Vicious grinned. "Let's fucking do this."
What makes you feel alive?
Being loved. Wildly. Under the open sky. Under the pouring rain. Under a spell that never, ever ends.
"No offense, Rosie, but I don't want anyone to leave me," Dean said when I confronted him about asking Emilia to never leave. At the time, I thought it was because he was a cocky douchebag. Now, it was crystal clear.
He had abandonment issues.
He had abandonment issues, and Millie abandoned him.
It made me irrationally mad at my sister, but also grateful that she did.
Flopping on the bed after Thanksgiving dinner, I thought about the afternoon, about that kiss in the rain-like we were in The Notebook and he was Ryan Gosling and I was obviously delusional-and started giggling. The giggling turned into coughing, which wasn't that surprising.
But then, the coughing turned into blood.
Spitting a lump of bloody phlegm, I stared at it in the tissue in front of me for long seconds, unblinking.
The decision to keep this to myself was immediate. There wasn't much point, anyway. Dean and I were heading back home in a few hours. He was in Los Angeles with his friends, and the last thing I wanted was to throw my whole family into high gear and make them drag me to a nearby hospital. Dr. Hasting used to see me at crazy hours, days and weekends. I could always get to her in New York if it happened again.
I rolled in my bed, side-to-side, unable to get some much-needed sleep. I coughed some more. Then sniffed some. Changed positions to try to figure out the best way to breathe without the mucus blocking my airway. And it was ironic, that my need for Dean was suffocating not him, but me.
No matter how much I enjoyed our love declaration, my body didn't appreciate that it was in the rain.
He told me he loved me.
It brought to me the kind of glee money could never buy. But this happiness was also dunked with dread. Because I knew that someday-someday soon-I was going to die. Die in the middle of this beautiful life he had planned for us.
Would I leave him, a widower in his thirties, with kids to take care of? Would I let him take the fall? How many hearts was I going to break, and why did I stop fighting the need to prevent myself from breaking them?
He told me about Nina.
That was the other reason I couldn't sleep. He tore my heart right out of my chest, and I had no idea how to put it back. Only Dean had this spell over me. The ability to make me feel like I was completely crushed, yet elated in the best possible way. I heard the door to my room creak and coughed into a worn tissue. Squinting my eyes at the material, I detected more dark spots of blood, my shoulder sagging on a sigh.
Thanks, reality. I had a fun ride today, but you just had to ruin it.
"Mill? Shut the door after you. It's chilly." I croaked again.
The door was pushed all the way open this time. Dean walked in, his body bigger than my fears and doubts. He slipped into bed while his clothes, shoes, and coat were still on and pulled the cover up to tuck us both in, then turned around and spooned me from behind. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. The red numbers said six o'clock in the morning.
"What are you doing?" I clutched the toilet paper in my fist and buried it under the duvet before he could see it. He couldn't know. He would want to take me to the ER, and I hated ERs. Emergency rooms were where your soul went to die so that your body would keep functioning.
"No point in getting undressed when we leave in an hour," he murmured into my ear, pressing his hard-on to my ass. He sounded too sleepy for sex. Surprisingly, I wasn't disappointed. I felt like hell, and sex with Dean wasn't something you could wing or half-do.
"How was the meeting?" I rasped.
There was a pause before he answered. "Good."
"Is Trent moving to Todos Santos?"
"Eventually. And in time, so will we."
"Excuse me?"
"Priorities, Rosie. They change. We're changing, too."
"You sound like them," I accused, though I wasn't as mad at Dean as I was at my parents.
"No." He clasped my chin between his fingers and turned my head for a soft, slow kiss. The kind of kiss you give your wife on your wedding day, not to the girl next door you occasionally screw. "I sound like me. And I don't give a fuck about what they want. But I know that you're in New York for the wrong reasons. You can have your independence here, too. The only power people have over you is the amount you give them."
I swallowed, changing the subject. "Did you stop at your dad's?"
"Didn't have time. Dropped Trent off ten minutes ago at his parents' house. He'll have to wait. Why are you awake?"
"I had a lot to process today." Not a lie. That seemed to appease him. I stifled the rest of my coughs to avoid producing more blood. When we finally got to the airport, I locked myself in a restroom.