Chapter 7: Heat

The doctor left at midnight with his bag and his gray face.

I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands between my knees, and I made up my mind out loud.

"Tomorrow I'll say Bianca's name to my mother, with Bianca standing in the room," I said. "Tonight I can't carry it."

Ciro stood in the middle of the room and didn't say a word.

A muscle moved in his jaw.

"I'll stand beside you when you do," he said finally.

"You don't have to."

"I know I don't."

He said it so plainly that something in my chest let go.

I had been holding up the whole weight of being called a liar for a year.

He had just taken one end of it.

"I don't want to talk anymore," I said.

"All right."

"I don't want to think about her, or Mamma, or the doctor."

"Then don't."

"I want one night where I'm not the sick one." I looked up at him. "I want you to take your shirt off."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he reached behind his neck and pulled the shirt over his head.

His chest was broad and scarred, with a long pale line under the ribs and a round one on the shoulder.

I put my palm flat against the round one.

"Gunshot?"

"Fire. A beam fell."

"When?"

"I was seventeen." He caught my wrist gently. "Not tonight."

"No," I said. "Not tonight."

I stood up, and my legs held, and I pulled my own shirt off.

I knew what he would see.

Ribs, and hip bones, and the long thin scar from the biopsy.

He didn't look away, and he didn't look soft either.

He looked at me.

"You're beautiful," he said, rough.

"I'm a skeleton."

"You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

"Then come here."

He crossed the room in two strides and picked me up.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Seven Days Before the Mafia Princess Died from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.