Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
She left on that, though her words hadn’t made me feel particularly warm or hopeful. Ranger had also many reasons to live. He was strong. He was loved. If there had been a way he could’ve fought his way back to us, he would’ve done it.
I stood in the doorway, just staring at Kace. I wanted to hover there, maybe forever. Because in this doorway, he was alive, none of the realities of what his life might be—what my life might be—could catch me in this doorway.
My boot moved. Then the other. He looked even was worse when I got to his bedside. The side of his face was swollen, covered with scratches and scrapes. From his face being scraped across the road, I guessed. My stomach lurched at the vision of his injuries. How something simple like a driver’s error, a distracted moment, could end so many things.
It wasn’t as quiet in here as I’d expected. I had imagined without Kace’s presence, without his smile, his easy words, his hard words, without any of his words really, that there would be nothing but a cruel silence filling the room. The same one that was there when I was cleaning my husband’s bloody body two years ago.
But there was the beep of the monitors he was strapped to. A low hum. Sounds of nurses, patients and doctors moving around in the hallways. My heart thumping between my ears.
My fingers moved to trail his. They were slightly scraped up too. The rings he usually wore were gone. I wondered what happened to them. Had the doctors taken them off? What about the necklace Lily made him that he wore every day, even in the shower?
I checked his neck. That was gone too.
I was thankful for his tattoos. For the permanence of them. His identity, his personality, stamped on his skin so he didn’t seem so anonymous laying in this bed. He was somebody. He was ours.
“I don’t think you can actually hear me right now,” I rasped, my voice a hoarse whisper. “I think maybe that’s something doctor’s say to people to try to make them feel better. To soften all the hard edges of this. Or maybe because the talking thing isn’t even for you. Maybe it’s for me. Being able to talk to you is a reminder you’re not gone.” My fingers interlaced with his. He was still warm.
“I know I’m meant to sit here and tell you I know you’re going to make it through. Know you’d never leave us. But that’s not how it works. You are not in control of this. Something else is. That makes it so much harder, doesn’t it? That neither of us are in control of what life will look like. I’ve gotta say, I can’t even think of a life that doesn’t have you in it. You managed to find your way into our lives, and it just isn’t fair for you to leave us yet.” I paused, tears prickling the backs of my eyes.
I took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling, doing my best to hold them back. I couldn’t let them fall. Not yet. I’d either cry with joy when he opened his eyes and said my name, or I’d fall apart in the shower after burying the second man I’d loved.
Either way, I had to hold it together for now.
“We’ll be waiting for you,” I whispered. “To come back to us.”
Six Months Later
“Okay, babe, I’m not a snob, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I’m afraid I’m not doing my job as your Old Man if I let you walk in there, let alone catch whatever STD is living on the sheets in those rooms.”
I smiled, watching Kace screw up his face at the exterior of the motel. He was still leaning on a cane that he was expected to need for another few weeks. He’d tried to tell me he didn’t, but that hadn’t worked. Not with me. Not with Lily. Or Jack. Or even any of the macho men of the Sons of Templar. Sure, they were mens’ men, alpha males to the max, but they also weren’t about to let their brother jeopardize his health for any kind of dumb masculinity bullshit.
It hurt me to see him need to use it. The slight hardness in his eyes illustrating that he was in pain. But he was alive to feel pain. And as much as I hated for him to suffer, that was all that mattered. And the doctors had assured us—me, many times—that he was going to heal completely as long as he used the cane, did his rehab and took it easy.
He did most of those things.
Except when it came to sex and his bike. Two things he did not ever do easy. I should’ve fought harder, but I was a weak, selfish woman. I liked being fucked hard by my Old Man. Liked being on the back of his bike.