TWENTY-THREE
Chiara
I lost it.
“JACK!” I screamed his name.
I had shot him in the side of his chest. Jack. He was lying here bleeding because of me.
Me. I had done this.
I was trying to shoot the shadowy figure with the gun, but then Jack had to go all superhero complex and jump between us. He had distracted the gunman but landed in the path of my bullet.
I slapped his face, trying to get him to come back to me.
“JACK! NO!”
My earlier vision flooded my mind. Jack’s lifeless eyes. The pool of red blood around him.
I was the reason Jack would die.
A hand pulled me back. I fought.
“Ma’am! You need to stand back.”
Another hand joined the first and lifted me away from Jack, holding both of my elbows now.
I screamed and sobbed. “NO! JACK! NO!”
Jack lay unnervingly still on the ground, his profile illuminated by the headlights of several cars, sopping wet in all his nineteenth century finery. Eyes closed, face ashen.
My body sagged against whoever was holding me.
I shook my head, refusing to accept that I would lose Jack this way. I pulled again on my arms, desperate to touch Jack.
“No.” My voice a whisper.
If I could just touch him, talk to him, maybe Jack wouldn’t die. I could fix this. Undo what I had done. He would be okay—
“Ma’am, I need to you to calm down.” That same voice in my ear, speaking in crisp Italian. “We need to help him, but you’re making that difficult. He’s bleeding and needs immediate medical attention.”
A heartbeat. Two.
That’s how long it took for it to sink in.
I whirled to stare into the eyes of a young officer holding me.
I turned back to Jack, lying in the rain.
Jack was bleeding.
Jack was still bleeding.
He was breathing. He was here. Chest rapidly rising up and down.
Two police officers flew past me, collapsing to their knees, medical kits at their sides. They worked furiously on Jack, ripping away his clothing, touching him.
Touching. Him.
“Jack!”
I collapsed to my knees, those arms still holding me back.
“Ma’am,” that same voice behind me.
“I’ll be good,” I sobbed, “I promise I won’t shoot him again. Just let me touch him.”
Something in my mental patient raving must have gotten through to them. The officer released me.
I collapsed beside Jack’s head.
I smoothed his wet hair off his forehead and ran my fingers over his face, his nose, his lips. I scraped my fingernails against his stubble. I cupped his cheek and feathered kisses across his closed eyes.
I memorized him with my touch. I pressed my cold lips against his. I tasted the salt of my tears on his skin. He smelled of brandy and peppermint and some manly old-fashioned cologne.
All the while talking to him like the love sick idiot I was.
“I’m here, Jack. Stay with me. I can’t bear to lose you. Not now. Not like this. Please don’t leave me.”
Why he was still corporeal, I didn’t know. I was shocked brainless by the solidity of him underneath my palm, his short puffs of air against my lips.
The officers peeled away Jack’s bloody waistcoat, pressing gauze against the bullet wound in the right side of his chest.
I hiccupped, just managing to choke back a gasping sob.
I had done this. I had hurt him.
“Is he going to be okay?” I asked the paramedics.
“I can’t say, ma’am. A gunshot wound to the chest is always serious.”
Sounds intruded. Emergency sirens. An officer on the phone asking for a med evac helicopter.
Chaos.
My mind short-circuited. All I could see was the shallow rise and fall of Jack’s chest. All I could feel were the faint puffs of air against my cheek. All I could do was pray that my vision didn’t come to pass. That Jack would live.
No one tried to separate us. Maybe those tabloid photos of us kissing weren’t so bad after all. Everyone assumed we were a package deal.
I kissed him.
I promised him bloody retribution if he died on me now.
I promised him I would dote on him forever if he lived.
I panicked that he would suddenly become ghostlike again. I panicked that he would die.
And then I panicked that he would live, fully corporeal.
Because . . . I clearly didn’t know how to do a healthy long-term relationship, and I was going to screw this up big time and hurt Jack and ruin everything.
Obviously, as I had already managed to shoot him.
Psycho girlfriend.
That was me.
And just to make sure that image was clear, I lost it, my head bowed over his. Sobbing. Blubbering. Laughing one minute over the absurdity of the situation, crying the next in terror.
I may have even promised him that I would go to therapy, anything, if he would just hang on.
Basically . . . every hysterical cliche.
I screamed and had to be restrained (again) when they loaded Jack into the helicopter.
“Ma’am, I’m going need you to calm down. The paramedics and police are doing all they can for your boyfriend.” The officer’s words in my ear fumbled through my consciousness. “The best thing you can do to help him is to get control of yourself.”
And then he said the worst—
“Think your little self can manage that?”
Ah. My nemesis.
My spine instantly straightened. I sucked in a long, shuddering breath.
Why, yes. My little self could manage that.
But I still wiped away tears as the helicopter lifted into the sky, carrying Jack away from me.
The police didn’t immediately let me follow Jack. Turns out, when you shoot someone—accidental or not—there is a lot to be discussed. They asked me questions about the attack, my involvement, the play-by-play of my accidental shooting of Jack. I responded.
The police had taken the shooter into custody. The man apparently had a long criminal history and connections with the Tempeste family. He had been trying to fill the hit contract out on me before Jack threw himself into the crossfire.
A more senior police officer eventually showed up and informed me that I would not be charged or arrested at the moment. Though he did say that might change if Jack didn’t make it. The police would wait to see how Jack fared and then make a decision.
I took that hard. Not the threat of jail time. No. It was the insinuation that Jack might not live.
The ride in the police car to the hospital was unbearable. I nearly bit a hole in my cheek and sobbed my way through two packages of tissue, but at least I managed to stifle the screams and crazy-eyed rants.
It didn’t help that midway through the drive, the officer riding shotgun turned around and handed me a business card.
“Call this number tomorrow.” Concern laced her tone. “You will definitely want to get some counseling after the events of tonight.”
I stared at the card, my brain trying to assimilate her words.
“You shouldn’t let this fester,” she continued. “Talking about things with a professional will help.”
I crumpled the card in my hand, crying harder. Even the police officer could see that I had serious issues.
Dante, Claire and Branwell met me at the emergency room entrance. Jack was in surgery. The medical staff had no other information.
I took that as permission to lose it again.
Bless my family. Branwell simply scooped me up and held me while I sobbed, Claire rubbing my back.
“I can’t believe she shot him,” Dante said.
“It was bound to happen with one of her boyfriends, I suppose,” Branwell replied.
I cried harder.
“Wow. That got like . . . no reaction.” Dante whistled. “She’s got it bad.”
“Obviously.” Branwell sighed. “We’ve tried to warn Jack, but he seems just as smitten, poor guy.”
I should have been furious, but their offhand comments simply made me feel worse.
They were right.
Jack should run. He was too good of a person to deal with my amount of crazy. I was the psycho girlfriend who had shot him.
At this point, I wasn’t even sure that decades of therapy could fix me.
Branwell rubbed a hand between my shoulder blades. “Again, not even a twitch, Dante. No slap, no grunt. Nothing.”
Dante whistled again. “He’s done a number on her.”
“Eh, I think she was the one who did a number on him.”
I may have kidney punched Branwell at that point.
My brothers wisely switched to discussing why Jack was still corporeal.
“Is it the seriousness of his injury, do you think?” Branwell asked.
“Possible.” Dante shook his head. “Jack just had to be at death’s door in order to stay in our world.”
“If so, maybe we should have let Chiara have at him sooner.”
Branwell grunted over my quickly jabbed elbow.
“I’m just hoping he doesn’t fade away in the middle of surgery or something,” Dante said. “Poor guy could spend eternity half-naked, bloody and in a hospital gown.”
That started me crying all over again. How could I have done this to him?
I kept picturing Jack’s lifeless eyes. I wanted to burn the image from my brain, excise it from memory. But until I knew that Jack would be okay, I couldn’t shake it.
After a ridiculous amount of time in which I cried, paced, cried into Dante’s shoulder, paced, cried onto Branwell’s chest and then paced some more, a doctor finally called our name.
I was in front of him before he finished talking. “H-how is he? P-please. I n-need to know.”
The doctor smiled. “He’s in post-op currently, breathing on his own.”
Relief pounded through me.
“S-so he’s okay?” I may have half-sobbed the words.
“He’s stable and, barring any complications, he should make a full recovery. If the bullet had been a higher caliber, he wouldn’t have made it. He has been very, very lucky. ”
Lucky.
Lucky was good.
I sagged against Branwell, my knees threatening to give out. Jack would be okay. He was stable.
I partially listened to the rest, words floating by me. Collapsed lung. Fractured rib. Monitor his recovery. Bullet lodged against an artery—
“Wait—what?” I interrupted.
The doctor shot me a ‘you poor thing’ look.
“The bullet didn’t exit his body,” he repeated. “Like I said, had you been packing a higher caliber pistol—something like what I understand the gunman was carrying—the bullet would have blasted right through Jack, killing him instantly. As it is, the bullet didn’t have enough power to exit Jack’s ribcage, leaving it lodged in his chest cavity. We can’t remove it.”
“Can’t?” Dante asked.
“We can’t. The way the bullet is situated against the artery, it would kill him if we removed it. So it stays. As long as he doesn’t re-injure the area and dislodge the bullet, it shouldn’t cause any problems.” The doctor moved on, discussing post-operative care.
My mind reeled. Was the bullet the reason why Jack was still corporeal?
It flooded me, blinding understanding.
My bullet was inside him. Permanently. If the gunman’s bullet had hit Jack, he would have died. But mine . . . saved him.
When we had experimented before with Jack eating and stabbing him with a needle, the items hadn’t been necessary to his survival.
But the bullet? It was necessary and as such, permanently changed his body from what it had been, grounding him to this world.
“Can I see him?” I asked.
The doctor studied me for a moment. “We don’t expect him to wake up for a while, but you’re welcome to sit with him until he does.”
Jack
The world came into focus bit by bit as I groggily pushed my way to consciousness.
Sensations intruded, sharp and harsh. Glaring light. Loud beeping. Cotton mouth, dry and uncomfortable. Throat scratchy, like I had been screaming. Legs and arms numb and clumsy. Clothing scraping against my sensitive skin.
Air rattled in my lungs.
What—
What?!!
Air. Lungs. Breathing.
I was breathing.
I could feel. Taste. Smell.
I sucked in a deep breath.
Pain shattered through me. I coughed. More pain.
Pain was . . . good.
I worked to pry my eyes open. They felt leaden, but eventually I managed to look up into a bright light.
That was . . . odd. I had expected a canopied bed. Or a painted ceiling. Things that normally greeted me upon waking.
Where was I?
I closed my eyes, trying to bring back my memory.
It came in fits and starts.
Shadow world. Ghost. Twenty-first century. D’Angelos. Pain.
Gunfire.
Chiara.
I gasped, fighting to open my eyes again.
Where was Chiara?
I struggled to sit up.
“Shhhhh.” A hand gently pushed me back down. “You need to stay still and rest.”
“Chiara.” My voice a hoarse whisper.
“Yes?”
I paused, groggily lifting my eyelids again.
Her beloved face hovered over me, dark hair piled on top of her head, eyes red-rimmed and puffy. Warm fingers threaded through my right hand.
“Hey,” she whispered. Her free hand touched my face stroking hair off my forehead.
“Chiara,” I breathed her name, leaning into her touch.
After so long, human contact felt . . . incredible.
She cupped my cheek and kissed my forehead, her lips soft against my skin. I nuzzled into her hand, trying to get closer to her.
I was here. Corporeal and solid. I felt pain, but it wasn’t the searing, burning agony of pushing myself fully into this world. The pain was more of a sharp ache localized to my ribs and lungs. How could this be?
“What happened? I remember being shot.” I pulled back, bringing her back into focus. “Wait. You shot me.”
Chiara’s dark eyes instantly filled. “I d-did shoot you. I-I am so sorry, Jack.” She sniffled and then muttered, “How I haven’t dehydrated myself yet, I don’t know,” while reaching for a tissue.
I lifted my head, looking down at myself. My wet, clinging Regency clothing was gone. Instead, a sheet rested on my lower half while my bare chest was covered with bandages, tubes, wires and gauze. An IV was taped to the back of my left hand.
“Tell me what happened.”
I listened as Chiara recounted the entire scenario, including the bullet still lodged in my chest. She swiped at her damp cheeks as she talked. But she touched me at every chance—my arm, my face—our fingers laced together. She fetched a drink of water for me, holding a bent straw near my lips.
“I can’t believe I’m still here,” I whispered as she set the water aside.
“Me either. How bad is the pain?”
“I feel like I’ve been shot.” A small grin. “Gaping chest wound.”
Chiara gasped and instantly dissolved into tears. Zero to hot sobbing mess in less than three seconds.
“Too soon?” I asked, trying not to smile and failing miserably.
“S-stupid Brits and their s-stupider dark humor. You c-cannot joke about this, Jack!” she choked. “I shot you!”
“Yes. You did. As I said, gaping chest wound.”
Her replying look clearly stated that she wanted to smack me. She leaned over and kissed me instead, a gentle lingering peck on my cheek.
“Mmmm.” I turned my head toward her. “You missed a spot.”
She had never been slow, thank goodness. She kissed my lips. First the top. Then the bottom. She smelled of sugar and vanilla but tasted of salty tears.
“Heavens. I must be doing a poor job of it if you’re still crying,” I said.
She hiccupped. “You almost d-died, Jack.”
“Yes. I’ve been sort of straddling the divide between life and death for a few hundred years now. It’s been my thing.” My tone may have been a touch too blasé.
A shuddering breath escaped her. Another.
“Hey—” My brows furrowed. “That was another stilted attempt at humor. You’re supposed to laugh.”
She sank into the chair beside me, sobbing into my hand.
“I’m sorry, Chiara mia,” I murmured. “That was unfeeling of me.”
She shook her head, refusing to look up. “J-just give me a moment. Trying to pull myself from Hysterical Hot Mess to just D-disheveled Hot Mess.”
I laughed at that. A laugh that quickly turned into a panting groan of pain. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“Sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I studied her beloved face. Chiara didn’t know it yet, but she was stuck with me now. She needed to prepare herself for a decidedly serious courtship, British lord style—
A knock sounded at the door and Dante poked his head into the room.
“Chiara, you’re needed out here—” He paused, eyes meeting mine. “Hey, Jack. Glad to see you’re finally awake and fully in the land of the living.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He nodded at me and then beckoned toward his sister. “Chiara, there are two police detectives out here. They need to chat with you.”
“Me?” Chiara pointed at her chest. “Right now?”
Dante shrugged. “They’re being insistent.”
“But—” Chiara turned back to me, squeezing my hand. “Jack is going to be okay. They’re not here to arrest me, are they?”
Arrest?! I tried to sit up more, my instinctual reaction to protect Chiara from harm leaping to the forefront.
“No, no, Jack.” She instantly pressed a gentle hand against my uninjured shoulder. “Stay down.”
Dante shook his head. “I think they just have more questions about the events. It’s all part of their larger sting operation for the entire Tempeste organization.”
“Tell them I’ll be out in a just a minute, okay?”
Dante nodded and left the room.
Chiara turned her head back to me.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll deal with this and then I’ll be back.” She pressed a lingering kiss onto my forehead.
“Please don’t be long. I have disliked not seeing you this week.” I shamelessly lifted my chin, forcing Chiara to press a kiss to my lips.
“I missed you, too. But I’ve made such a mangled mess of things. I shot you. You’re lying in a hospital bed because of me—”
“Precisely! I am lying in a hospital bed because you shot me and miraculously lodged a bullet in my chest that has grounded me to this world.” I managed a small smile. “Thank you.”
Her eyes narrowed. Ah. There was the Chiara I knew and adored. “That wasn’t my point, and you know it.”
Dante opened the door again. “I’m sorry, guys. The police are being more insistent. Chiara, you gotta come.”
She made a frustrated, growly sound.
“Go. I’ll be fine until you return.” Fatigue washed over me. Pain filtered through. “There will be plenty of time to hash out our issues.”
Her expression drew down further. “Promise?”
“Promise.” My voice sounded weak.
I closed my eyes, letting pain and weariness pull me under.