Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

Cinna

For just a short, dream-soaked, disconnected moment, there was no agony as I slipped from unconsciousness to awake.

But before my eyes—or eye , in this case, since the other was swollen shut—fluttered open, the pain shot through me.

Each area fought for recognition.

My feet pulsed.

My wrist ached.

My ribs screamed.

My face throbbed.

And my head jackhammered.

I lay there, unable to do anything but try to breathe through it, try to fight back the wave of tears that welled up again as the pain just kept coming in endless waves.

A small, wounded animal sound escaped me as I pressed my good hand to my forehead, like pressure might be able to push some of the pain away.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Dav’s voice said, small, soft, close.

My eye slitted open to find him already beside the bed, his eyes squinted small as he looked at me.

“That good, huh?” I asked, sniffling, realizing I’d been crying without realizing it.

“You’ve looked better, pretty girl,” he said, putting something down on the nightstand, then twisting open a bottle of water. “I found some pain meds. The good shit,” he explained.

By ‘found,’ it, I imagined he sent one of his associates or soldiers out to buy some.

“It’s legit,” he added at my silence. “And it’ll help. Don’t be a hero, Cin.”

“I’m not. Give me two,” I demanded, trying to push up, only to fall back with a humiliating cry of pain.

“Let me,” he said, soft, understanding.

He came closer, putting the bottle of water in my good hand, then reaching under my head to tilt it up enough that I wouldn’t choke.

“Open up,” he demanded, then pressed the pills onto my tongue before taking the bottle from me and tipping it against my lips. “More,” he demanded when I only sipped enough to swallow the pills. “Alright,” he said, gently lowering me down, then capping the bottle and placing it on the nightstand.

“What time is it?” I asked, glancing over toward the window, but he had some thick-ass blackout curtains pulled. Likely due to his nocturnal nature, always catching sleep when the sun was up.

“Six in the morning. You haven’t been asleep long,” he told me. “But those pills should get you another couple of deep hours. Got plenty more. Figure maybe not being conscious much today might be a good move.”

“No objections here,” I said, pressing my hand to my head again, trying to breathe through it, reminding myself that in less than an hour, the pills would be kicking in, and I would feel better.

But no amount of assurances were helping me right in that moment. And no amount of ego could keep the whimpers or tears in.

“Oh, baby,” Dav said, voice soft. “It’s going to get better,” he said, and the mattress was depressing from my other side, his body slipping close to me.

His arm lifted, hovering, aware how half my body was wounded, and not wanting to hurt me.

Eventually, he wrapped it around my hips, fingers digging in, his face in my hair. Just… being there.

And as someone who’d never had anyone to be there for me, his willingness to just be there while I suffered, not asking anything of me or trying to feed me hollow reassurances, only made me fucking cry harder.

“Everything hurts,” I admitted, hating how small and weak my voice sounded, but unable to do anything about it.

“I know,” he said, arm tightening, giving me the closest thing to a hug my body would allow. “I know it does.”

Eyes squeezed shut, I found myself oddly confessional. “I almost didn’t make it.”

“You did, though. That’s all that matters. You made it. One thing I know about you, Cin, you’ll claw your way out with your nails and teeth if that’s all you got. Never met anyone as fucking strong as you.”

“Don’t be nice,” I begged, his words only making my eyes leak harder and my lower lip tremble.

I would never say I was someone who needed reassurances. If anything, I’d worked my ass off to never require external validation. But Dav’s words were doing something to me right then. And I both loved and hated it in equal turns.

“Okay,” he said, and I could feel his lips curve up against my hair. “You’re a really fucking terrible pool player. In case anyone hasn’t reminded you of that lately.”

A sound that was an odd mix of a laugh and a cry escaped me at that.

“And you make coffee way too fucking strong. It’s like drinking sludge.”

“Just because you need a pound of sugar in your coffee doesn’t mean mine isn’t good.”

“I got an immediate ulcer the last time I choked down a cup,” he insisted.

“Your weak stomach has nothing to do with me,” I said, realizing that the tears had disappeared, and my lip was dangerously close to curving up.

“Your knife throwing skills also need work,” he said.

“Those are fighting words,” I said, turning my head on the pillow, not realizing just how close he was until I was facing him, our noses practically brushing.

“Fine. Then as soon as you can move without something hurting, we will have a contest,” he said, cocky in his belief that he’d beat me.

“I’ll wipe the floor with you.”

“And I’ll try to pretend I don’t enjoy the fuck out of that,” he said, giving me that smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle ever so slightly.

This Dav was easier for me to deal with. The playful, flirtatious one that I’d built up a wall against for years.

I had no defenses to the soft and sweet Dav, the one full of praise and admiration.

“Tell me one of your stories,” I demanded.

“One of my stories?” he asked.

“Right. Like you don’t know what I’m talking about. One of those stories you are always telling a crowd of people at Renzo’s house.”

“Did I ever tell you the story about when I was spending the summer with my aunt and uncle over in Pennsylvania?” he asked.

“No,” I admitted, surprised how excited I was to hear something new about his life. Especially his childhood, which he was almost as closed-lipped about as I was about my own.

“So, we were sixteen, right?” he started, slipping into the magnetic voice and cadence he always had when he was telling a story. “And we were really fucking interested in what was under a girls’ skirt.”

“Ugh,” I grumbled. Of all his stories, the ones that involved his escapades with women had always rubbed me the wrong way for reasons I didn’t care to analyze.

“Hang on with me,” he said. “Anyway, he had this basement that his parents had kind of converted into a bedroom and ‘kid space’ when my cousins became teenagers. Had two bedrooms, a bath, plus a common space with a pool table, video games, the usual shit. Had those external doors too, so we waited until his parents went to bed, then snuck some girls in.

“Turns out, my cousins each had a thing for these sisters. And, well, shit started to get hot and heavy in the common area where I was crashing on the couch. So they took the girls off into the bedrooms. And… shit was getting noisy.

“Then, like a fucking bad teen movie, I heard the creak of footsteps from above. From the parents’ bedroom, through the house, and getting close to the doors.”

“Uh oh.”

“Exactly.”

“What did you do?” I asked, knowing most of his stories featured him as the lead.

“Grabbed my phone, brought up some porn, and broadcast that shit on the main TV. Room filled with a chick getting airtight with a group of others just waiting around for their turn, jerking off. Turned that shit up loud as the door to the basement opened, then went under the covers and pretended I was having a good, late-night fap all to myself.”

“Oh, god,” I grumbled, shaking my head.

“Needless to say, my uncle rushed the fuck back up the stairs. Couldn’t look me in the face the rest of that month,” he admitted. “But my cousins had the best five minutes of their lives that night.”

“Five minutes, huh? What is that? Twice your best time?” I teased.

“What I might lack in sheet time, I more than make up for in my on my knees time.”

Right.

As if the tales of Davide’s fucking skills weren’t practically legendary in Brooklyn. I mean, the tales of his head game were just as widespread, but, yeah, he only joked about it because we both knew the man was, apparently, some sort of sex god.

Not that I cared.

Or had ever wondered about what he was like in bed.

Or what he was packing.

Nope.

My mind definitely never went there.

“Those meds kicking in?” he asked as I tried to ignore the way his fingers were no longer stationary on my hip, but were instead searing a trail down my hip and my outer thigh. It was a whisper of a touch. But I felt every freaking centimeter his fingers traveled.

“Yeah,” I said, the throbbing just slightly more tolerable. Enough that I wasn’t actively crying anymore, at least. Which was a win in my book. I’d cried more in this one night than I had in the past fucking decade. Or maybe ever. I was pretty sure I didn’t even cry much as a baby. My mother would never have responded to my wails anyway.

“Close your eyes,” he suggested, his fingers still working their soothing magic up and down my hip and thigh.

That sounded like a good idea to me, so I let my lashes flutter closed, getting lost in the warmth of him beside me, the feel of his fingers on me, the scent of him all around me.

That, mixed with the meds cutting my pain, and I practically wanted to purr at the comfort I felt enveloped in right then.

I was mostly asleep when I heard Dav’s voice break into the floating bliss I was enveloped in.

“I’m gonna track down each one of the motherfuckers who put their hands on you,” he said, voice a whisper, likely thinking I was out cold. “And I am going to skin them fucking alive for this.”

If you only ever knew Dav at the surface level, you would be apt to roll your eyes at that declaration. No one would blame you. Dav had a lot of, well, surface. A lot of joviality and bravado, this extroverted shell that appeared so open and lighthearted.

But those of us who’d been in the trenches with Davide knew that all that surface was just there to hide the depths inside of him.

A well that was fed endlessly with darkness and violence.

I had no idea what had happened in Dav’s past to create the kind of rage and bloodlust you could find inside him at times.

I just knew it existed.

And when he was saying dark things like that, he wasn’t just saying things. He meant every last word.

Normally, I would bristle at the idea that a man, any man, would suggest that I needed him to fight my battles for me.

Somehow, though, as I drifted off to sleep, all I could think was how nice it would be for someone else to pick up my fight for me for a change.