Damn.
I drew breath, meaning to say something, but I started coughing. It hurt like hell. I gasped as I coughed, feeling as if I was going to rip apart at the seams, and Malcolm woke up at the first expulsion.
“Sadie?” he said, panic coloring his voice. He sat up immediately and moved to the head of the bed, his beautiful artists' hands reaching for me.
I stopped coughing and gave him a weak smile.
“Hey,” I said.
“Sadie,” he replied, and his cherry wood eyes filled with tears. He started shaking his head, leaving me confused. Was he upset I was awake?
I couldn't even get beyond the next thought. I felt like complete ass. It was hard to rally my brain into a coherent pattern, and when I tried to lift my head the room dipped and swirled around me.
Warm hands landed on my shoulders. “Shh, shh,” Malcolm murmured. “Just lay back and rest.”
“I got shot,” I said.
His face became lined with concern. “I know,” he said. “Shit, I'm so sorry, Sadie. It's all my fault. I shouldn't have been so stupid...”
I felt my brows moving into some position or other—probably frowning—but I was still high enough on morphine that I could hardly tell what my face was doing. My confusion must have showed, though, because he drew his lip through his teeth, clearly upset.
“I mean I treated it as a game” he tried to clarify. “I didn't think Don would be that ruthless. I have no idea how he thought he could get away with it, but people backed into corners do crazy things. I should have known he would do whatever it took. I played with your life, all of your life, just to feel something other than emptiness or pain. I'm so selfish... I understand if you won't ever forgive me.”
He is crazy, I thought to myself, vaguely amused. It wasn't like I hadn't known what I was doing, trying to throw myself in front of a man hell-bent on self-destruction. I'd done it before, and got a lot less out of it for my trouble. But there was something special in Malcolm, and I felt an answering spark in me when we were together. Those days on the boat, dancing closer and closer together, had been some of the sweetest of my life, and I couldn't have born the thought of never having that again. So I'd fought hard to save it, and now that was done and Malcolm was here beside me.#p#分页标题#e#
Worth. It.
“Sadie?” He seemed to be waiting to hear his fate.
I gave him a little half-shrug, more that I couldn't really move rather than out of any insolence on my part. “Nobody's perfect,” I rasped at him.
“But... I'm so sorry...”
I managed a tiny smile. “Just don't do it again.”
The sheen of tears disappeared and he smiled at me. A real smile. It took my breath away. Then he lowered his face and buried it in my shoulder.
“You need to rest, Sadie. You have to recover.”
I licked my lips. “Don?” I managed to say.
“In jail, as is his driver and one of my lawyers... I couldn't trust my legal team, so I had to rely on you, and I wish I hadn't. I should have found another way...”
I shook my head, even though he couldn't see it from where he had buried his face. “No big deal,” I managed to tell him.
He lifted his head. “Yes, big deal. You could have died.”
I closed my eyes. His warm hands moved up my throat to my face, smoothing over my cheekbones, covering my brow. “Sadie...” he said.
I fell asleep, just happy to be with him.
The bullet had torn through my side, but miraculously had missed most of my major organs, though I'd been nicked in the liver. The blood loss had been the worst of it, and I learned I'd malingered for a day or so until I was able to be stabilized. It still felt totally wretched, but I got off easy. The driver of the car hadn't been quite so lucky with a bullet bursting a kidney. He'd live, but when I learned about it I felt awful. He probably hadn't known I was going to be killed.
Don, of course, got the least of it with a major concussion and a broken nose, though I guess it was lucky he was coherent because, as I guessed, he tried to tell everyone I was a thief, stealing from my disgraced lover. The thumb drive found in my underwear, of course, told a different story. I wished I could have been awake to see the doctor's faces when they found that. But it freed Malcolm, and though there would be an ongoing investigation into what exactly had happened I had a feeling that Felicia's lawyers would figure out a way to get any charges dropped without my intervention. I focused on getting better.
Eventually the hospital staff let me go home, although Malcolm insisted that the home I go to was his. I didn't really feel like arguing with him. I still needed a lot of help, and it was a bright, sunny day late in March when I was let out of the hospital. When we arrived at his house, Malcolm helped me hobble up the front stairs. The place was still empty, but it felt like a better empty now. The emptiness of possibility, rather than the emptiness of ending. Malcolm cradled me in his arms and carried me all the way up the stairs to the fourth floor, and I wrapped my arms around him and let him. It felt good to be carried. It felt good to be taken care of.