Page 30 of Violent Little Thing

Undeniable

ADONIS

“ S hit, I haven’t seen you smile like this since you used to make me and Lo watch cartoons with you.”

The irritatingly jovial voice of my best friend slices through my mood. I correct him, “It was anime .”

“Right.”

“Why are you here?”

“I wanted to see how she was after the tests. I’ll be here after lunch to go over the results with Dr. Greene,” he fills me in.

Standing, I tuck the phone in the pocket of my slacks, and I meet Silas’ stare.

It’s only then that the strain in my facial muscles registers, and I realize it’s from smiling at my phone.

Smiling because Delilah texted me and told me I could take her to lunch.

Well, close enough. She has no choice since Victor is off today. A win is a win.

“Ms. Delilah has you wrapped around her pinky. I gotta look her in the eye and thank her for this metamorphosis. I’ve never seen you this… open .”

Irritated that he’s talking about me like a fucking science experiment, I snatch my gaze away from him, inconspicuously keeping my eye on the door Delilah is supposed to walk through any minute now.

“She doesn’t have me wrapped around anything. You should be happy I’m being nicer.” I clear my throat, my voice catching around the lie. “Aren’t you the one who said she needs a supportive environment if she’s going to get better?”

“Yeah…” Silas’ voice trails and I avert my eyes to see what has his attention.

Instead of the exit I expected, Delilah emerges from a door near reception with a furrow digging between her arched brows.

Silas looks from her to me and back again, a slow smile stealing across his face.

Before I can tell him to wipe the smugness out of his expression, Delilah reaches us, and her face brightens at the sight of him.

“Hey, Silas.”

“How are you, Delilah?”

“I’m ok.” She tries to shrug away some of the doubt clouding her eyes. “Cold and a little hungry.”

My jacket is draped across her shoulders before she can finish that statement.

Now that I’m behind her, I’m facing Silas, and the amusement flickering across his face hardens my jaw.

Unaware, Delilah peers up at him. “Adonis is taking me to try sushi. Do you want to come with us?”

More mirth deepens the lines around my best friend’s eyes. He shoots me a glance and covers his mouth with his hand to hide an obnoxious smile.

“You know what? I’d love to.”

Pushing away thoughts of rearranging that smirk on his face, I turn to walk out of the building, Delilah and my alleged best friend a few paces behind me.

Two hours later, we reenter the neurologist’s office. Delilah darts off to use the bathroom while Silas rounds on me with a subtler curve of his lips.

“I stand corrected. You’re wrapped around her finger but you’re also in love with her.”

“How many incorrect declarations you plan on making today? The fuck is wrong with you?” I sweep my gaze around the vestibule, checking for nosy bystanders.

Holding a hand over his heart, he narrows his focus on me. “I know these are new emotions for you, so let me explain them in terms you understand.”

High-handed gibberish flows from his lips, but his last question snaps me back.

“Have you slept with her?”

“How is that any of your business?”

He lifts his shoulder. “I’m her doctor. You can thank yourself for that,” he points out in answer to my scowl. “I only ask because we could get her in for a birth control consultation. Just because you like her doesn’t mean she needs to be afflicted with your child anytime soon.”

Like her?

That word doesn’t seem anywhere near adequate…

But my mind snags on something else, my voice dropping to an offended whisper, “Why did you say afflicted like having my baby is some kind of illness?”

“Because it would be.”

“Fuck you. I haven’t had sex with her.” That doesn’t mean it hasn’t crossed my mind every single day and night. In the last six weeks, I’ve found more relief in my hand alone than I had with anybody in the past five years.

My sex drive had always been an afterthought.

I thought it was because I worked so much and found people to be more trouble than they were worth.

Now I know it’s because I needed more than a physical connection to get me there.

I didn’t feel anything with other women because they didn’t fill me with anything.

But Delilah.

She fills me with rage.

With lust.

With longing.

With curiosity.

With the desire to be somebody worth her rage. Her lust. Her longing. Her infinite curiosity.

My libido isn’t a problem with her in the picture.

All Delilah had to do was scowl at me and I needed twenty minutes alone in my shower. The amount of strawberry body wash I’d gone through…

“Does she know about Chiara?”

Hearing my future fiancée’s name quells the rising swell of my arousal and an unwelcome sensation burns the back of my throat.

I know for a fact that Delilah had her period last week.

I know what food she likes and, more importantly, the food she avoids.

I know she loves the sun and dogs and hates reading because it was all she could do to pass the days for so long.

I know she likes dresses, that piano medleys make her sleepy and she likes bright colors that remind her of summer as much as she likes pastels.

All these things are imprinted in my mind. I can recite them without hesitation or prompting.

But Chiara.

Fuck, I don’t even know her favorite color.

I’m sure Victor put a folder together with that info somewhere and I couldn’t be bothered to look at it.

Another wave of uneasiness crashes into me.

Finally, I answer him, “No.”

“Why not? Don’t you think it’s important? I’d want to know if the man falling in love with me was supposed to get engaged in the next few months.”

His next string of words gets lost in the fog of my mind when Delilah walks out of the bathroom, reapplying her lip gloss. The preoccupied look on her face melts away when she looks at me.

When she reaches us, she looks away from me to Silas. “Is Adonis allowed to come back when I get my results?”

Silas’ eyes soften, all teasing and meddling taking a backseat as he interacts with his patient. “Would you like him there?”

Delilah cuts me a glance that’s shorter than a blink and nods at him.

“Yes.”

Dr. Greene and Silas are huddled in a corner of the room while Delilah sits beside me, knee bouncing. My jacket is back around her shoulders, but I know the temperature has little to do with the steady shiver working through her .

Dr. Greene speaks first, pushing his glasses on top of his bald head.

Delilah sits up straighter.

“You had one during the examination.”

“Oh.”

“That’s a good thing. We were pretty confident before but now we know for sure.”

The man in his early fifties crosses his arms, regarding her with a neutral look.

“A lot of times, these things are scarier for the person witnessing them than the person experiencing them. For you, it’s barely noticeable, but for people around you, it can be jarring.

Especially if you’re in the middle of an activity and just stop. ”

“The medication will stop them?” The hopeful inflection in her question breaks a piece of my heart.

Silas gives her an encouraging smile.

“The overwhelming majority of patients who take their meds consistently, are able to get relief.”

Delilah falls quiet so I voice my burning question. “What’s the possibility of this form of epilepsy progressing into another type of seizure? With convulsions?”

“It’s not zero percent but it’s rare.” He looks pensive.

“Then again, we typically see absence seizures in children who grow out of them before adulthood.” His gaze returns to Delilah.

“In some cases, people with petit mal seizures can eventually experience grand mal seizures, or tonic clonic seizures. But we can’t know if that’s going to happen until it does.

That’s why it’s important for the people around you to keep an eye on you. ”

“Okay…” She clasps her hands in her lap and exhales shakily. “Thanks.” Her gaze flits between them. “Both of you.”

“Happy to help you anytime, Ms. Delilah.” Sympathy shines in Silas’ eyes. “For now, I want you to make sure you get plenty of sleep at night, eat well and refrain from driving until you’ve gone a few months without one.”

“Oh, that’s easy. I don’t have a driver’s license,” she announces to the room.

“Not yet.”

She turns to me with a cocked brow but says nothing before looking away.

Our drive to the pharmacy is silent. Delilah spends the time staring out the window with her teeth abusing her bottom lip.

“You’re gonna start bleeding if you bite any harder, menace.”

“Huh?” Her dazed eyes clash with mine before she jolts out of whatever she was thinking about. “Sorry.”

“What’s on your mind, menace?”

Her fingertips comb through the hair around her temples.

“And don’t lie to me,” I add.

“H-how much is this going to cost?”

Reality rips through my resolve and I swear under my breath.

“I can pay for it. I just need time.” Rustling fills the car, and I look to see her rifling through her purse for something.

There’s already over ten million in an account for her and she doesn’t know it. Even if she knew, I wouldn’t let her touch it for this.

Whether she likes it or not, she’s my responsibility in every way that counts.

Stressing over a pharmacy bill is a reality I never want for her.

As long as I’m alive, she can afford anything she wants or needs.

And even after that. It’s the least I can do to make up for the bullshit the other men in her life gave her.

“I’m paying for it, Delilah. That’s not something you gotta worry about.”

“But the doctor says I’ll need to take it consistently . It’s not like a round of antibiotics or something.”

“Then I’ll pay for it consistently. If I can help it, you’re not going without something you need, Delilah. You should never even question that.”

“That’s easy to say now. When I leave?—”

“Nothing will change,” I cut her off, ignoring the pain pulsing in my chest at the thought of her leaving, being anywhere I can’t make sure she’s safe.

Silently, Delilah takes one of my pens out of her bag and I wonder when she stole it. She’s been in my car enough in the past week that it could have been any day.

“Fine,” she concedes. “I’ll take my notebook just in case.”

She tugs the blue spiral notebook out of her bag and gives me a half smile. “I’m ready.”

That fucking notebook is going to be the death of me.