Phoenix Wright : How to Breathe : Diego/Mia : Part 6 of 7
Title: How to Breathe
Genre: Drama, romance
Rating: R for sex
Pairing/Characters: Diego/Mia, OCs
Summary: Mia couldn’t let Diego go without knowing what happened to him. She would risk everything-her career, her sanity, and her life-to understand why he was poisoned and bring down the woman responsible. Five chapters + prologue and epilogue.
Previous parts: Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4
Warnings: Spoilers for 3-1 and 3-4, unannounced flashbacks, smut, romance, and angst. Contradictions with canon where Mia’s magatama is concerned.
Notes: Lots of thanks to ggmoonycrisco for reading, reviewing, and making sure I didn’t trip over canon. This is the last full chapter; the short epilogue will be posted Wednesday.
***
Chapter 5
“Why now?” Mia demanded. “Why so soon before my second trial? You won’t tell me why you’re going, you don’t even know when you’ll be back-”
Diego’s hand closed around her ankle, lightly and possessively. “Kitten, I’ll do everything a man can do to make it back in time for the trial. And if I don’t, Grossberg will be there-”
“It’s not the same,” Mia muttered, circling her knees with her arms. “He isn’t you.”
“You can do this without me, kitten. I’d wager you could do it without anyone’s help. You’re smart, you’re prepared and nothing’s going to happen. I promise you that.” He leaned forward and kissed her leg, squeezed her ankle and let it go, getting up off the bed.
Mia rested her chin in her knees, watching him. There was an open bag on the other side of the bed, half-packed. She sat up against the pillows, dressed for the oppressive heat of mid-August in nothing more than panties, a flimsy white camisole over her bra, and one of her silk scarves around her throat (not that that did anything to cool her, but at least it was light and it kept her hair from sticking to the back of her neck). Even with the windows and the blinds all tightly closed and the AC working overtime, the apartment still felt sticky-humid. At least she wasn’t wearing jeans like Diego. She would have approved of him going shirtless if she weren’t feeling too moody to ogle him.
He hadn’t packed any of his coffee machines yet, and she supposed there wouldn’t really be room for one in the bag, but what was he going to do without it? For that matter, what was she going to do without him?
Her eyes were suddenly stinging. Not since she’d moved in nearly five months ago had they been separated for more than half a day, a day at the most. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him for a week, or maybe more. Especially not when he wouldn’t even tell her why he was leaving.
“How can you do this?” she demanded suddenly, the words tumbling out of her all in a rush. “Especially now when my second trial’s not a week away? I need you here, Diego! And you won’t even tell me why-where’s that honesty you like to talk about? ‘A man’s first rule,’ isn’t that what you always say? If you can’t even trust me enough-” She bit off the words, pressing the heels of her hands hard against her eyes. Why did it have to come out like that? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been angry with him, or fought with him. They’d never had anything to fight about. Why couldn’t she say what she wanted to say, that she was lonely and hurting already at the thought of being without him?
She heard Diego approaching her, but she didn’t look up until she felt him sink down onto the bed beside her and curl a warm hand around the back of her neck. “Diego-” she began in a subdued tone, her hands reluctantly lowering, but before she could get any farther he leaned down and covered her mouth with his.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, not now-she needed to talk to him, to try to explain herself to him, and yet her arms were sliding around his neck as though by their own volition, and she was leaning back against the pillows as he moved over her, the beautiful warm length of his body covering hers. She kissed him back with the fierceness of everything she wanted to say to him, letting her hands wander over the bare skin of his back, muscle shifting beneath her fingers. He broke away from her long enough to untangle the scarf from around her neck and pull the camisole up over her head, and then his mouth was on her throat as his fingers deftly unhooked her bra, and then it was on her breasts and she was arching up against him.
How was it that it seemed even hotter with her clothes stripped away? His mouth played subtly over her breasts until she was gasping, and when he leaned up to kiss her again she pressed herself against him, unabashed in her near-nakedness. She felt him catch her hands in one of his, and then something soft and silky looped around her wrists, tightening enough to bind.
Mia broke away from him and looked down at her wrists, astonished. He had used her silk scarf to knot them together. She met Diego’s eyes and saw the new gleam in them, the slight curve of his mouth.
“Trust me, kitten,” he murmured, and because she did-completely, utterly-she let him draw her wrists up over her head and secure them to the headboard.
Diego leaned over and switched off the lamp on the nightstand, plunging the room into blackness. It was night, and even the light from the streetlamp outside the window was blocked by the closed wooden slats of the blinds, and in the new darkness Mia could barely see a thing. She lay prostrate and blinking and waiting for her eyes to adjust, and shivered when she felt Diego’s hands settle on her waist, his thumbs stroking her hips before hooking into the elastic of her panties and drawing them down and off her legs.
She listened to the rustle of heavy fabric as he undressed, waiting breathless for his hands on her body again. When they came the touch was so light that she might have imagined it, but no-the warmth of his palms, the slightly calloused pads of his fingers were details her mind could not recreate. With her senses she followed every light brush of those hands, every caress of his fingers as he slowly tormented her, exploring her calves and her thighs and the backs of her knees, her hips and her belly and her ribs and her breasts, seeking out the places on her body that made her shiver or gasp or arch with sensation. It was brutally, exquisitely languid, as though he weren’t leaving in just a few short hours, as though he had all night and all day-eternity, if it came to that-to make love to her.
And yet she was aware, on some peripheral edge of her mind, of some dawning sense of unease, an urgency in him, a restlessness in his body and his touch. She could not pin it down, not with her nerves lit and blazing and her thoughts scattering crazily-it was simply as though the rhythm of him, that which she lived and breathed to, being in him, being part of him, was thrown off, irregular. She wanted to touch him but couldn’t, wanted to reassure him, but her body was flushed with pleasure and wanting and need as his warm, wet mouth followed the paths his hands had marked, and the only words that came from her lips were pleas. He had no pity for her, mapping her body with lips and tongue and teeth for what seemed like hours, or it might have been minutes, or it might have been much, much longer.
His mouth was fire between her legs at last, and she arched gasping to him, pulling at her bindings, her entire body tensed for the spark of release. It came blazing and powerful all through her body, and she was still shuddering in the aftermath when he moved up over her again, the slow glide of his hands over her skin easily reawakening her wanting for him. She parted her legs for him ardently and blindly sought his mouth with her own, the taste of his lips and the deep thrust of his tongue as he entered her.
It was this, this joining, this completion, that made lovemaking with him more than physical, more than she’d ever thought it could be. He knew intimately her body and her mind, and found the rhythm that made her strain against her bindings and rock back against him, her legs wrapped around his waist to draw him deeper into her. She lit bright with a second peak, pleasure sparking along every nerve in her body and simmering through his long thrusts inside her until he came shuddering and gasping against her throat.
She lay heavy in the aftermath of ecstasy with the silk tight around her limp wrists, glorying in the weight of his body on hers, listening to him breathe. It was some moments before she realized he was still shaking.
“Diego,” Mia whispered in the darkness. “Untie me.”
He reached up slowly to tug the knots apart, and as soon as her arms were free Mia wrapped them around him fiercely, feeling his whole body tense and shuddering. “Diego,” she whispered again, smoothing his hair back from his face, kissing his damp forehead, his lips. “Diego, talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong. Please.”
He turned his face away, and she held him tighter, thinking that if he refused, if she lost him now she might just lose herself, but then he tangled his fingers in her hair and pressed his forehead against hers. “I can’t lose you, Mia.” His voice was broken and harsh and his fingers sank tightly, almost painfully in her hair. “I don’t know what I would-” He broke off, and she gripped him tightly before he could pull away.
“You listen to me right now, Diego Armando,” Mia ordered, forcing him to meet her eyes. “You are never going to lose me, do you understand? Never. There’s not a thing in this world that’s going to take me away from you.”
Diego cupped the side of her face in his broad palm and kissed the corner of her mouth. “I love you,” he murmured, leaning his forehead against hers again. “So damn much. Don’t ever doubt it, mi gatita.”
It wasn’t an answer, not really, but she wrapped her arms around his neck anyway, and wished she could hold onto him for the rest of her life.
* * *
November 10
Present Day
A young woman, perhaps her age or a couple of years older, answered Mia’s knock. Her dark eyes swept over her purposefully, without surprise, and then the woman stood aside, holding the door open. “Well, come on in. You’re Mia Fey, right?”
Mia hesitated, then stepped over the threshold and into the woman’s apartment. “Yes…Mona Harper?”
The woman’s broad lips quirked in a smile. “Harper-Whittaker.” Her skin was as dark as chocolate, her round face pretty and her black hair braided into cornrows; she wore a white peasant blouse and a pair of old jeans stained with colorful, dried splotches of paint. “You want tea or something? I have Darjeeling.” She led the way barefoot through her apartment, all polished wood floors and brick walls and high ceilings, airy and urban.
“Sure, that sounds great. Thank you.” There was a surrealism to the encounter, as though Mia were asleep and dreaming. This person knew Diego, she thought as she watched Mona Harper-Whittaker-a stranger, to her-set an old brass tea kettle on the stove and start it boiling. This was someone Mia had never met; they were only connected by the bond of both knowing-and perhaps both caring for-Diego.
“You seem to know me,” Mia said.
Mona leaned against the counter, her long fingernails tapping out a staccato on the polished surface. “He showed me your picture,” she said. Her dark eyes were heavy-lidded, even when she smiled; it made her look sleepy and alluring. “You’re even cuter in person.”
There was no need to ask who ‘he’ was. Mia found herself wondering if this woman was a former lover of Diego’s, if she cared for him beyond friendship, and above all why Diego had chosen to confide in her, to make her part of his plot against Dahlia. That, partly, was what she was here to find out.
“Mugs are in the cabinet over the sink,” Mona said when the kettle began whistling, and Mia took out a pair that both looked hand-painted as her hostess turned off the gas and produced Darjeeling tea powder in a canister. She poured for them both, mixed the tea briskly and handed a cup to Mia.
“C’mon, we’ll sit in the living room. I’ve been expecting you, you know. Ever since it happened.”
Mia had thought as much. She followed Mona to the living room, down a pair of steps from the dining room onto thick white carpeting. The wall above the red leather couch was hung with a huge canvas, an abstract blend of bold primary colors that drew her eyes. “That looks like an original,” Mia remarked as she took a proffered seat.
Mona grinned as she sat on the couch, tucking her feet beneath her. “Yeah, it is. An original Harper-Whittaker.”
Mia glanced up at the painting again, admiring it. “It’s very good. Not that I’m much of an art expert, but I like it.”
“Thanks. I did it in college, back when I was still full of myself enough to put my own stuff on the walls. The only reason I don’t take it down is because it’s so heavy.” Mona sipped some of her tea, watching Mia from over the rim of the mug. “So I guess you have a lot of questions.”
“I do,” Mia answered evenly. “But all I really want to know is one thing.” She’d thought about it the whole way here, not to mention the week she’d spent looking up Mona’s address and staying away from her own apartment, lest any friends of Dahlia’s show up again. But Grossberg had called the police as threatened, who staged a brief investigation, and if they hadn’t found anything they’d at least seemed to scare off whoever was following her. She had given it an extra few days, not wanting to lead anyone dangerous to Mona’s doorstep, but the biggest question on her mind could not go unanswered any longer. “Why did Diego meet with Dahlia Hawthorne? What did he have on her?”
“Have on her?” Mona echoed. “What do you mean, what did he have on her?”
“You know…information. Dirt.” Mia sipped some of her own tea to hide her frustration. This was not what she wanted to hear. After getting this far, could her best and last chance at learning why Diego was poisoned be a dead end? “Whatever it was that made Dahlia poison him. Diego must have placed you deliberately at the scene, isn’t that right? He went to you because you were an old friend of his. Obviously he expected that he might get hurt. Didn’t he say why he was confronting Dahlia, or…?”
Mona rubbed the back of her neck, looking uneasy. “He told me the two of you had been investigating her for some murder or something, but I don’t know about any dirt. Maybe he just didn’t want to tell me.”
Mia pressed her hand to her eyes. “So I guess that’s it.” Her eyes were burning, but no tears were coming-perhaps she didn’t have any tears left in her. After a moment or two she lowered her hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pressure you. It’s just that I’ve been trying for so long to figure out why Dahlia wanted to kill Diego, and now-”
“Mia, you’ve got it all wrong,” Mona interrupted, shaking her head. “Dahlia didn’t want to kill Diego. She wanted to kill you. Her target all along was you.”
Mia stared at her, the mug in her hand nearly slipping from her grasp before she set it down on the glass coffee table. “She-what?” she whispered. “How do you…? How could you possibly know that?”
Mona shrugged. “It’s what Diego told me. He didn’t say how he knew, but-Mia, I’ve known him for a long time. We were friends in college, and for a few years after. I’ve never seen him this scared. He didn’t want you to know, especially if anything happened to him. He didn’t want you to keep looking for her. He wanted to end it, even if it meant getting hurt. So he set up Dahlia Hawthorne, made her believe that it would be you there that day at the courthouse. And then he went himself.”
Mia bent forward, gripping her hair in her hands. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, didn’t know whether to cry or to scream. “I can’t take this,” she said aloud, feeling herself shaking all over. “I can’t take any more of this. Because of me he was-she went there with that poison thinking that she was going to kill me that day. And because I wasn’t there, she tried to kill him instead. She poisoned him because of me.”
“Aren’t you a lawyer?” Mona demanded. “Last I heard, lawyers aren’t known for being stupid. He loved you. He wanted to protect you. He set up the meeting and he made the choice to be there that day. He knew what he was risking.”
“For me!” Mia said harshly. “For my sake!”
“Wouldn’t you have done the same?”
Mia lowered her head, her eyes closing. If their situations had been reversed-if she had found out that Dahlia wanted to kill Diego-yes, she would have done the same. She would have done anything in her power to protect him, to keep her away from him and him away from her. She wondered how long Diego had known, what he had hid from her only so she wouldn’t find Dahlia.
“Before he left town,” she said quietly at last, “I almost fought with him…I was angry at him because he wouldn’t tell me what was going on. I wanted to know why he was leaving. He told me he couldn’t lose me. Now I know what he really meant.” She covered her eyes with her hand again. “But I couldn’t lose him either, and I still did. I wish he had told me! Even if I would have done the same.”
“I’m sorry for you, Mia.” Mona touched her hand, squeezed it briefly. “I really am. I wish I had more to tell you.”
Mia took a long breath. The tears she couldn’t cry were gone now. “It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly, feeling empty, hollowed of emotion. “He did tell me everything, before it happened. I just didn’t hear him.”
* * *
By now, the hospital room in the neurology ward of the Caduceus Trauma Center was as familiar to Mia as the apartment in which she’d lived for close to eight months. It never changed, the blue-painted walls and modern wood paneling, the TV in a corner near the ceiling, the beeping, whirring machines, Diego lying still between white hospital sheets. He never changed. There were small differences, small improvements every now and then, but the changes that she has once looked for-signs of life, signs of awareness-were never there. It was just as Dr. Littlemen said. She hadn’t wanted to believe it at first, how little hope there was for him, but it had come over her anyway, slowly and insidiously-the heavy acceptance, the understanding that he would probably never wake. When did I stop hoping to see his eyes open? she wondered. When did I stop looking for signs that he might be waking? She could not remember.
Mia sat beside him and ran her fingers slowly through his hair; it was nearly all white now, peppered here and there with a few lone dark strands. She hated that reminder of his weakness, his frailty, the damage that the poison had wrought on him. He had lost so much weight-she could feel it whenever she touched his face, the sharp jut of his cheekbones and jaw. She could feel the outline of his ribs on his torso. She had memorized every change, every damage done to his body with her fingers, mapping him by touch the way she used to when they made love. He was still the most beautiful man she knew, but the beauty was marred now, tainted.
She leaned down to kiss his forehead, tangling her fingers with his and gripping his hand tightly. She didn’t know what a person in a coma heard, or sensed, or felt, especially a coma as deep as Diego’s. It seemed likely that he was aware of nothing at all. But if there was a chance, no matter how tiny, that he could hear her, that he knew she was there, she wanted to make sure he sensed her now.
“I talked to your friend today, Diego. Mona.” She kept her voice low and her mouth close to his ear, glad that the door was closed. She had fallen out of the habit of talking to him; more and more on her visits she simply sat beside him, sometimes holding his hand, reliving minutes or hours of their past together. “She told me everything. She said Dahlia had meant to kill me, and you knew it, and that was why you met with her, and why you kept it a secret from me.”
Mia bent her head over his hand, pressing her lips against his fingers. “I just want to tell you that I forgive you for leaving me out of the loop. I’ve been angry with you for a long time for that. I understand now why you did it. It doesn’t make it right, Diego. You should have told me. You should have counted on me to protect you. Like you protected me.” Her voice trembled a little, and she took a deep breath to steady it. “But I forgive you. And I’m grateful to you for wanting to keep me safe.”
She could feel the hollow ache in her insides now, the emptiness. What she had to say to him now squeezed in her chest like a vice clamping around her heart, or perhaps her lungs, and she struggled to catch her breath.
“I’m not-coming back anymore, Diego.” There was nothing she could do to stop the shaking of her voice now. “I’ll visit every now and then, but I can’t-I can’t do this anymore. Not every day, or every few days. I can’t see you like this. It’s killing me, sweetheart.” She closed her eyes, her head bent forward, gripping his hand tightly in both of hers. “I’m giving up on Dahlia, for now, because I think that’s what you’d want me to do. You’ve probably saved my life with what you did. She can’t kill me now, not after poisoning you, not when everyone knows she did it. But I won’t provoke her, just in case. I’m staying alive for you. I’ll keep going, at least until I can find a way to bring her down.
“But I won’t be coming much after this, okay?” she said, and tried to smile. “I love you so much, Diego. Don’t ever doubt it.”
And even knowing what she knew, even being certain he wouldn’t wake, certain there was nothing to hope for, she paused, giving him a moment to answer if he chose. She heard only the beeping of the machines, and the muffled sounds of the hospital outside the room, and silence.
It was as though something broke open inside her then, and the tears that she’d thought she couldn’t cry came, hot and wet on her cheeks. “I guess I’m giving up,” she said aloud in a voice that ended in a sob, and Mia bent forward, pressed her face into Diego’s chest and cried until she had nothing left.
***
Continued
Genre: Drama, romance
Rating: R for sex
Pairing/Characters: Diego/Mia, OCs
Summary: Mia couldn’t let Diego go without knowing what happened to him. She would risk everything-her career, her sanity, and her life-to understand why he was poisoned and bring down the woman responsible. Five chapters + prologue and epilogue.
Previous parts: Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4
Warnings: Spoilers for 3-1 and 3-4, unannounced flashbacks, smut, romance, and angst. Contradictions with canon where Mia’s magatama is concerned.
Notes: Lots of thanks to ggmoonycrisco for reading, reviewing, and making sure I didn’t trip over canon. This is the last full chapter; the short epilogue will be posted Wednesday.
***
Chapter 5
“Why now?” Mia demanded. “Why so soon before my second trial? You won’t tell me why you’re going, you don’t even know when you’ll be back-”
Diego’s hand closed around her ankle, lightly and possessively. “Kitten, I’ll do everything a man can do to make it back in time for the trial. And if I don’t, Grossberg will be there-”
“It’s not the same,” Mia muttered, circling her knees with her arms. “He isn’t you.”
“You can do this without me, kitten. I’d wager you could do it without anyone’s help. You’re smart, you’re prepared and nothing’s going to happen. I promise you that.” He leaned forward and kissed her leg, squeezed her ankle and let it go, getting up off the bed.
Mia rested her chin in her knees, watching him. There was an open bag on the other side of the bed, half-packed. She sat up against the pillows, dressed for the oppressive heat of mid-August in nothing more than panties, a flimsy white camisole over her bra, and one of her silk scarves around her throat (not that that did anything to cool her, but at least it was light and it kept her hair from sticking to the back of her neck). Even with the windows and the blinds all tightly closed and the AC working overtime, the apartment still felt sticky-humid. At least she wasn’t wearing jeans like Diego. She would have approved of him going shirtless if she weren’t feeling too moody to ogle him.
He hadn’t packed any of his coffee machines yet, and she supposed there wouldn’t really be room for one in the bag, but what was he going to do without it? For that matter, what was she going to do without him?
Her eyes were suddenly stinging. Not since she’d moved in nearly five months ago had they been separated for more than half a day, a day at the most. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him for a week, or maybe more. Especially not when he wouldn’t even tell her why he was leaving.
“How can you do this?” she demanded suddenly, the words tumbling out of her all in a rush. “Especially now when my second trial’s not a week away? I need you here, Diego! And you won’t even tell me why-where’s that honesty you like to talk about? ‘A man’s first rule,’ isn’t that what you always say? If you can’t even trust me enough-” She bit off the words, pressing the heels of her hands hard against her eyes. Why did it have to come out like that? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been angry with him, or fought with him. They’d never had anything to fight about. Why couldn’t she say what she wanted to say, that she was lonely and hurting already at the thought of being without him?
She heard Diego approaching her, but she didn’t look up until she felt him sink down onto the bed beside her and curl a warm hand around the back of her neck. “Diego-” she began in a subdued tone, her hands reluctantly lowering, but before she could get any farther he leaned down and covered her mouth with his.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, not now-she needed to talk to him, to try to explain herself to him, and yet her arms were sliding around his neck as though by their own volition, and she was leaning back against the pillows as he moved over her, the beautiful warm length of his body covering hers. She kissed him back with the fierceness of everything she wanted to say to him, letting her hands wander over the bare skin of his back, muscle shifting beneath her fingers. He broke away from her long enough to untangle the scarf from around her neck and pull the camisole up over her head, and then his mouth was on her throat as his fingers deftly unhooked her bra, and then it was on her breasts and she was arching up against him.
How was it that it seemed even hotter with her clothes stripped away? His mouth played subtly over her breasts until she was gasping, and when he leaned up to kiss her again she pressed herself against him, unabashed in her near-nakedness. She felt him catch her hands in one of his, and then something soft and silky looped around her wrists, tightening enough to bind.
Mia broke away from him and looked down at her wrists, astonished. He had used her silk scarf to knot them together. She met Diego’s eyes and saw the new gleam in them, the slight curve of his mouth.
“Trust me, kitten,” he murmured, and because she did-completely, utterly-she let him draw her wrists up over her head and secure them to the headboard.
Diego leaned over and switched off the lamp on the nightstand, plunging the room into blackness. It was night, and even the light from the streetlamp outside the window was blocked by the closed wooden slats of the blinds, and in the new darkness Mia could barely see a thing. She lay prostrate and blinking and waiting for her eyes to adjust, and shivered when she felt Diego’s hands settle on her waist, his thumbs stroking her hips before hooking into the elastic of her panties and drawing them down and off her legs.
She listened to the rustle of heavy fabric as he undressed, waiting breathless for his hands on her body again. When they came the touch was so light that she might have imagined it, but no-the warmth of his palms, the slightly calloused pads of his fingers were details her mind could not recreate. With her senses she followed every light brush of those hands, every caress of his fingers as he slowly tormented her, exploring her calves and her thighs and the backs of her knees, her hips and her belly and her ribs and her breasts, seeking out the places on her body that made her shiver or gasp or arch with sensation. It was brutally, exquisitely languid, as though he weren’t leaving in just a few short hours, as though he had all night and all day-eternity, if it came to that-to make love to her.
And yet she was aware, on some peripheral edge of her mind, of some dawning sense of unease, an urgency in him, a restlessness in his body and his touch. She could not pin it down, not with her nerves lit and blazing and her thoughts scattering crazily-it was simply as though the rhythm of him, that which she lived and breathed to, being in him, being part of him, was thrown off, irregular. She wanted to touch him but couldn’t, wanted to reassure him, but her body was flushed with pleasure and wanting and need as his warm, wet mouth followed the paths his hands had marked, and the only words that came from her lips were pleas. He had no pity for her, mapping her body with lips and tongue and teeth for what seemed like hours, or it might have been minutes, or it might have been much, much longer.
His mouth was fire between her legs at last, and she arched gasping to him, pulling at her bindings, her entire body tensed for the spark of release. It came blazing and powerful all through her body, and she was still shuddering in the aftermath when he moved up over her again, the slow glide of his hands over her skin easily reawakening her wanting for him. She parted her legs for him ardently and blindly sought his mouth with her own, the taste of his lips and the deep thrust of his tongue as he entered her.
It was this, this joining, this completion, that made lovemaking with him more than physical, more than she’d ever thought it could be. He knew intimately her body and her mind, and found the rhythm that made her strain against her bindings and rock back against him, her legs wrapped around his waist to draw him deeper into her. She lit bright with a second peak, pleasure sparking along every nerve in her body and simmering through his long thrusts inside her until he came shuddering and gasping against her throat.
She lay heavy in the aftermath of ecstasy with the silk tight around her limp wrists, glorying in the weight of his body on hers, listening to him breathe. It was some moments before she realized he was still shaking.
“Diego,” Mia whispered in the darkness. “Untie me.”
He reached up slowly to tug the knots apart, and as soon as her arms were free Mia wrapped them around him fiercely, feeling his whole body tense and shuddering. “Diego,” she whispered again, smoothing his hair back from his face, kissing his damp forehead, his lips. “Diego, talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong. Please.”
He turned his face away, and she held him tighter, thinking that if he refused, if she lost him now she might just lose herself, but then he tangled his fingers in her hair and pressed his forehead against hers. “I can’t lose you, Mia.” His voice was broken and harsh and his fingers sank tightly, almost painfully in her hair. “I don’t know what I would-” He broke off, and she gripped him tightly before he could pull away.
“You listen to me right now, Diego Armando,” Mia ordered, forcing him to meet her eyes. “You are never going to lose me, do you understand? Never. There’s not a thing in this world that’s going to take me away from you.”
Diego cupped the side of her face in his broad palm and kissed the corner of her mouth. “I love you,” he murmured, leaning his forehead against hers again. “So damn much. Don’t ever doubt it, mi gatita.”
It wasn’t an answer, not really, but she wrapped her arms around his neck anyway, and wished she could hold onto him for the rest of her life.
* * *
November 10
Present Day
A young woman, perhaps her age or a couple of years older, answered Mia’s knock. Her dark eyes swept over her purposefully, without surprise, and then the woman stood aside, holding the door open. “Well, come on in. You’re Mia Fey, right?”
Mia hesitated, then stepped over the threshold and into the woman’s apartment. “Yes…Mona Harper?”
The woman’s broad lips quirked in a smile. “Harper-Whittaker.” Her skin was as dark as chocolate, her round face pretty and her black hair braided into cornrows; she wore a white peasant blouse and a pair of old jeans stained with colorful, dried splotches of paint. “You want tea or something? I have Darjeeling.” She led the way barefoot through her apartment, all polished wood floors and brick walls and high ceilings, airy and urban.
“Sure, that sounds great. Thank you.” There was a surrealism to the encounter, as though Mia were asleep and dreaming. This person knew Diego, she thought as she watched Mona Harper-Whittaker-a stranger, to her-set an old brass tea kettle on the stove and start it boiling. This was someone Mia had never met; they were only connected by the bond of both knowing-and perhaps both caring for-Diego.
“You seem to know me,” Mia said.
Mona leaned against the counter, her long fingernails tapping out a staccato on the polished surface. “He showed me your picture,” she said. Her dark eyes were heavy-lidded, even when she smiled; it made her look sleepy and alluring. “You’re even cuter in person.”
There was no need to ask who ‘he’ was. Mia found herself wondering if this woman was a former lover of Diego’s, if she cared for him beyond friendship, and above all why Diego had chosen to confide in her, to make her part of his plot against Dahlia. That, partly, was what she was here to find out.
“Mugs are in the cabinet over the sink,” Mona said when the kettle began whistling, and Mia took out a pair that both looked hand-painted as her hostess turned off the gas and produced Darjeeling tea powder in a canister. She poured for them both, mixed the tea briskly and handed a cup to Mia.
“C’mon, we’ll sit in the living room. I’ve been expecting you, you know. Ever since it happened.”
Mia had thought as much. She followed Mona to the living room, down a pair of steps from the dining room onto thick white carpeting. The wall above the red leather couch was hung with a huge canvas, an abstract blend of bold primary colors that drew her eyes. “That looks like an original,” Mia remarked as she took a proffered seat.
Mona grinned as she sat on the couch, tucking her feet beneath her. “Yeah, it is. An original Harper-Whittaker.”
Mia glanced up at the painting again, admiring it. “It’s very good. Not that I’m much of an art expert, but I like it.”
“Thanks. I did it in college, back when I was still full of myself enough to put my own stuff on the walls. The only reason I don’t take it down is because it’s so heavy.” Mona sipped some of her tea, watching Mia from over the rim of the mug. “So I guess you have a lot of questions.”
“I do,” Mia answered evenly. “But all I really want to know is one thing.” She’d thought about it the whole way here, not to mention the week she’d spent looking up Mona’s address and staying away from her own apartment, lest any friends of Dahlia’s show up again. But Grossberg had called the police as threatened, who staged a brief investigation, and if they hadn’t found anything they’d at least seemed to scare off whoever was following her. She had given it an extra few days, not wanting to lead anyone dangerous to Mona’s doorstep, but the biggest question on her mind could not go unanswered any longer. “Why did Diego meet with Dahlia Hawthorne? What did he have on her?”
“Have on her?” Mona echoed. “What do you mean, what did he have on her?”
“You know…information. Dirt.” Mia sipped some of her own tea to hide her frustration. This was not what she wanted to hear. After getting this far, could her best and last chance at learning why Diego was poisoned be a dead end? “Whatever it was that made Dahlia poison him. Diego must have placed you deliberately at the scene, isn’t that right? He went to you because you were an old friend of his. Obviously he expected that he might get hurt. Didn’t he say why he was confronting Dahlia, or…?”
Mona rubbed the back of her neck, looking uneasy. “He told me the two of you had been investigating her for some murder or something, but I don’t know about any dirt. Maybe he just didn’t want to tell me.”
Mia pressed her hand to her eyes. “So I guess that’s it.” Her eyes were burning, but no tears were coming-perhaps she didn’t have any tears left in her. After a moment or two she lowered her hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pressure you. It’s just that I’ve been trying for so long to figure out why Dahlia wanted to kill Diego, and now-”
“Mia, you’ve got it all wrong,” Mona interrupted, shaking her head. “Dahlia didn’t want to kill Diego. She wanted to kill you. Her target all along was you.”
Mia stared at her, the mug in her hand nearly slipping from her grasp before she set it down on the glass coffee table. “She-what?” she whispered. “How do you…? How could you possibly know that?”
Mona shrugged. “It’s what Diego told me. He didn’t say how he knew, but-Mia, I’ve known him for a long time. We were friends in college, and for a few years after. I’ve never seen him this scared. He didn’t want you to know, especially if anything happened to him. He didn’t want you to keep looking for her. He wanted to end it, even if it meant getting hurt. So he set up Dahlia Hawthorne, made her believe that it would be you there that day at the courthouse. And then he went himself.”
Mia bent forward, gripping her hair in her hands. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, didn’t know whether to cry or to scream. “I can’t take this,” she said aloud, feeling herself shaking all over. “I can’t take any more of this. Because of me he was-she went there with that poison thinking that she was going to kill me that day. And because I wasn’t there, she tried to kill him instead. She poisoned him because of me.”
“Aren’t you a lawyer?” Mona demanded. “Last I heard, lawyers aren’t known for being stupid. He loved you. He wanted to protect you. He set up the meeting and he made the choice to be there that day. He knew what he was risking.”
“For me!” Mia said harshly. “For my sake!”
“Wouldn’t you have done the same?”
Mia lowered her head, her eyes closing. If their situations had been reversed-if she had found out that Dahlia wanted to kill Diego-yes, she would have done the same. She would have done anything in her power to protect him, to keep her away from him and him away from her. She wondered how long Diego had known, what he had hid from her only so she wouldn’t find Dahlia.
“Before he left town,” she said quietly at last, “I almost fought with him…I was angry at him because he wouldn’t tell me what was going on. I wanted to know why he was leaving. He told me he couldn’t lose me. Now I know what he really meant.” She covered her eyes with her hand again. “But I couldn’t lose him either, and I still did. I wish he had told me! Even if I would have done the same.”
“I’m sorry for you, Mia.” Mona touched her hand, squeezed it briefly. “I really am. I wish I had more to tell you.”
Mia took a long breath. The tears she couldn’t cry were gone now. “It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly, feeling empty, hollowed of emotion. “He did tell me everything, before it happened. I just didn’t hear him.”
* * *
By now, the hospital room in the neurology ward of the Caduceus Trauma Center was as familiar to Mia as the apartment in which she’d lived for close to eight months. It never changed, the blue-painted walls and modern wood paneling, the TV in a corner near the ceiling, the beeping, whirring machines, Diego lying still between white hospital sheets. He never changed. There were small differences, small improvements every now and then, but the changes that she has once looked for-signs of life, signs of awareness-were never there. It was just as Dr. Littlemen said. She hadn’t wanted to believe it at first, how little hope there was for him, but it had come over her anyway, slowly and insidiously-the heavy acceptance, the understanding that he would probably never wake. When did I stop hoping to see his eyes open? she wondered. When did I stop looking for signs that he might be waking? She could not remember.
Mia sat beside him and ran her fingers slowly through his hair; it was nearly all white now, peppered here and there with a few lone dark strands. She hated that reminder of his weakness, his frailty, the damage that the poison had wrought on him. He had lost so much weight-she could feel it whenever she touched his face, the sharp jut of his cheekbones and jaw. She could feel the outline of his ribs on his torso. She had memorized every change, every damage done to his body with her fingers, mapping him by touch the way she used to when they made love. He was still the most beautiful man she knew, but the beauty was marred now, tainted.
She leaned down to kiss his forehead, tangling her fingers with his and gripping his hand tightly. She didn’t know what a person in a coma heard, or sensed, or felt, especially a coma as deep as Diego’s. It seemed likely that he was aware of nothing at all. But if there was a chance, no matter how tiny, that he could hear her, that he knew she was there, she wanted to make sure he sensed her now.
“I talked to your friend today, Diego. Mona.” She kept her voice low and her mouth close to his ear, glad that the door was closed. She had fallen out of the habit of talking to him; more and more on her visits she simply sat beside him, sometimes holding his hand, reliving minutes or hours of their past together. “She told me everything. She said Dahlia had meant to kill me, and you knew it, and that was why you met with her, and why you kept it a secret from me.”
Mia bent her head over his hand, pressing her lips against his fingers. “I just want to tell you that I forgive you for leaving me out of the loop. I’ve been angry with you for a long time for that. I understand now why you did it. It doesn’t make it right, Diego. You should have told me. You should have counted on me to protect you. Like you protected me.” Her voice trembled a little, and she took a deep breath to steady it. “But I forgive you. And I’m grateful to you for wanting to keep me safe.”
She could feel the hollow ache in her insides now, the emptiness. What she had to say to him now squeezed in her chest like a vice clamping around her heart, or perhaps her lungs, and she struggled to catch her breath.
“I’m not-coming back anymore, Diego.” There was nothing she could do to stop the shaking of her voice now. “I’ll visit every now and then, but I can’t-I can’t do this anymore. Not every day, or every few days. I can’t see you like this. It’s killing me, sweetheart.” She closed her eyes, her head bent forward, gripping his hand tightly in both of hers. “I’m giving up on Dahlia, for now, because I think that’s what you’d want me to do. You’ve probably saved my life with what you did. She can’t kill me now, not after poisoning you, not when everyone knows she did it. But I won’t provoke her, just in case. I’m staying alive for you. I’ll keep going, at least until I can find a way to bring her down.
“But I won’t be coming much after this, okay?” she said, and tried to smile. “I love you so much, Diego. Don’t ever doubt it.”
And even knowing what she knew, even being certain he wouldn’t wake, certain there was nothing to hope for, she paused, giving him a moment to answer if he chose. She heard only the beeping of the machines, and the muffled sounds of the hospital outside the room, and silence.
It was as though something broke open inside her then, and the tears that she’d thought she couldn’t cry came, hot and wet on her cheeks. “I guess I’m giving up,” she said aloud in a voice that ended in a sob, and Mia bent forward, pressed her face into Diego’s chest and cried until she had nothing left.
***
Continued