I was wrong.
They were worse.
Way worse.
Murphy coughed beside me, and I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the doctor to make sure he was okay.
He’d been doing that a lot.
I didn’t think he even realized just how much he was coughing—especially while he was asleep last night.
Sleep that was restless at best—another sign that he was in end-stage congestive heart failure.
The next five minutes, Dr. Battle explained it all, starting with Murphy’s first heart attack, ending with one he’d suffered just a few months ago—two days after he’d delivered my baby—and ending with what was next for Murphy.
Which was a whole lot of hoping, praying, and waiting.
“We’ve had Mr. Romano on the donor list for about four months now.” He paused. “Ideally, he may look like he’s doing well on the outside, but he’s struggling hard. I give him about two weeks, and then he’ll be on oxygen.”
I didn’t think he was looking good.
I could see the decline in his health very obviously now that I knew the signs.
“What are the chances that he’ll find a heart?” I asked the hardest question I’d ever had to voice.
“One in ten people on the donor list that need a heart, get one,” Dr. Battle explained.
“Fuck,” I whispered softly.
“It’s a hope, wait, and pray game.” Dr. Battle admitted. “He’s on the list. He’s young. He’s healthy other than his heart. He has a very high likelihood of receiving a heart if one becomes available to him.”
Meaning, someone had to die for Murphy to live.
At that moment in time, I prayed for someone to die.
That might make me selfish.
That might make me a bitch.
That might make me evil.
Whatever you called it, I didn’t care.
What I cared about was Murphy.
“What about working out?” I asked. “That can’t be good for him.”
I tossed Murphy a glance, seeing his face fully blank.
The man could pull off blank better than anyone I knew.
“I discussed that with him last week.” Dr. Battle sounded frustrated. “He agreed this would be his last week working out.”
I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat.
I’d never felt more blindsided in my life.
I felt betrayed.
I felt…raw.
“What can we do to make this better for him?” I wondered. “What do I need to do?”
Dr. Battle looked from me to Murphy and back.
“Quality of life from this stage forward is just going to get worse. When it gets to the point where Murphy can’t make it to the bathroom and back without needing help, we’ll start him on oxygen.” He paused. “Soon, he’ll need it even sitting still.”
I felt my heart all but sink.
“His appetite will go. He’ll sleep fitfully. And pretty much, from here on out, there will be a decline in all aspects of his life. We’ve already started him on drugs that’ll help with those things, but at this point, there is only so much medically we can do to help.”
Meaning, he would die.
There was no other option.
Either get a heart and live, or don’t get one and die.
I literally felt sick to my stomach.
There were no words, either, for what I was feeling.
Sorrow. Hatred. Despair. Utter exhaustion. Sickened.
Jesus, the entire Webster’s Dictionary couldn’t help at that moment in time.
“What now?” I asked. “Where is he on the transplant list?”
The doctor frowned as he shrugged. “I could contact the hospital but…”
But it wasn’t good.
Whatever number he was at, it wasn’t going to be any time soon.
“As for what’s next…next we just try to stay as healthy as possible. That means no going out to stores. Continue having groceries and your errands ran,” the doctor continued, but my head went a little fuzzy.
My sister had been delivering him groceries for months. Six of them almost.
He’d known for six months at least that things were really bad.
“…I highly recommend no more CrossFit. I know you like it, but it’s time to admit that it’s not going to happen for you anymore.”
I felt my stomach sink.
“We need to be careful because you could also suffer another heart attack,” he continued. “So you need to be sure to have someone with you at all times. Or, if that’s not possible, then we need to be sure to have a way to contact someone if something goes wrong. I want you to always carry aspirin.”
He continued to list all the things that Murphy couldn’t do, and by the time we were walking out of the office, I felt like my head was going to explode.
I’d, of course, gone silent.
There wasn’t a single thing that I could do to fix this, and it was seriously getting on my nerves.
We got into my van, and I sat silently fuming for a few long seconds while he navigated his way out of the parking lot.
We passed by the main hospital, and I glared at it as I passed, because tomorrow I would have to return to work, and that sounded like the worst thing in the world to me.
The more I worked, the less time I had to spend with Murphy.
And, apparently, I had a lot less than I’d planned to have after last night.
My worries for what was wrong with him—I thought something small was wrong. Not this—had seriously gone way past the stratosphere of possibility.
And now I didn’t know what to think. What to say. What to do.
But I knew what I wanted.
Him. For as long as I had left.
“Do…do you want to stay at my place?” I asked quietly. “Do you want to come stay with me and Vlad? You could…”
“I’ll stay the night,” he offered. “From there, you might decide that I’m too loud. Or that I’m bothering you.”
I snorted. “I’ve wanted you around for a long time, Alessio.”
His eyes were hot when they turned to me. “There was a reason I wanted you to stay away.”
I didn’t say anything more to him until we pulled up in front of his house and got out.
CHAPTER 14
Back & Body hurts.
-Coffee Cup
MURPHY
“I kind of hate you for almost taking this decision away from me,” she muttered darkly.
I didn’t know what to say to that at first.
Instead, we got out of the car at my house, and I walked inside, leaving the door open for her to trail behind me like I knew she was going to do.
“Where are your dogs?” she asked curiously, her eyes taking in the half-finished mansion.
I scratched my belly as I walked into my bedroom. “They stay at the shop. I have the dude next door let them out before he leaves for the night, and when he gets back in the morning.”
“The baker?” she asked.
“That’s him,” I confirmed. “We actually kind of share them. Before I got the shop, the baker was the one feeding them.”
She made an understanding sound as she followed me to my room.
I reached into my closet and pulled down my spare gym duffle bag and tossed it on the bed before heading to my drawers and grabbing enough underwear to last me a week, not just a day.
Then I grabbed just as many shorts and t-shirts before finding some socks and my toiletries.
It was only after the entire bag was packed that I turned to see her standing in the door way staring at me like I never wanted her to look at me.
The moment she caught my eyes, I knew she wasn’t doing good.
I opened my arms, feeling my heart in my throat, and she ran into them as if the world was weighing down on her shoulders.
And maybe they were.
Her in my arms, her tears soaking my shirt, was the entire reason that I didn’t wa
nt her to know.
I didn’t want her to have this very feeling she was feeling right then.
I wanted her blissfully ignorant.
If I could get her to continue hating me, then maybe she wouldn’t totally break when I died.
Except, with one look at the woman currently looking at me like she was ready to do battle—with me—I knew that wasn’t going to work.
She would fight tooth and nail to be here with me until she couldn’t anymore.
“Do you want your pillow?” she asked, fisting her hand in the soft fabric.
I thought about it for a moment.
I did like my pillow. But I’d slept just fine last night with Mavis’s.
Before I could answer, however, she moved away from me, picked it up and tucked it underneath her arm.
I looked at her then, really looked at her, and felt my heart sink down into my belly.
She looked…lost.
I never wanted to see that look on her face ever again.
I finished zipping up my bag, then I left it where it was at on the end of the bed before reaching for her.
She tried to evade my touch, but I moved forward until I could catch her solidly around the waist. The moment I had her in my arms, she truly started to struggle.
“Let me go!” she cried.
I thought about doing as she asked for all of two seconds before slamming my mouth down onto hers.
She gasped in outrage, and I took advantage of her open mouth by sweeping my tongue inside, blistering her with a searing kiss that felt like everything to me and more.
When I finally pulled back, it wasn’t just my failing heart that made me pant—it was the need that I felt coursing through my body at the feel of her body pressed so close.
I pressed my hardened cock into the side of her hip as I said, “I’m sorry I told you.”
She reared back like I’d slapped her.
“What?” she gasped.
I smoothed my hand down her throat.
“I moved back here because the doctor here is one of the best in the nation.” I paused. “If I’d known that you were going to be hurt by that move, I wouldn’t have even come.”
She narrowed her eyes and then moved forward until she could poke me directly in the chest with one very pointy finger.
There hadn’t been much space between us, but now there definitely wasn’t. And with each damn poke of her finger into my chest, the harder and harder I got for her.
“Listen here,” poke, poke. “Buddy. I’ll do,” poke, poke, poke. “What ever the fuck I want to do.” Poke. “Do you understand me?” Poke. “And if you take away the chance to love you again, I’ll straight up murder you. The damn heart failure won’t even have to take you.” Poke.
My lips twitched, but I dared not smile, because I knew damn well and good that would set her off even more than my comment had.
“And the next time you think to do something to ‘save me the pain’ or whatever the hell you’re thinking, think a-fucking-gain. Okay?” she snarled.
I caught her up in my arms, and then toppled us both to the bed on our sides. Before she could say something more, like ‘go fuck yourself,’ I started to strip her of her clothes.
First the shirt, then the pants. Followed by the stupidly tight bra that she had on that kept all her assets in too-good of a confined space.
The only thing left by the time I was done stripping her of her clothes were the practically barely-there panties she’d stuffed her cute ass into.
I eyed them, wondering if she’d be pissed if I yanked them off, and heard her growl, “Don’t you fucking dare.”
My brows rose. “Or what?”
I fisted her underwear, and she hissed in a breath. “Or I’ll make you buy me another pair of seventy-dollar panties.”
“Why do you even own a pair of seventy-dollar panties?” I questioned as I started to tug.
She hissed in a breath as she said, “I bought them last month.”
I waited.
“And I bought them because I knew that I was going to let you look at them one day.” She paused.
I was going to frame the damn panties.
I was also going to rip them off of her first.
She opened her mouth, a denial on the tip of her tongue, but I’d already yanked.
She gasped as the fabric gave way with ridiculous ease.
“That was way easier than I thought it would be,” she whispered.
I snorted. “Seventy-dollar panties don’t mean that they won’t rip.”
I then bent down and caught one taut nipple in my mouth, pulling it into my mouth and giving it a long, hard suck.
She cursed. “Murphy, we shouldn’t.”
I ignored her and started to pull my clothes off, too, starting with my shirt, and ending with my underwear.
“One of my biggest desires,” I said softly, “was to have a baby.”
Her breath hitched.
“I wish I’d have found you before…” I hesitated to say what I said next. “But I’m glad I didn’t. Because then I wouldn’t have met Vlad.”
That kid and his mother meant the world to me, and she didn’t even know it.
She didn’t know that, since Vlad was born, my entire world had brightened, and happiness had been a constant emotion for me.
I was glad that she trusted me with her son.
I was even happier that I’d met him and gotten to be a part of his life before I no longer had mine.
“You’re thinking awfully hard,” she whispered brokenly. “I think you should think about something else, so I don’t start crying in the middle of some of the best sex I’ve ever experienced.”
“Ohh?” I teased, moving until I could pull my pants and underwear off. “I’m not the best you’ve ever had?”
She scoffed and laced her fingers in my hair, tugging lightly on the strands. “You are the best I’ve ever had. But, I was more talking about this particular time with me. Last time was great, but I have a feeling you can do better.”
I took that as the challenge that it was, and slowly started to back my way down the bed until I was on my knees in front of it.
I looked up the length of her body, my eyes taking in the swell of her chest, the slight rise in her stomach, and the way her hips were lushly curved.
I caught each ankle in my hand, and then slowly tugged her until she was all but hanging off the end of the bed, and then pushed them wide to reveal her pussy.
She tried to close her legs, and I growled. “Let me.”
She froze, her hands halfway to my head as she started to push me away, but stopped, frozen there as she stared down into my eyes.
“I’m…” she paused. “Are you sure?”
I rolled my eyes, then proved how sure I was when I bent forward and caught her outer labia between my teeth and gave it a small nip.
She gasped and jerked, inadvertently spreading wider in the process, and stared at me in astonishment. “You just bit me! On the vagina!”
I leaned in while she was distracted and dragged my tongue along the length of her slit, causing her to gasp.
Grinning wickedly, I decided to eat her for dinner, sucking, tugging, playing, and ultimately pulling two orgasms out of her that shut her up mighty fine.
When I finally pulled back, beard and lips wet with her juices, it was to find her staring at the ceiling as if she was in a comatose state.
I grinned and stood up, my cock hard and proud in front of me, and stared at her until she finally brought her eyes up to meet mine.
“I think,” she breathed. “You beat your record from yesterday.”
I chuckled, slightly out of breath from the exertion, but chose to push past it and focus on something much more pleasurable than my death.
I fisted my cock in my hand, and slowly pumped the length of it over the top of her pussy, my eyes on hers.
“You’re making me feel nervous,” she whispered, twisting on top of my bed spread and watc
hing me with a narrow-eyed look on her face that bespoke the nerves she’d just admitted to.
“I don’t know why,” I told her. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. You seriously could get any guy that you wanted. Why do you want ol’ broken down me?”
She sat up and my cock practically touched her mouth as she said, “Because I’ve wanted you since you were old enough to tell me how bitchy my grandmother is.”
I laughed as I bent down and captured her mouth. Only once she was breathing just as hard as I was did I let her up for air.
“I think,” I said as I slowly bent down until my cock was lined up with her entrance, “that you need to not mention her in this bed ever again.”
She snickered as she went back onto her elbows and watched me bring my cock to her entrance.
With my eyes on her face, as she watched, I slowly sank inside of her until there wasn’t a single inch of me not cocooned in her softness.
Her mouth parted, and she stared at me in shock.
“What?” I rasped, bending down until only the tips of her nipples pressed against my chest.
I’d seen a lot of boobs in my lifetime.
When I’d suffered my heart attack when I was younger, I’d done my damndest to live life to the fullest. That meant I wasn’t always choosy when it came to sexual partners. If they were hot and wanted me? Who was I to say no?
But being with a ton of women also gave me a lot to compare Mavis to.
And I knew, without one single doubt in my mind, that the woman underneath of me, taking my cock so pretty, had no comparison to other women.
Her breasts were perfect, despite having stretch marks indicating that they’d grown very fast in size, likely due to Vlad’s pregnancy.
They were smaller than I was used to, and they by no means were the most perky I’d ever seen. But they were a part of the woman that was by no means perfect to everyone else, but she was perfect for me.
“You’re looking at me weird,” she grumbled as she once again sifted her hands through my hair. “Why?”
I leaned down and placed a chaste kiss to her lips, forcing myself not to say, ‘because I fucking love you’ to her.
I never planned on telling her.
Not ever.
Because she didn’t need that or me on her conscience when I was gone.
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