Page 118 of Between Desire and Denial

He shrugged. “Got it synced up with my access when we moved in together.”

“Dimitri—”

He scoffed. “You weren’t ever really fake. I might have denied it for a while and only acted on my desire, but I think I knew you were mine the second I saw you cry at my best friend’s wedding, Olive.”

Georgette stood over my brother as I walked in. She was wringing her hands with worry and when she looked up and saw us, the worry turned to anger. She glanced behind us and said, “Why are they in here?” to my father who had trailed behind us.

“That’s his sister, Georgette,” my father said.

“This is a liability. All of it. I can’t protect you and myself if we get taken to court when this all comes back to us,” she seethed.

She wasn’t concerned for my brother at all, and that’s when I looked at Dimitri. He knew the look immediately, knew I was done with them, that I would forever be done with them. “You can all get out.”

“What?” She narrowed her eyes.

My future husband didn’t hesitate. “This hospital belongs to my family, you realize that?”

“So?” my stepmother threw out. “That’s my son—”

“Stepson,” I corrected her. “And you’re not here for him.”

My father thought he still had some control. “Now, Olive, that’s no way to talk to—”

“How can you be even the least bit concerned with how I’m speaking to her when Knox is on a ventilator, Dad? He could be brain-dead and—”

“That would be a blessing,” Georgette murmured.

My jaw dropped before I lunged for her. Dimitri caught me just in time. “Don’t give her the satisfaction right now, Honeybee.”

I took a deep breath. “Go. Please. Because once I’m done taking care of Knox, I will leave this hospital and I will do everything in my power to never be a part of the partnership you’re creating. Matter of fact, I’ll make sure I’m more of a liability than you will ever be able to silence.”

My father’s face curdled. “Fine. Be dramatic and stubborn. But it’s not something I’ll ever respect. It doesn’t suit you, Olive. You’ve always been a brat of a—"

“Watch your mouth,” I heard from behind me, and all I had to do was lean back to feel Dimitri’s chest as solid as a rock behind me.

“What did you say to me, boy?”

“I said, watch your mouth when you’re speaking to my girl, or I’ll break it apart so you don’t have to,” he said to my dad, his voice low.

“She’s my daughter. I’m her father.”

“She might be your daughter, but she’s the woman I’m going to marry. The mother of my future children. I wouldn’t ever talk to her that way, so I’ll be damned if another man—father or not—does.” He took a deep breath. “Matter of fact, I’m going to need you to apologize.”

“What?” my father whispered.

He cracked his knuckles and kept his eyes on my dad. “Apologize to your daughter before I make you apologize, Mr. Monroe. And try to mean it because after this, your lives as you know them are over. I hope you both realize that, but if you don’t apologize and leave right now, not even your daughter will be able to convince me that you shouldn’t endure excruciating amounts of discomfort in the future. I will make Dante’s inferno look like heaven. Do you understand?”

My father’s stare was full of anger, but he murmured an apology, and then Dimitri growled, “Now, get the fuck out of my hospital.”

He pressed a button on his watch, and security rushed to the room as my father and his wife were exiting. After they left, I held Knox’s hand. It felt stronger than my mother’s had at the end, but the pain of being there with him in that bed was the same.

I wanted to cry, to break down, to curse whatever higher being was out there that let this happen. But instead, I recited my mother’s favorite lines of a book to him. I told him he would be okay, and I fell asleep there for hours and hours.

Dimitri never left my side. He talked with the doctors, and we found that there were lethal doses of fentanyl in him that nearly killed him. He would be kept on a ventilator for longer than I liked, but his brain waves seemed stable, good.

Promising even, the doctor said.

What a word to use when you felt like your world was a storm crashing down on you.