Page 99 of Cruel Kiss

Whatever he wants—another warning, another apology—it can wait. He's not important right now. He can wait forever, honestly, but tonight in particular, he can wait.

I decline the call without a flicker of thought. A little envelope badge blooms in the corner a minute later. Voicemail. I don't check it. I turn the phone all the way off and put it back in my bag.

"Who was that?" Ronan asks. His voice is hollowed out but he's still watching everything, even now, even here.

"Nobody," I say. "It doesn't matter."

He frowns. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, it was just?—"

"Are you two waiting for Navi Akov?"

We both look up to see who spoke. It's a doctor. He's young and tired, with a mask hanging loose around his neck. He looks from Ronan to me. As I feel Ronan turn to stone, I grip his arm.

"Yes," Ronan says. "Yes. I'm— He's my cousin. Tell me."

"He made it through surgery," the doctor begins.

I feel Ronan's arm go loose under my hand, just for a second, like something in him unlocked.

"He's not out of the woods yet, though," the doctor goes on quickly, before we can get anywhere near relief. "I want to be very clear about that. He lost a tremendous amount of blood. One round nicked the lung. The other, we got out clean, but there was a lot of damage. He's in critical condition. The next twenty-four to forty-eight hours are going to tell us a great deal. But he's holding. His vitals are stable, for now. He's a strong man, and he's stubborn, and both of those things are working for him right now."

"He's stubborn," Ronan repeats with a harsh laugh. "Yes. Yes, he is. He's the most stubborn man I've ever met."

"That's good in situations like this," the doctor says kindly. "Keep that. He's not conscious, and he won't be for a while. You can't see him yet—he's going into the ICU, so it'll be a couplehours before he's settled and family can go back, one at a time. But he made it through. I wanted you to hear that from me."

"Thank you," I say, because Ronan can't. Ronan has his hand pressed over his mouth and his eyes shut and his shoulders shaking. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

The doctor nods and tells us a nurse will come find us when we can go back, and then he goes. Ronan just stands there with his hand over his mouth, undone.

I put my arms around him. In the middle of the waiting room. Under the lights. And he folds down over me the way he did on my landing, the way a much smaller man would, and I hold as much of him as I can hold, which isn't nearly all of him, but it's enough.

"He's holding," I tell him. "He made it. He's holding on."

"He said it wasn't him," Ronan says into my hair, ragged. "The last thing—before he went under—he told me it wasn't him. The mole. I doubted him, Cali. He took two bullets for me and used his last breath to tell me I was wrong."

"Then you tell him you're sorry when he wakes up," I say firmly. "You tell him to his face. He's going to wake up, and you're going to tell him, and he's going to give you hell about it for the rest of your lives. Okay? That's what's going to happen."

He doesn't answer. But he holds on tighter.

Together, we settle back into the chairs to wait for what comes next.

In search of some kind of comfort in these awful chairs, I let my head fall back against the wall. Pinned in the corner overhead isa small black security camera, one little red light blinking. It's pointed right at us.

I look at it for a long time. I wonder what it sees. Two people in ugly chairs. A woman holding a man's hand. A man who cried into her hair in the middle of a waiting room.

Does it look real? Does it look like love?

Or does it look like two people who lied their way here?

A man who stole my company and a woman who married him to keep him out of prison? A cheating husband, a fake marriage, a paper deal that turned into whatever this is?

I can't tell anymore. Maybe the camera can't, either.

Maybe it just sees a hand in a hand and doesn't know if it's a beautiful lie or a cruel truth.

Maybe the difference no longer matters.