Val chuckled. “You don’t do sleepovers either.”

She rolled her eyes. Her bed hadn’t been lonely since Italy.

“Come here,” he said, drawing her close. His head dipped to hers and his lips chased away her tears.

He tasted her, slowly, burning the memory of his kiss deep in her soul. Meg opened to him, familiar with the dance of their tongues, and languished in his kiss until he stole her breath.

The soft scrape of his beard left a path of want down her chin, her neck. After only a few weeks, the man knew her body better than any other man cared to explore. The spot behind her ear, the space between her collarbone, the brush of his fingers over her breasts right before he sucked one into his mouth.

He made love to her slowly, drawing her to the bed and laying her down and starting all over again. Head to toe, with plenty of stops in between. When he moved into her, with her, and pushed them both to the point where passion met the stars and flew on past, Meg realized one thing . . . she loved him.

Desperately.

Completely.

Telling him would just make it harder to leave. Instead, she felt the tears gather again, listened to Val say beautiful things in a language she didn’t understand, and made love to him until the early morning hours.

They kept quiet the next morning, made love in the shower one last time, dressed, and went to the hospital to gather Gabi and say good-bye.

Val held her hand, kept telling her they were going to be fine . . .

Meg didn’t see it. His life was in Florida, and hers was an entire country away.

Gabi woke before the sun. The nurse made her rounds and removed all the needles and medications from Gabi’s room.

She showered, dressed, and waited for the doctor’s last visit. She hurt, still. Two weeks and her body had aged ten years.

Alonzo had drugged her. The pills he told her were aspirin weren’t. The strong opiates left her with headaches. The alcohol he’d given her made it worse. Then the pain had gotten better. She remembered her wedding . . . how Alonzo had constructed the whole thing. She’d been high, even then, but she couldn’t say she didn’t know what she was doing. And that was the biggest betrayal of all. After that, everything was a blur. The first time the needle had pierced her skin the euphoria had been instant. She remembered, briefly, that it wasn’t right. Nothing worked against pain like that. Nothing legal, in any event. He had her out on the ocean for a week. She remembered two days of it.

Once she arrived in the hospital, all she did was beg for more drugs. The staff had to restrain her, give her weaker drugs until she could be pulled off them completely. She was humiliated, damaged.

Gabi shook the thoughts from her head, realized she wasn’t alone in the room. “Dr. Hoyt. I’m sorry . . .” she waved a hand in the air.

“Distracted. It’s OK, Gabi. I wanted to check on you before you left.”

They talked about how she was feeling, cravings for the drug she’d held a brief addiction to. She told him of her move to California and he found a list of doctors to follow up with when she got there.

Dr. Hoyt studied the floor, or maybe his shoes, but he stopped meeting her eyes when he cleared his throat. “I-I ah, I know you’ve been through hell. But I need your permission about something.”

Doctors seldom stuttered, and Dr. Hoyt, who had to be in his late sixties, seemed seasoned enough to speak in complete sentences.

“My permission?”

“It’s about your husband.”

She shuddered. “Don’t call him that.”

“Sorry. It’s about Mr. Picano.”

His image, the one of him smiling as the needle slid in . . . “What about him?”

“His brainwaves are nil, the ventilator is keeping his vital organs moving . . . without it, he will die.”

Good. The world would be a better place without him. “What do you want of me?”

“Permission to remove him from the ventilator. The family in Italy has refused to speak to us. We can obtain a court order, but it would be better if you’d allow us to remove the breathing tube.”

You need to work through this to get over it, Gabriella. The therapist’s words sounded in her head.

Closure . . .

Finding her backbone, Gabi stood. “Take me to him.”

Dr. Hoyt’s eyes grew wide. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“You want me to pull the plug, that’s what it is, right?”

“Essentially.”

“Then take me to him.”

It was clear by Dr. Hoyt’s stance that he wasn’t sure what to do.

Gabriella followed alongside Dr. Hoyt, up the elevator, back into the ICU where she herself recovered the first week she was in the hospital. She’d been too disoriented at the time to realize the man who put her there was feet away . . . that the same staff caring for her was taking care of him.

The bastard didn’t deserve it.

A hush went over the staff when they saw her enter the unit. Another doctor stood behind a nursing desk, and moved quickly to follow them into the private room surrounded by windows.

She braced herself, wasn’t sure what to expect when she lifted her eyes to the man who had nearly killed her.

He was hooked up to more machines than she knew existed.

His face was swollen, nearly unrecognizable; the pasty color of his skin was slick with sweat. The smell of the room was a mixture of the powerful cleaners they used on every floor and death.

She stepped closer, noticed the staff gathering behind her, watching her.

Any connection to the man she’d wanted as her husband, as the father of her children, was gone. How could that be? She thought she’d loved him, at one time. The feeling had never been mutual, she knew that now . . . but it had been real for her.