The words "blood donation" were like a needle, precisely piercing my feigned calm.
I jerked my hand back with such force that it startled him. Looking at his bewildered face, a metallic taste rose in my throat—the lingering fear from coughing up blood these past few days. I took two steps back, my back pressed against the cold wall, my eyes brimming with resistance, my voice trembling with suppressed emotion: "Liam, I've been coughing up blood these past few days, can't you see? Please don't force me, okay?"
I wasn't begging; I was questioning him. Questioning how he could be so heartless as to treat someone who was half-dead as an inexhaustible blood bag.
A flicker of hesitation crossed his eyes, but it vanished in an instant, as quickly as my imagination. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but his phone suddenly rang sharply in his pocket.
The ringtone was a special melody he had specially created for Vanessa.
He turned around almost instinctively, his back to me, and pressed the answer button, not even sparing me a glance. I leaned against the wall, listening to the tenderness pouring out in his voice, a kind of indulgence that my son and I had never received before.