Deep (The Pagano Family Book 4) (24 page)

It was perhaps a good thing that Nick would no longer do this work himself. This work required perfect control. And Nick was losing his.

He turned away from the ocean. “Let’s head back. It’ll be light soon.”

~oOo~

The dawn light was just easing into the night sky when Nick slid into the flowery blue and green room in his uncle’s house. Beverly was lying on her back, sleeping heavily—in the nights since the attack, she’d slept heavily through a few hours of the pain medication’s greatest power, then woken terrified when it wore off.

Her beautiful face was badly mottled with healing bruises and cuts, but the swelling was gone. Once it had been clear that she wouldn’t stay lying in bed, the doctor had fashioned a kind of a bandage sling for her breast, to ease some of the pressure on the sutured wound.

Her body was healing well. She wasn’t talking much yet, but she was trying. Her mind, though, her personality—Nick didn’t know. She was different. Duller. Darker. Of course she was. How could she not be? He didn’t know how to bring her back, how to help her come back.

Nick would have liked to have killed Chris Mills, and he might yet do it. After that asshole had been taken away, Nick helped Beverly back to bed. She’d been quiet and listless, refusing to discuss it or engage in anything at all. The breakthrough she’d had before Mills’ visit had been undone.

He stripped down to his boxer briefs and t-shirt and squatted next to the bed. Taking her hand gently in his, he whispered, “
Bella
. I’m here.” He tugged a little on her arm and she woke with a slight start. Still deep enough under the medication, she didn’t wake with fear.

“You’re safe now,
bella
. I swear to you. You’re safe.”

She smiled and patted the bed next to her. He went around the bed and slid in, lying on his side facing her. She took his hand and fell back to sleep.

He would find a way to bring her sun back to her.

~ 16 ~

Bev leaned over the sink, getting as close to the mirror as she could, and brushed mascara on. Since that night at the diner, she thought her eyesight wasn’t as good as it had been. She’d never heard of a concussion permanently changing someone’s eyesight, but maybe there’d been a blow that had knocked something loose. Dr. Kerr had said everything looked normal, but she definitely felt like things were blurrier. Or maybe it was that things were dimmer. Something.

Things were dim and blurry in general since that night. Something had been knocked loose somewhere, some wire that didn’t connect, some circuit that didn’t fire right any longer. The world just looked and felt different to her. A month and a half had passed. Her body was healed. She ran her pinky down the faint line through her lips—healed, but not restored.

She closed the mascara and stepped back, trying to take in her whole look. No one who didn’t know would know. She saw the difference, felt the difference, but even that faint scar through her lips was barely noticeable to anyone not looking. Her knees had several small but noticeable scars, but nothing that would keep her from wearing a short skirt if she wanted.

Her breast—that was another matter. That scar was still red and ugly, down the full side of her breast. But since the stitches had come out, no one but her had seen it. She hated that scar violently, but she could not seem to keep herself from looking at it, touching it. If she was alone, she’d find her hand going to it, even though she couldn’t feel it through her clothes. More crazy still, sometimes, she’d feel compelled to take her clothes off and stare at it. She’d even done that a couple of times when she wasn’t alone, spending long minutes in the bathroom with the door locked, staring at it, remembering how it had happened.

It made no sense to her at all. Why would her mind strive so often to remember the most horrible thing that had ever happened to her? Not even being raped by both of those men caused her as much distress as the big one sawing through her breast. How that had felt—God, the pain of it. But the greedy look in his eyes, the fucking
smirk
on his face…

Bev stripped off her shirt and bra and turned sidewise, lifting her breast in one hand,  smoothing out the scar. She ran a finger of her other hand up and down, up and down over the shiny, red skin.

She was losing her mind. That was the only possible explanation for her obsession with remembering that pain, that fear, that utter loss of hope.

“Beverly?” Nick knocked on the door. “Sky’s here,
bella
.”

“Okay. I’m about done.” She picked her bra off the floor and put it back on. She didn’t fill out the cups the way she used to. She didn’t fill out any of her clothes the way she used to. She either needed a new wardrobe or a new outlook.

Once she was dressed and had fluffed her hair a little, she opened the door and stepped out.

She was back in her apartment. No longer were there men stationed in the hallway. No longer was Donnie sitting in her living room, watching SyFy and asking for popcorn. Things were back to normal.

Except that Bev wasn’t back to normal. It felt odd and lonely, after a month of being guarded, to be completely alone. She thought of the feeling as similar to those days when she decided not to take a purse out with her, and then spent the rest of the day fending off little panic attacks, thinking she’d lost it somewhere. It felt like something that should be with her was missing.

Not that she was alone all that often. Nick had practically moved in with her, and he spent every free moment with her. When he wasn’t with her, Sky was. Sky had a lot of free time, because she was trying not to take another job until Sassy Sal’s reopened. Romeo was covering her bills, just like Nick was covering Bev’s.

She hated that, too. But she wasn’t sure how it would end. Nick was certainly in no hurry for her to work, and she didn’t know how to be ready to work again. She couldn’t imagine walking into Sal’s ever again. Not even as a customer, much less an employee. If, indeed, the place did reopen.

Both Bruce and Donnie were still in the hospital, six weeks later. For Donnie, that was as the doctors expected. The damage to his face had been severe, nearly fatal. Nearly all of the skin had been seared away on one side, and in a few places, everything down to bone had been destroyed. He wouldn’t be leaving the hospital until, essentially, he had a new face.

Bruce hadn’t been discharged yet because he’d been shot in the gut with a shotgun, and the pellets had pierced several vital organs. Bouts of sepsis had slowed his recovery. But he finally seemed to have turned a corner.

Since she’d been strong enough, Bev had gone to the hospital often to see her friends. She felt—she was—responsible for their pain. The men who’d come into the diner had been there for her. Especially Bruce. He was a good man, a simple man, living a simple life. He had a wife and children. And he’d almost died because Bev was in love with Nick.

Nick was still standing just outside the bathroom door when she came out. He smiled and brushed his fingertips over her temple. “You’re beautiful.” His hand moved down the side of her face and then to her neck. She could feel him lift the gold chain in his fingers and pull the sun out from under her shirt. “I have meetings, but it should be a short day. I’ll see you around three. We’re expected at Ben’s at five-thirty.”

She smiled. He was so gentle and patient with her now. He was always Good Nick. Since that night, he’d been kind and solicitous. He’d told her that he would do anything in his power to help her, and he was as good as his word. Even as she’d been forcefully taught how profoundly dark and dangerous his world was, even as he’d told her how dark his own life, his history, was, she’d come to know him as a tender, loving man.

He was helping her. Bev thought that without him, she would have sliced through her feathers by now. But he was there and steady, and so patient. Trying to show him that his care was helping had cleared a way for his care to help.

But she couldn’t imagine being intimate with him, or anyone, ever again. The mere thought of a man’s body on hers made her skin constrict and her stomach twist into a knot.

His hand still held her pendant. She bent her head and kissed his knuckles. “Okay. I’ll be back by then.”

“Good. I love you,
bella
.”

“I love you, too.”

Sky was standing near the door, her bag still on her shoulder. “You ready, Bev?”

“Yep. Let’s go.” She picked up her purse from the table near the door. With a last wave at Nick, she followed Skylar out. They were headed to the hospital to visit the guys.

~oOo~

Donnie had had surgery the day before and was still heavily sedated, so Bev and Sky sat with him for a little while as he slept. Sky had grown fond of him during his long hours sitting in the booth while Bev worked. There had been other guards, of course; Donnie didn’t work nonstop, but the others had cycled, several different men, usually taking shifts while she was sleeping or, at least, home. Only Donnie—and, at the end, Smash—had been a consistent presence in her life.

Bev had come to consider him a real friend. They had talked a lot about their lives and families—in fact, Donnie knew more about Bev’s family than Nick yet did. She knew he had a little boy, and that he was having to fight with his ex to see him as often as he wanted. She knew that he liked skinny girls with little tits, and that he liked watching ballet—she’d been sworn to secrecy—because ballerinas were the “hottest women on the planet.”

She knew he liked Marvel comics and science fiction. She knew he’d been kicked out of his family on the day he’d been made—trading a broken family for a whole one, he’d said. She knew he loved Ben and Nick like a father and brother and would do anything for them.

Bev and Sky sat quietly for a little while, watching him sleep. His head was wrapped in gauze, but he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. The nurse had told them there was no chance he’d wake, but it was good to see him at apparent ease. He was still in a tremendous amount of pain, usually. But he’d been goofy and funny during their visits nonetheless.

“Do you know what you’re going to do?” Skylar’s voice surprised Bev. She’d been woolgathering, thinking about the night she and Donnie had made homemade pizza and argued over toppings. She’d started to shred cheddar cheese, and he’d looked at her like she’d been preparing to spread cat turds on the pie.

“Hmm?”

“About work. Are you going to come back?”

“I don’t know. The vertical hold in my head goes wonky when I try to think about that. Why?”

“Because I need to work. I’ve been trying to hold out for Bruce to get better, but I don’t know if I can. Rome’s paying for everything right now. I had no savings, so he’s been covering everything.”

“Is he getting angry about it?”

“No—that’s the problem. He likes it. With all my free time, I’ve been cooking and organizing the apartment and cleaning—just looking for shit to do. He loves it. Last night, he asked if I’d thought about getting married someday. Like he wants a ‘little woman’ all of a sudden. Freaked my shit out.”

She knew that Skylar never wanted to get married. Her mother had been married four times, to increasingly violent losers. In Sky’s mind, marriage was a prison. And Romeo knew that, too.

“What’d you say?”

“I told him he was freaking me out and he knew my feelings. He apologized, but he was pissy the rest of the night. I need to get back to work and get us back to normal. But if you thought you would come back, I’d hold out a little longer. I love working at Sal’s with you.”

Bev sat for a moment and forced herself to imagine working at the diner, the way it used to be. Her and Sky on together, doing their telepathy thing, chatting with the regulars, exchanging affectionate snark with Bruce, making Dink blush. She’d loved the job. Waitressing was nothing special. The work pretty much sucked. But the people—that had been fantastic.

But, like every other time she’d tried out this image, it ended with glass crashing and shots being fired, with a hot grill and a bone-handled knife.

“No. I won’t go back. I can’t. All I ever see is that night.”

Sky reached over and grabbed her hand, and Bev realized that she was gripping the arm of her chair so hard her arm shook. “Okay. I understand. I’m going to have to try to find something. Maybe just short-term, until Bruce gets Sal’s back up. If he does. He was pretty far underwater already, I think.”

Bev thought about her conversation with Bruce during her shift on that last night. He owed Donnie a lot of money. That meant he owed Nick a lot of money.

~oOo~

Bev had been home about an hour when Nick knocked on the door. He always knocked now. Once, when he’d walked in unexpectedly, she’d screamed, and he had not opened her door without warning again.

He smiled his beautiful smile when she opened the door. “Hi,
bella
. How are the patients?” As she stepped back, he walked in and kissed her cheek. That was as intimate as they got these days.

She knew he already knew Donnie’s status. He kept apprised of that at least daily and was the one who kept her informed, since the nurses wouldn’t say much of import to her.

“Donnie was sleeping when I saw him. Bruce is doing a lot better. He said they told him he might be released in a week or so, if things keep going like they are.”

“That’s excellent.” He slid his hand into his suit jacket and handed her a flat, square, light blue box. “For you.”

He hadn’t given her a gift since that night. Well, every day he gave her a gift, being there, loving her, letting her lean on him without pushing her for anything. But he hadn’t handed her a box like this since that night. It scared her—did this mean he was tired of waiting for things to be the way they were, that he would begin to push?

“Nick…”

His hand clenched around the box. “Don’t, Beverly. Don’t reject my gift without even seeing it. If you don’t like it, that’s one thing. But don’t just push it away. You’ve left me no other way to love you.”