Something Wicked 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)

12: Broken heartbeats

MARÍA GENERAL HOSPITAL, November 7

White morning sunlight crept under my eyelids, waking me from my doze. My shoulder ached from hours of being wedged into a lumpy hospital armchair. Dante was awake, swaddled by blankets and gazing at me with that heart-stopping smile of his.

"¡Dito!" I lunged toward the bed, clutching at blankets and bedsheets. "Are you OK? You were so cold. I—"

My scar burst alight with pain. I sucked on my lip to hold back a scream, my hand clawing at my arm. My skin was decorated with dead scar tissue from countless gashes that had faded with time, yet this scar on my arm always seemed alive, writhing like a worm under my skin. And always with Dante.

"Shh, Jay. I'm OK." Dante prised my white-knuckled fingers from the bedsheet and slotted his hand into mine. "Does your scar always hurt with me?"

I nodded through the agony. The sweep of Dante's fingertips against my palm, and the pain in my scar simmered to a dull ache.

"Yeah," I whimpered. "But it...st-stops hurting with y-you too."

"Shh, Jay. Everything's OK."

Everything did look OK. Dante seemed his usual perfect self; save dark rings under his eyes I'd never have guessed he'd almost died of hypothermia hours earlier. The tingle of Dante's warm palm against mine soothed me. My breaths came easier.

"I don't get it. Your heart stopped. I was so bad at warming you up. I thought—"

"Shh, Jay. My heart didn't stop." Dante guided my trembling fingertips to his wrist. "See?"

I closed my eyes, waiting for the familiar ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum of Dante's heart to jump against my fingers. But his pulse was erratic, like his heart was playing its own bizarre melody. A minute of listening revealed its beat pattern. Dum...ba-dum...ba...ba, then a pause that was too fucking long for Dante to still be alive, followed by a return of the dum...ba-dum...ba...ba pattern. Sometimes with the petrifying pause, sometimes without, the trippy beat of Dante's pulse woulda scared the shit outta me if I hadn't been reassured by his warm hand against mine, and his shy little smile.

"My heart doesn't beat the same as yours, see?"

"Has it always been like that?"

"No." Dante's smile dimmed. His fingers shrunk away from me. "It's...it's recent."

"What happened? Did you get injured collecting intel for the Alcor case?" One of Alcor's operatives musta hurt him. How brutal had the attack been if Dante's heart was permanently damaged? Rage began to stir under my skin. It melted into a liquid fury that charged my muscles. If Dante could identify his attacker I'd find them. I'd make them pay, whatever the cost to myself. "Who hurt you?"

Dante lowered his beautiful eyes, his forehead creased like he was reliving the same scene over and over in his head. He looked so fragile then that I dropped his wrist, worried that even my touch might hurt him. Maybe nobody had attacked him during his intel work; maybe losing Steph had literally broken his heart.

"I'm OK," he whispered. "The doctors said my heart's strong. Everything's OK."

Dante was safe and well, and not frozen to death. We'd made it.

Finally convinced that Dante wasn't gonna keel over in cardiac arrest, I gave him a shy smile back. "How long you been awake?"

"About twenty minutes."

I slid my phone outta my Hamish-McCloud-slacks and eyeballed the screen with a gasp. "Ten AM! You shoulda woken me!"

"You needed the sleep."