“I can take care of myself,” she murmured, not very convincingly when the tears were streaming down her cheeks now.
“Yes, you can. And you have. But you deserve something more out of life. I don’t want you to be afraid to live, or to love, Dylan. Can you promise me that?”
Before Dylan could say anything, the door swung open and one of the attending nurses came in with a couple new bags of fluids. “How we doing, Sharon? How’s your pain right now?”
“I could use a little something,” she said, her eyes sliding to Dylan as if she’d been hiding her discomfort until now.
Which, of course, she had been. Everything was much worse than Dylan wanted to accept. She got up from the bed and let the nurse do her thing. After she was gone, Dylan came back over to her mother’s side. It was so hard not to break down, to be the strong one as she looked down into the soft green eyes and saw that the spark in them—the fight that needed to be there—was gone.
“Come here and give me a hug, baby.”
Dylan leaned down and wrapped her arms around the delicate shoulders, unable to dismiss the fragility of her mother’s entire being. “I love you, Mom.”
“And I love you.” Sharon sighed as she settled back against the pillow. “I’m tired, sweetheart. I need to rest now.”
“Okay,” Dylan answered, her voice thick. “I’ll just stay here with you while you sleep.”
“No, you won’t.” Her mother shook her head. “I won’t have you sitting here worrying about me. I’m not going to leave you tonight, or the next day, or even next week—I promise. But you need to go home now, Dylan. I want that for you.”
Home, Dylan thought, as her mother drifted off to a drug-induced sleep. The word felt oddly empty to her when she pictured her apartment and the few possessions she had there. That wasn’t home to her. If she had to go somewhere now, somewhere she felt safe and protected, that pitiful hole in the wall wasn’t it. Never really had been.
Dylan rose from the bed and turned to leave the room. As she wiped at her teary eyes, her gaze lit on a shadowed face and broad shoulders silhouetted by the hallway lights outside.
Rio.
He’d found her, followed her there.
Where her every instinct should have been to run away from him, Dylan went to him instead. She pulled open the door and met him outside her mother’s room, incapable of speaking as she wrapped her arms around his solid warmth and wept softly into his chest.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Three
H e hadn’t expected her to run to him when she saw him standing there.
Now that Dylan was in his arms, her body trembling as she cried, Rio found himself at a complete loss. He’d worked up a healthy amount of anger and suspicion in the time it took him to track her across the city. His head was ringing from all the noise, and from the endless, overcrowded presence of humans everywhere he looked. His temples were screaming from the bright lights, all of his senses battering him from within.
But none of that mattered in the long moments he stood there, holding Dylan, feeling her shake with bone-deep fear and anguish. She was hurting, and Rio felt an overwhelming need to protect her. He didn’t want to see her in pain like this.
Madre de Dios, but he hated seeing her this way.
He caressed her delicate back, pressed his mouth to the top of her head where it nestled beneath his chin, murmuring quiet words of reassurance. Feeble gestures, but all he could think to do for her.
“I’m so afraid I’m going to lose her,” she whispered. “Oh, God, Rio…I’m terrified.”
He didn’t have to guess at who Dylan was talking about. The patient sleeping in the adjacent room had the same creamy coloring, the same fiery-hued hair as the younger version Rio was holding in his embrace.
Dylan tilted her tear-streaked face up at him. “Will you take me out of here, please?”
“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.” Rio smoothed his thumbs over her cheeks, erasing the wet tracks. “Do you want to go home?”
Her sad little laugh sounded so broken, lost, somehow. “Can we just…walk for a little while?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He nodded, tucking her under his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
They walked in silence, down to the elevator and then out of the hospital to the warm night outside. He didn’t know where to take her, so he just walked with her. A few blocks up from the hospital was a footbridge that led to the East River promenade. They crossed it, and as they strolled along the water’s edge, Rio felt people staring at him as they passed on the walkway.