Page 22 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

The words slip out of him as if he has been speaking them in sleep for years—stay, angel, quiet, fine, no farther, my angel, my angel.

“Shh,” I say, because shh is a spell in every language.

I slide the cool cloth along his temple and tuck the towel into the hollow by his ear.

He does not flinch, which is either trust or delirium.

I set up the acetaminophen and the water, and when he rolls his head toward the sound of me, I'm absurdly glad for the poor lighting and the fact that I'm alone with my face, which is doing an unfortunate amount of feeling.

The fever lifts something in him I haven’t seen.

It's a little boy who learned to be quiet because quiet makes you invisible.

It's a teenager who watched men in heavy coats and taught himself their footsteps.

It's a man who never gets to be taken care of.

He wakes hard, like surfacing from deep water into a loud room.

One second he is slack and hot, the next his eyes are clear and his body is a fist.

He sits up in a single line that pulls his stitches, and still, he does it because the room has changed shape in his head and his body is trying to catch up.

“Easy,” I tell him, and I'm already closer than common sense suggests I should be. “It's just me. It's the same night. You are fine.”

He blinks once. Twice.

The focus returns, and with it a tension that lives in the shoulders of men who know too much.

He runs his tongue over his bottom lip like the word he wants is there. When he finds it, it has edges.

“You should not keep me here,” he says. “Not for you. Not for anyone you love.”

I feel the heat of my own temper before I hear my answer.

It's not grand.

It's not a speech at a podium.

It's small and specific and mine.

“I'm not the kind of woman who lets a man bleed in the street,” I say. “Even if he is inconvenient. Even if he thinks he is a problem set I'm not equipped to solve. I was raised by a woman who fedpeople who did not deserve it and prayed for the ones who did. We don't throw human beings away because It's easier.”

“I'm not a good bet,” he says, softer now, like he is testing how much honesty the room can hold.

“Good,” I say. “I'm not a gambler.”

His gaze changes the way light changes when a cloud moves.

There is heat in it I have felt from people before, but not like this.

Not without the oily layer that says a man likes the idea of you more than he will ever like you when you are dropped in his actual life.

He looks at me like I'm exactly what I am, and he is deciding whether he is allowed to want what is not good for him.

It should make me nervous.

It makes me brave in a way I don't recommend.