Page 123 of Ghost Ribbon
“I guess not.”
“I just can’t let him know,” Marco continued. “And you can’t either.”
He looked up at me with those wide, earnest, impossibly sincere eyes. “Okay? Promise?”
“I promise. It’s your decision.”
His shoulders dropped. The tension that had been holding him upright released all at once, and he sagged forward, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “I just… I don’t want anyone to know. I didn’t want you to know.”
“There is nothing about you that I shouldn’t know. Remember, you’re mine.”
He nodded once. “I’m yours.”
I crawled into bed and pulled him against my chest and held him there, one hand in his hair, the other pressed flat against his back, feeling his heart beat against mine through the thin barrier of skin. It was weak.
I could feel it.
The flutter of it. The struggle.
The way it pushed against his ribs like a bird testing the walls of a cage that was slowly, slowly closing in.
“Are…” He swallowed. “Are you going to fuck me?”
I shook my head slowly. “Not today.”
I would never say no to him.
If Marco wanted me, in any form, at any hour, in any state of ruin or desperation or tenderness, I would give him whatever he asked for without hesitation. My body answered to him in ways that still unsettled me if I thought about them too long.
But not today.
Today I didn’t want to fuck him.
Today I wanted to hold him.
I kissed his forehead.
I kissed his temple.
I kissed the bridge of his nose.
I kissed the corner of his eye.
I wanted to kiss his heart and heal it.
Chapter 29 - Marco
It was getting worse.
My prescription had been changed after the last appointment.
The new medications were stronger. Aldenberg had explained why: optimized dosage and adjusted regimen and cardiac function support, all of which sounded very clinical and reassuring in his office and then turned into something entirely different once they were inside my body.
In the beginning, when I started taking them, I was always throwing up. After every dose I could barely eat.
I lost weight.
