Page 35 of Hannah and the Hitman

She grabbed the hot pepper flake shaker from the empty table beside us and shook some spice on her slice. After a few bites, she asked, “Are youreallya mortician?”

I shoved a bite into my mouth and dropped my crust on my plate, which she reached across and snagged. I had to finish chewing to answer. “No.”

Relief made her practically wilt in the chair.

“What’s wrong with a mortician?” I wondered. There really was job security. It wasn’t like they were going to run out of customers, especially if I kept working.

“Dead bodies.” She picked up her red plastic cup again and had some more soda.

“Squeamish?” I asked, at a loss. It was my job to make dead bodies, like employees at McDonalds made hamburgers. They were the final product I was paid for.

With the shake of her head, her hair slid over her shoulder. Hair that I knew felt like strands of silk between my fingers. That I knew she liked having tugged.

Remembering her pizza, she took a bite, chewed.

“I got pretty close to dying a few months ago,” she admitted. “I’m all for staying alive.”

Oh shit. Her brain tumor. Panic made my stomach feel greasy and not from the mozzarella. I didn’t know anything about brain tumors, but yeah, those things were usually fatal. I’d never have met her. I was saving the world by killing the people I did, but her loss would ruin it.

I doubted she would see the difference between the two.

I saw it clearly. It was quick, my feelings for her. Myprotectiveness was fierce. I’d do anything to protect Hannah. To keep her safe. Not only because I was a selfish asshole and wanted her all to myself, but because she needed someone on her side. Someone to have her back. Hell, to hold her fucking hand. It didn’t seem like she had much of that these days.

“Your brain tumor.”

She nodded.

I talked all the time with Dax about death. Big Mike had made it simple: some people needed to be taken care of. Bad guys needed to be eliminated. It meant nothing to us. But sweet, innocent, very naughty Hannah dying? I clenched my teeth.

“Will you tell me about it?”

She sighed and set her slice down. Wiped her fingers on her napkin. “I was getting headaches. Then weakness in my arms and legs. My doctors weren’t sure what it was, so I had an MRI and there it was.” She tapped her head with her left hand.

“At dinner, your mother mentioned you had surgery.”

She nodded. I doubted she knew she was shredding her napkin into little bits. I knew she wasn’t meeting my eyes because this was tough for her. Fuck, she was strong. A fucking brain tumor. FUCK. I wanted to round the table and hug the hell out of her. Instead, I reached out and took her hand, the remainder of the napkin dropping.

Her gaze lifted to mine. How had I considered her innocent even moments earlier? She’d experienced so much, and I could see it in her eyes. She hid it well, but I noticed.

I was starting toseeher.

“It’s called gamma knife radiosurgery. It’s actually radiation,not surgery, since they didn’t cut into my head or anything, but she calls it that anyway.”

I squeezed her fingers. She tried to pull them away, but I wasn’t letting go. Not now, not ever. “You had radiation?”

She nodded. Oh fuck.

“Like for cancer?” I realized what I was feeling was panic. I didn’t know anything about radiation treatments other than people who were really sick got them. Ignorant of me not to know more, but I was pretty much healthy, never had to go to a doctor–other than a few years ago when I broke my finger hand fighting with a German bomb maker–and never had to wonder.

Until now. Now, I wanted to know everything.

She shook her head. “No. Not cancer. It was a benign meningioma. But yes, it was a kind of radiation where they aim gamma rays at the tumor and blast it. It took a few hours, and I was awake but totally out of it.”

She was offering a simplified version of what happened. Maybe it was because I was freaking out and wanted to make it out to be less than it was. Or maybe she didn’t really want to talk about it much.

Even what she shared sounded like fucking hell. And had been rough, totally manhandled her earlier with my need to see her come. I’d shoved her up against a row of shelves and finger banged her. I could have hurt her.

I was a selfish asshole.