Chapter 7 - The Blood of a Monster
"Catch him!" Tessa screamed.
Marcus and the two guards leaped forward, barely managing to break Rafe’s fall as he hit the floor with a deafening crash.
"On his back! Get him on his back now!" Tessa ordered, dropping to her knees beside him.
She ripped open his torn shirt. The abdominal wound was a disaster—the stitches were completely pulled, blood oozing steadily into his trousers, the surrounding skin red, swollen, and hot to the touch. His pulse was thready, hitting a dangerous hundred and thirty beats per minute.
"Get my bag from the car!" she barked at Marcus. "And bring me hot water, clean towels, and every bottle of rubbing alcohol in this house! Now!"
The men scattered like soldiers following a general.
Tessa cupped Rafe’s face in her hands. His skin was burning, his jaw slack, his eyelids fluttering as he drifted in and out of consciousness.
"Rafe," she called out, shaking his chin gently. "Look at me. Calder! Open your eyes!"
His heavy eyelids lifted. His gray eyes were glazed with fever, but as they focused on her face, a faint, broken shadow of a smile touched his lips.
"You... you stayed," he murmured, his breath hot against her wrists.
"Of course I stayed, you miserable fool," she sobbed, tears finally breaking past her defense line as she pressed a clean cloth against his side to stop the bleeding. "You think you can just throw me into an armored car and get rid of me?"
"Tessa..."
"Shut up," she commanded, wiping a streak of sweat from his forehead. "Save your strength. You're going to survive this night if I have to pull you back from the grave with my own teeth."
For the next four hours, the grand library of the Blackwood estate became an emergency operating room.
Tessa worked with ruthless, mechanical precision. Without proper surgical lighting, she used two high-powered tactical flashlights held by Marcus. She cleaned the torn muscle tissue, irrigated the infection with saline, and re-stitched the deep lacerations using the emergency suture kit from her trauma bag.
Rafe didn't have the luxury of general anesthesia.
She gave him a local block, but the depth of the wound meant he felt every bite of the needle, every pull of the heavy thread.
Yet he didn't scream.
He lay on the long leather sofa, his massive fists gripping the cushions so tightly the leather tore under his nails. Whenever the pain became unbearable, his gray eyes would find Tessa’s face, anchoring himself to her steady hands, her furious, beautiful hazel eyes.
"Almost done," she whispered at 4:00 AM, tying off the final knot on his side. "Almost done, Rafe. Hold on."
When the last bandage was taped securely in place, Tessa collapsed back onto a wooden chair, her hands shaking, her scrubs soaked in his blood and her own sweat.
Rafe was breathing deeply now, the fever beginning to break as the IV antibiotics she’d hooked to a floor lamp began their work.
Marcus stepped out of the room quietly, shutting the door to give them privacy.
Tessa leaned over the sofa, resting her forehead against Rafe’s uninjured shoulder. Her body shook with quiet, exhausted sobs.
A heavy, warm hand lifted slowly from the floor, resting against the back of her head.
Rafe’s fingers tangled gently in her brown hair, stroking the strands with an incredible, desperate tenderness.
"Don't cry, little nurse," he whispered, his voice weak but clear. "Monsters don't die that easily."
Tessa lifted her head, looking down at his pale, worn face.
"You're not a monster," she said, her voice fiercely absolute. "Don't ever say that again. A monster doesn't bleed for his sister. A monster doesn't lock a woman in a stairwell to save her life. You're just a man who's been hurt for too long."
Rafe reached up, his large thumb gently wiping a tear from her cheek.
"Then stay with me," he rasped, his gray eyes wide and vulnerable in the low firelight. "Teach me how to be a man again."
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Tessa didn't answer with words.
She leaned down and pressed her lips softly against his forehead, feeling the cool, breaking fever against her skin.
