Chapter 86

VEDA

He wasn’t lying. My room was exactly as I’d left it, all the way down to the crumpled blankets on the bed and my sneakers kicked off in the corner.

Grateful to be alone, I took a deep breath and froze. It smelled like Luca in here. Had he been creeping around in my room while I was gone? Looking for what? Too tired to think about it, I just shook my head and went to the closet to find something to sleep in. The sun was coming up, but I was so fucking tired. I needed to sleep. And strangely enough, I felt safe here.

As I pulled off my dead sister’s clothes and left them lying in a heap on the bathroom floor, I had to wonder, what was he planning to do with me now? The game was up. Mario knew who I was. Or rather, who I wasn’t. And Luca hadn’t so much as asked me to close my eyes when we drove to his house, which meant I knew the location of the house now. His private sanctuary that, by his own words, not even his own family knew about.

What the hell did that mean?

Turning on the shower, I gave it a minute to warm up before stepping beneath the spray. A hiss of pain escaped me when the water ran over my body, but I refused to look down to see the reason why. Wouldn’t watch as the water ran bloody down the drain.

For a while I just stood there, letting the shower beat down on the back of my neck, my eyes squeezed shut, as much to hold back the tears as so I wouldn’t see. I was so done with all of this. I just wanted to walk out the door and go back to my boring, lonely life. Forget everything that had happened.

But even as I longed for the life that had been torn out from under me, a part of me rebelled against the idea. Ached at the very thought. I was too tired to analyze it. And too tired to deny it. So what I did was ignore it as I washed my hair and body, turned off the shower, and reached for the towel on the rack, carefully keeping my emotions in check because I was afraid that once I set them free, I would never recover.

For the second time since I’d come in here, I froze. Someone was in my room. I could hear them moving around. I walked over to the partially open door and listened. Whoever it was, it sounded like they were making my bed.

Assuming it was Lisa, I closed the door and finished drying off before I pulled on my sleep shorts and the T-shirt with the multicolored peace signs all over it. I loved this set. It saddened me that my blood might ruin it. With that in mind, I started opening the cabinet doors, looking for something I could use as a bandage. I found a first aid kit under the sink and took out the gauze bandages and some medical tape.

It was hard to cover things up without looking in the mirror, but I just went by the way it burned and hoped the bandage was large enough. When I was finished, I hid the wrappers back in the first aid kit and put it back under the sink.

When I opened the door, I was surprised to find Luca in there, smoothing down a clean top sheet on my bed. “What are you doing?”

He glanced up, his eyes traveling from the top of my head to my bare feet, then stood and picked up the comforter from the floor. “I wanted you to have a clean bed to sleep in.”

“Have you been sleeping in here?”

If my question caught him off guard, he didn’t show it. Walking around the bed, he pulled the comforter up over the pillows and evened it out over the side of the mattress. “I did last night.”

“Why?”

Finished with what he was doing, he straightened and looked me right in the eye. “Because I missed you.”

“You missed me?” I barely bit back a laugh.

“I did. I was worried about you, Veda.”

Holy shit. The gall of this guy. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?” I asked him. “You were going to shoot me, Luca.”

“I didn’t shoot you.”

My exhausted brain tried to keep up with what he was saying. Was he trying to tell me that he never planned to shoot me at all? But no, that wasn’t true. He was. I’d felt it all the way down to my bones both that night, and now. And would it matter either way? Really? This guy had done nothing but fuck with me since the moment he laid eyes on me. “But you were going to shoot me.”

He was quiet for a long time. “Yes,” he finally said.

Yes.

His expression was completely impassive. I couldn’t read him. And honestly, I didn’t want to try. I just wanted to sleep. Maybe forever. “Please get out of my room. I can’t talk to you right now. I just want to sleep.” Walking over to the bed, I pulled back the clean blankets and climbed in.

“Veda, we need to talk.”

“Luca, please. I’m so fucking tired.”

After a moment, he said, “Okay.”

I heard something rustling behind me and assumed he was picking up the dirty sheets. So I was surprised when a gust of cool air hit my back right before his warm body curled around mine, his muscular arm sliding around my waist and holding me there when I stiffened and tried to pull away. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“You can sleep with me here, or you cannot sleep at all and we can talk. Either way, I’m not fucking leaving your side right now.” He was quiet a moment, and then, “I can’t leave your side right now.”

Jesus Christ. Was this guy for real? After everything I’d been through the last week, I didn’t think it would be possible, but eventually, I started to relax against him. My eyes slid closed, and my mind shut down as sleep started to pull me under.

Luca slid his hand beneath my tee, moaning when he laid it flat on the bare skin of my stomach. I tried to stay awake, fully expecting him to try to fuck me. And I couldn’t let him do that, even if I wanted to. I couldn’t let him see. But he didn’t try anything. And eventually, his even breathing lulled me into unconsciousness. So I wasn’t sure if it was real or not when I heard him whisper, “I’m never letting you go again, my vita. My life.”