tears she had been holding back finally made their appearance known when she blinked. They tracked lines down her cheeks, but she didn’t even bother to wipe them away or try to hide her emotions.

“I wasn’t ready,” he said after a moment.

“But you still did it.”

Renzo let out a loud exhale. “I don’t know why, though.”

Lucia nodded. “But would you do it again?”

That took him a little longer to answer. She didn’t know what he would say, and she didn’t have any expectations about it, either. It was his right to answer her question the way he wanted to—honestly, if he wanted. Or a lie, if he needed.

“Knowing what I know about the situation and the bomb … and the fact seventeen men were able to go home and tell someone they loved them again, yeah.” Renzo glanced up and met her gaze. “Even if that meant I didn’t get to do that same thing again—you already knew, right? Did you need me to tell you again?”

Lucia dragged in a ragged breath. “I need you to tell me that every single day of my life, Renzo.”

“Okay, baby. Okay.”

It seemed like with that out of the way, an invisible rope had come to tie itself around Lucia’s middle. Something yanked on it, and her feet started moving. She couldn’t stop, either. Not until she was all the way across the hospital room, and got her hands on this man she loved entirely too much.

She loved him crazy.

Lucia wrapped her arms around him, but not too tightly. Not that it mattered, he tried to wrap his other arm around her back—his only one that wasn’t in a cast. She felt the tremor working its way through his arm as she pulled back, and he tried to touch the side of her face with his palm. His arm just wouldn’t lift.

Renzo let out an angry noise, and shook his head. “Sorry, I just—”

“No, it’s okay,” she whispered quickly, dropping a kiss to his scowling lips to make him smile again. “Promise.”

When she felt his lips curve against her own, she kissed him again. And then again until her lungs were burning with the need for air, but she didn’t care. She needed his kiss as hungry and desperate as it was. She needed his lips working against hers to bring her back to reality because it felt like she had been in hell for far too long.

In the background, something beeped.

Entirely too loud.

Renzo pulled away with a chuckle, but tossed a glare over his shoulder at the machine that had made the offending noise. It looked like it was monitoring his blood pressure and heartrate. “Fucking thing—it gives me warnings.”

She grinned, and stroked his face.

Someone had shaved him.

It should have been her.

“Does it?”

Renzo nodded. “Yesterday, when they let Cree come in … it kept beeping, and they made him leave. I couldn’t get them to understand that’s what I needed. He was pushing me, and I needed it.”