“She is,” I ground out, even though I wasn’t so sure I was strong enough to let her. I wanted her to have everything. The beautiful home, the beautiful life filled with crossing off a million lists, and the beautiful kids she deserved.
“I know. I didn’t want to know, though. She's it for you, then?” she whispered. “You can’t see yourself with me instead? Not after all we’ve been through?”
“Izzy.” I looked down at the love of my life, then back up at her sister. They were so much of the same and yet so different. “She’s the slice of good to my bad. She’s the heaven to my hell. She’s always been it. She always will be.”
Izzy looked toward the ceiling as her unshed tears threatened to pour over. “You look at her like I wish you’d look at me.”
“You and I are too much the same, Izzy. You gotta see that, right?” I sighed. “And I’ve helped you more than most men, but it hasn’t ever been there for us. The chemistry…”
She shrugged. “I don’t need chemistry. I needed someone to believe in me, and you did more than anyone in my life. Addicts normally don’t get that.”
“You will.”
“You’re so sure of it?” She tilted her head and pulled roughly on her hair, a gesture so much like her sister’s but completely different at the same time. “I’m not, but I am sure I want what you have with her. I want a man who can face anything for me, and you’ll do that for her. It kills me that you can’t do that for me.”
She curled her arms around herself then, tears overflowing. Izzy was as much a little sister to me as a real one could be, and I pulled her in for a hug to comfort her.
Nurses and doctors filed in. Vitals were taken. We straightened up to answer the questions about witnessing Lilah wake up.
Things looked better. They knew she was on her way to getting there. The brain trauma caused these bouts, and she’d be good as new soon.
I still stayed the night.
Izzy went home, and the next morning I left to fetch breakfast.
Lilah woke up while I was gone, and her brothers got to her side.
It happened fast. Dimitri stood outside her room. He, along with his other brothers, was a spitting guy image of his sisters with dark hair and hazel eyes too. Except his held a death glare filled with rage I didn’t want to meet. I lifted the breakfast bag and tried for the easy route. “Brought us all some fuel.”
He reared back and swung fast but not fast enough. I dodged his first punch before he came at me again, right hook, then left. He missed both times.
The fact that I had him in a headlock while still holding our food was a pretty good indicator that he wasn’t going to win this fight. He wriggled in my choke hold and mumbled, “You’re a fucking asshole.”
“Agreed, but let’s not do this here.”
“Oh, fuck off,” he wheezed because he couldn’t breathe. He was the youngest of the brothers. His fighting showed it.
I let him go, and he fell to his knees, gasping for air.
“I’m here just as concerned as any of you.”
“As any of us? You put both our sisters in danger. And it’s Delilah!” he shouted, disbelief in his voice. “She could have died.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I walked up to him and kneeled down, setting the breakfast food right next to him. “You think I don’t know we could have lost her?”
We started at one another a long time after that. The look in his eyes was foreign and filled with a fury I never wanted to witness again. The Hardy family had taken me in as one of their own, but now that one of their own was hurt, I was the outsider.
I’d known it was coming, but the impact still felt like a bomb blowing up in my face, the shrapnel cutting deep into the insecurities I already had.
I was the only child of an Armanelli, and I was trying to prove to a nice, upstanding family that I was good enough for their daughter. My best friend’s little sister.
I heard Dom’s voice in her room, heard her whispering back to him. I stared past Dimitri as he said, “She doesn’t want to see you.”
“What?” I growled, my whole body rebelling at the news.
“She actually winced when Dom brought you up. She said if you come here, she doesn’t want to see you. And she wants to rest. She doesn’t want anyone here.”
“She’s not thinking straight,” I told him, although I knew that wasn’t true. The woman was shutting everyone out fast and quick, ready to barricade the room so she could hurt on her own. She’d done it before, but I wouldn’t let her do it again. “Give me her physical update.”