The nurse tried to keep me out of the room, she really did. But I had had enough of people trying to boss me around for a lifetime, so I told her she could let me in there now or she could deal with two pissed off people when he woke up. Because I guarantee my face was going to be the first one he wanted to see when he opened his eyes next. I mean, it was possible that maybe that wasn’t the case but I must have talked a good game because she let me in there and brought me a pillow and a blanket so I could curl in one of the “Dad beds” that doubled as a chair next to the hospital bed. Those beds that are usually in the maternity rooms, that unfold into the most uncomfortable flat surfaces known to man? Yeah, I curled up into that sucker and made it my bitch while I stared at his handsome sleeping face and tried not to reach out and touch him, just to make sure he was really there.

I was trying to let him sleep, like the nurses said I had to, but it was hard to deny the impulse. He’d been shot. By David. He’d almost died, because of an association with me, and he’d still managed to drag himself, broken and bleeding to drive almost forty-five minutes to get to me.

All those times I’d wished I was dead because of David, and I had never before now been so glad to have survived. It was the most uncomfortable night sleep I had suffered through in a while, but I must have nodded off for a bit at least, because I opened my eyes and met his caramel brown ones, silently watching me for God knows how long. I feel asleep on guard duty, how pathetic.

“Hi, beautiful,” he whispered.

“Liar,” I whispered back. I looked like hot garbage and I knew it. Surprisingly enough, I had suffered nothing broken in the fight with David, just a lot of contusions and bruising. I’d apparently toughened up in the last six years. My face was a swollen mess and I knew there were scrape marks all over from being dragged through the apartment and the parking lot, not even counting the shiner I got when I kissed the wall in the hallway. It was sweet of him to lie about it though.

“Beautiful to me.”

He was awake, I could touch him now without getting into trouble, couldn’t I?

Sitting up in the Dad bed, I leaned over and reached my hand through the bedrails, brushing the bare skin of his uninjured arm. Oh, it wasn’t a dream, he was really there. I was really there, and David Ashley was really dead and never coming back. Dino blinked sleepily at me and gave me a lopsided smile, I was pretty sure his pain meds were still in control as his eyes were slightly unfocused.

“Why don’t you come here and give me my hug?” He was still whispering, but his words washed over me like a joyful shout.

“You mean like a real hug?” I asked, returning his smile with one of my own. “I kind of thought you meant hug as a euphemism for sex.”

“I mean, it can be,” and he waggled his eyebrows at me suggestively. Silly Dino. Was this his normal self? Or just the pain meds talking? I took comfort in knowing that I didn’t have to rush to find out, and he didn’t have to hide anymore either.

I leaned over him, unsure of exactly where it was okay to touch him considering he had just come out of surgery the day before, and his arm and shoulder was a mess of bandages and wrappings. “I’m not sure where it’s okay to touch you without hurting you,” I said as I bent down first in one direction, then changed my mind and went another. I didn’t know where to put my arms, it was too awkward.

“It’s okay to touch me anywhere,” Dino said, coughing and then seizing up because I know the entire movement pulled at his busted shoulder. “It’s going to hurt no matter where you touch me. I just want you to touch me.” He laid his head back against the pillow and yawned, his eyelids blinking lazily.

Oh man, he needed to go back to sleep. I leaned down and kissed him softly but pulled away when he placed his good hand on the back of my head and tried to deepen the kiss. He was certainly in no shape for making out, and my face was swollen and painful as well. Was it considered patient abuse to give a man hopped up on pain meds a boner? I didn’t know, but it seemed wrong somehow, so I removed my lips from his. But then I kissed him on one cheek, then the other. Then I kissed him on the forehead, and when I lifted my head for the last time, his eyes had fluttered closed and he was breathing a little more deeply than he had been a moment before.

I thought he had fallen asleep, but as I curled back up onto the small chair bed he spoke again. “Will you be here in the morning when I wake up?”

“Yeah, Dino, I’ll be here.”

“And the next day too?” I had no idea how long he would be in the hospital, the surgery had gone well, and I just assumed he would be getting discharged soon. But under the influence of his pain medication he seemed to need a little reassurance.

“If you are here, that’s where I’ll be.”

He liked that answer, and before long his quiet breathing turned to soft snores, so I knew now he had fallen back to sleep. There was so much for us to talk about, but it could wait, I wasn’t going anywhere. Things were still a sticky legal mess. I wasn’t in trouble actually, but there was so much truth to be told, and it would take a long time before the police would be satisfied with the entire story. All six years of it.

Gabe had asked me if I planned on changing my name back, but Gabriella Hensley was a stranger to me now. This was my life for the last six years, and I liked being Jeanette Clary. Jeanette Clary had friends, Jeanette Clary had a kick-ass job, and Jeanette Clary was the woman that fell in love with Dino Affini. I wouldn’t trade any of my tomorrows getting to know Dino better, to get back any piece of Gabriella Hensley.

I wasn’t stupid enough to be grateful to David Ashley for the life I had now. I mean, fuck that guy, he was a sociopath and deserved everything he got. But I’m glad I fought. I’m glad I survived. I’m glad I won.

There were other things I needed to tell Dino too, like how I had met his sister in the waiting room, and his Nonna too. Vanessa had tearfully apologized to me for the way that she treated me, and that was before she even heard about my story, then she broke down completely. She has a strained relationship with her brother, but I think she’s trying. Now that he doesn’t have to hide who he is, he can try too.

Gabe for some reason has declared Italian food his favorite, even though I had never before heard that. I thought it was Chinese takeout, but whatever. He’s decided that the restaurant business is a solid investment and has plans to funnel money into renovations to Affini’s. I know he really wants to start a new security business, that’s his real dream so the bullshit about investing is really just a cover for him wanting to take care of his friend. I wouldn’t call him out on it. Gabe and his need to take care of everyone is part of who he is and why I survived six years ago, so I’ll let him have that play.

I also did a thing. When I was talking to Vanessa I happened to ask her about the wedding set Dino said got sold at the auction. I wasn’t kidding when I said I had a lot of money. Gabe paid me a ridiculous salary that I barely used to live on. I lived frugally and simply not because I wanted to, but because I was trying to be stealthy. Even if I only counted my salary from Gabe I would still be considered well-off. But I was rich before I met Gabe, even if it was money I couldn’t convert to cash. I’d long switched mining cryptocurrency in favor of trading it, and for the last six years my investments had just been gathering interest. Building and building. I was from the original generation of bitcoin nerds, and was a self-made millionaire.

I’d asked Gabe to find out about the auction, and where the wedding set went. The woman who bought it was more than happy to part with it at double the price she paid for it. Gabe was facilitating the purchase tomorrow, so I didn’t have to leave the hospital if I didn’t want to. I’d let Dino put those rings back on his Nonna’s hand himself, and I wouldn’t hear a single word of protest from him. He was mine. I’d claimed him. No dollar amount could pay Dino back for my freedom, and anyway, it wasn’t a gift for him. It was a gift for the strong woman who believed so much in her family that she’d helped raise such a good man.

I rolled to my side in the uncomfortable chair, tucked the pillow under my head and pulled the blanket up over my shoulders. I reached my arm through the bars of the handrail again, put my hand on his and left it there. Feeling my skin on his skin through that simple touch was so soothing, I felt my own eyelids growing heavy and I couldn’t believe that I might actually be able to fall asleep again in that chair.

Hopefully everything would be taken care of tomorrow and I would have those rings in my possession by Sunday, because that was when I was invited over to his Nonna’s house for dinner. I wondered if Dino was going to mind.

I would ask him about it in the morning.