Page 20 of Cardinal House
“He lives!” Archer cackles, his smile all straight, white teeth.
Doesn't matter that I saw him last night, where I was, and still remain to be, far from my deathbed.
“That’s not funny, I actually almost died, dick’ead,” I frown, scowling at him as he lifts my duffle bag from the floor, and tosses it over his shoulder.
My legs are hanging over the side of the bed, joggers on, sans underwear, I was so out of breath after showering for a whole four minutes and towelling off, before trying to reach my feet to hook my bottoms on, I couldn’t be fucking bothered.
I breathe out hard, everything feels fucking exhausting, all this moving around is not fun. I suddenly wonder if going home alone to Cardinal House is even a smart idea. That huge plot, all those buildings.
Jesus Christ, I’ll have a lot of work to do.
I insisted I’ll be fine, but… will I?
“You need help?” Hunter grunts the question, staring at me through the straight, black hair that’s fallen over his eye.
“Fuck off,” I huff stubbornly, I know I was shot, but I don’t want to need help.
But the door opens at his back, a wheelchair pushing around my brother, his dark eyes on it as the woman steering it just narrowly misses running over his toes.
Luna wheels the chair right up to me alongside the bed, her long fingers curling around the handles. She looks up at me, my chest heaving as I continue to catch my breath, still bare without a shirt, and she lifts her brows.
The action makes me want to laugh.
She doesn’t pull them high, not in the way Haisley would, fast, and lifted on her forehead, arched with wide eyes and pursed lips. She’d demand I get in the chair without any words passing between us at all.
But this, the way Luna is so fucking delicate and blank, but I feel like I can see whatever it is she isn’t showing to the rest of the room, it makes my breath hard to catch for an entirely different reason.
“You need to use this,” she says softly, her voice still that rough little crack.
It’s all I hear in my dreams now.
“And if I don’t?” I challenge, lifting a brow, my heart bangs around inside my healing chest cavity and I'm sure it can’t be good for my health, but I don’t care.
At least I’m not hooked up to any more monitors that bleep when it happens, it was starting to get embarrassing, the dramatic beeping when my heart rate rose high, it only happened every time she entered the room.
She frowns slightly, only just barely enough to create a tiny little crease between her black brows, “You’ll end up back here,” she tells me like I was asking her a serious question, and not just playing around.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Archer purrs, draped like a human sloth in the chair behind me as I peer over my shoulder to scowl at him, my duffle bag on the floor discarded by his feet again. “Don’t you know…” he cocks his head, his sentence only half finished, it’s not a question.
Luna blinks, almost adorably confused, she’s so fucking smart, but she just doesn’t seem to get social cues, banter, jokes, it’s all sort of lost on her.
“Know what?” she asks, genuinely unsure of what Archer could possibly mean.
I stare at my brother harder, his playful grin widening, his eyes still on her, “This is exactly where he wants to be.”
I sigh heavily, scrubbing my hands down my face, before lifting my gaze onto hers, my hands thudding into my lap.
“Why would you want to stay in the hospital?” she whispers, stepping around the wheelchair so she’s in front of me, and she genuinely doesn’t know why.
Despite Archer winding her up, he's not wrong, I’d stay here forever if it meant I’d get to spend every night with her.
Without thinking, I reach over to cup her face, and she doesn’t flinch this time, she doesn’t step back, she lets me touch her, and my heart sings.
“Because you’re here,” I whisper back.
And it doesn’t matter that my brothers are here. It doesn’t matter that we’ve only just met and don’t really know each other. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t fully trust me yet, not enough to tell me her heartache, her secrets, her joy.
None of it fucking matters because I just know I want her.