Page 99 of A Love Most Fatal

Forty-five minutes later, I’m patched up and the nurse brings us water bottles before showing us to a quiet, empty waiting room.

Now, all that’s left for us to do is wait.

A tense and silent moment passes before she lets me fold her in my arms, her face pressing against my chest. I’m not sure if she knows that what happened to her sister is my fault, that the only reason Mary was shot is because I couldn’t get my shit together to pull the trigger when I had a clear shot, that I was as useless as she thought I’d be, too weak to take someone out even though they were right in front of me, gun pointed at me.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur into her hair repeatedly, holding the back of her neck to me.

“You could’ve died,” she says, and I feel her back hitch like she’s crying, holding in a sob.

I squeeze her tighter and smell her hair, which smells predominantly like smoke, but also like the coconut conditionerin her bathroom. I memorize the scent, certain that she’ll never let me hold her again when she knows what I did—what I didn’t do, and how unfit I am to be by her side.

“I’m okay,” I say, and then I say it again, and rub my palm along her back until she stops crying.

35

VANESSA

The surgeryon Mary’s shoulder took three hours, and Nate sat with me to wait. We watched the sun rise through the window of the private waiting room, drank cups of tea and burnt coffee brought to us by hospital staff, and shared a dense bagel.

Rafael needed surgery too, but his was quick, and he was already recovering in a room on the sixth floor, two men stationed at his door just in case. I do not know who attacked us last night, and the worst thing is that, after months of shit like this, I don’t have even anideawho it could be.

I am completely out of depth and have no idea where to go from here.

The lockdown didn’t work. It got Mary and Nate shot. The ever-growing list of reasons I am not cut out for this is miles long at this point.

Leo is out doing his own investigation, but I don’t imagine he’ll find any evidence that points us in the direction of who it was. That would be too easy, and nothing about this has been easy since that first shipment went missing in April.

Nate has been good, a steady presence next to me through the night, but I know he’s spooked. Who wouldn’t be? He gotshot, and that wasn’t even the first time he was almost killed because of me.

If he stays, it most certainly won’t be the last.

Mom arrives around six with Willa on her heels. Sean is at home with the kids, who are anxious to see their aunt Mary better.

“Any news?” Willa asks, though the news is the same as the last time Nate texted her forty minutes ago. Mary is stable, set to make a full recovery. We’ll be able to see her in an hour or so.

“You smell like an ashtray,” Willa says after another minute. “Go home. Mary will be discharged before the end of the day, and if she’s not, you can come back tonight.”

It takes another thirty minutes of her and my mother convincing me that they can handle things here before Nate and I walk out of the hospital the way we came, and despite my protests, he drives us home.

It’s a quiet ride. I can tell something it is eating at him and I’m too afraid to ask him what it is. I don’t want to hear him say that he was wrong, that he takes back what he said and could never be with me. Not when this is my life, and he will have to be afraid for the rest of forever that his life or mine will end with a bullet in one of our skulls.

I get it, I really do. I wouldn’t want this either if I were him. He deserves someone nice, a sweet thing who is good at gardening, has lots of recreational hobbies, someone who will be a good mother to the horde of children he wants to have. I can provide him none of this.

I cry silently, he grips my hand with the one not steering. I’m overdue for my semi-monthly stress cry, and now it all bubbles out of me in hot streams down my cheeks and neck.

All I have to offer him is pain, bloodshed, violence, a life of crime always maintaining our power on the top and sniffing out rats when threatened. I won’t be a good mother, not one who willdo anything to protect their baby from the horrors of the world, I will have to show them these horrors firsthand and teach them how to fight the demons that crawl in the shadows. It’s not something I can escape.

He doesn’t leave my side when we get home, both of us stripping out of our dirty clothes before stepping into the shower together. I let myself cry a little more with the hot water streaming down my face, and he washes my hair with gentle fingers massaging my scalp before rinsing it and repeating the process with conditioner. He does the same with the soap, lathering up his hands and sweeping them over my body, not missing any place from behind my ears to my feet.

I help him and don’t pull away when his lips fall on mine, soft and sweet kisses on my lips before they travel down my neck. They feel like a plea or an apology, and I wonder if he knows the same truth that’s settling over me like a heavy curse:

This is the last I will have him.

I’d already decided as soon as I’d heard that gunshot when Mary called his name. I knew then I couldn’t do this to him, I couldn’t ask him to live this life. It’s not him who can’t do this, it’s me—I won’t let this man live in danger like this for me, it’s not fair.

I will not be the death of Nate Gilbert. I refuse to be the reason he doesn’t breathe on this Earth. It’s selfish, and I know he is an adult, old enough to make his own decisions, but he has no idea what it will be like.

He knows three months in my house, summer nights watching movies and swimming with us in a warm pool. He knows being with my family around the dinner table and practicing fighting in a basement. He doesn’t know what it will be like really, how it will feel to be married to someone who must be cold and ruthless every day of the year. He can’t imagine whatit will feel like to know who I’ve killed, and to have to know his kids will kill too.