Free His Love by M. O. Kenyan

see what no one was brave enough to force me to see. If you didn’t come into our lives, Alessandria would still be frightened of me and I would still be—”
    “A jerk.” Rayne finished and encircled his neck with her arms. Her fingers played with the tiny hairs at the back of his head.
    “Everything that happened to you and me happened for this reason right here,” Antonio said. Rayne moaned as his lips brushed lightly against hers waiting for an invitation. “I think we just owe it to fate to be together.”
    Rayne tilted her head back in shock. She had known Antonio for a bit more than two months and never had he used such words like fate. “Flowery language, are you sick?”
    “No, but I think you are.” Rayne hadn’t noticed his arms slipping under her t-shirt. “You feel a little warm.”
    “I think I got whatever bug Alessandria has.” As if to confirm what she just said, they heard Alessandria call to them.
    “Mommy.”
    “What did she just say?” Rayne asked, but Antonio was already running toward his daughter’s cry for help.
    “Is she delusional? Oh my God, her fever must be worse than I thought.” Rayne sat on the bed on Alessandria’s other side and felt her forehead, her fever was back with a vengeance and now she was seeing her dead mother.
    “Mommy.”
    “I think she’s referring to you,” Antonio said, the shock evident in his voice.
    Rayne ignored the comment. She picked Alessandria up and wrapped her in an afghan. “We need to take her to a hospital.”
    It only took five minutes from when they left the room and headed out to wait for Antonio’s car to be brought around, but it seemed like an eternity to Rayne. Now she was strapped in the back seat with Antonio behind the wheel. Rayne didn’t know how fast he was driving, but she knew his sports car was being pushed to the limit. She tried to remain calm even when Alessandria began shivering in her arms. Rayne tried to warm her up, but she knew there was a limit to how much she could help at that point. Once they were at the entrance of the hospital she didn’t wait for Antonio to turn off the ignition, she opened the door and dashed out with the little girl in her arms. She frowned noticing how small the hospital looked, but it was the only one in the area.
    “I need help,” she called out, as the nurses rushed to her. “She has a fever and she’s shivering.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “Alessandria Burke,” Antonio responded. Rayne hadn’t noticed he was next to her already.
    Usually family sat in the waiting room as the doctor worked on their loved one, but she and Antonio were ushered into the same hospital room as Alessandria.
    “We should have brought her in earlier.” Rayne watched them take Alessandria’s temperature.
    “We didn’t know.” Antonio rubbed up and down her arms.
    When Rayne saw the doctor take out a needle an all-familiar itch came to her. She turned away trying to hide how at that moment she needed something to calm her nerves. Rayne was standing in the middle of a hospital, the one place apart from bars, where she could easily find her fix. She tried to bury what she was feeling and hide it from Antonio but he saw right through her.
    “Nurse, could you get her checked out? She also has a fever.”
    “Come with me,” the nurse said.
    “Where?” Rayne asked.
    “We are going to get you checked out.” The nurse didn’t wait for a response, she ushered Rayne into another hospital room.
    “But I’m totally fine.”
    “When the owner of the hospital says ‘get her checked out’, you get checked out.” She fell silent then mumbled. “After what happened to his wife, I’m not taking any chances.”
    Rayne swallowed her surprise. This was where Maria died. She knew it had taken Antonio a lot to return to the scene of the tragedy. She sat down and didn’t attempt to walk away; this was her way of humoring him and not getting the nurse into any trouble. When the nurse took out the