The first voice I heard was Bastian’s. “If she wants to order them for the room, we don’t care.”
“Well, I do. There’s no point to a hundred bouquets of flowers. Men don’t care about flowers.” Jett’s voice sounded perturbed.
“He will. Those flowers sort of smell like Katie. So he’ll love them,” Vick said in a lighter tone than everyone else I’d heard so far.
Silence stretched long enough for me to grow concerned. I didn’t know what the hell I’d woken up to, but the fact that Katie wasn’t answering had me opening my eyes.
“Where’s Kate-Bait?” The second the words left my mouth, the second I opened my eyes, everything came back to me.
She jumped up from my bedside to hover over my face, squeezing my hand. “You’re awake,” she whispered.
I didn’t answer her. I took in her curls, the way they fell around her face, how they almost bounced with the slight tilt of her head when I didn’t respond.
“Can you hear me?” she asked, a frown forming fast.
“Of course I can hear you,” I grumbled and winced when I tried to shift in the bed.
“What the fuck, Rome? Then answer me!” She shoved me in the shoulder and I winced.
“Jesus, woman.” I didn’t ask or even wait for a sorry. I’d be waiting forever.
“I’m scared as hell.” Her voice shook as she said it. A steadying breath seemed to calm her a little. “Can you feel your legs?”
“Right. We need to know, do you think you’re paralyzed? Do you have amnesia?” Vick called out loudly from the foot of my bed.
“He’s not deaf, Vick.” Brey had inched her way up and grabbed my other hand. “Glad you’re talking, Rome.”
“Well, I’m convinced at this point, Katie wouldn’t have had it any other way.” Vick kept rambling. “She’d have found the serial murderer inside her. She’s stacking up more bodies than you at this point and had you died or been permanently injured, yeah, that would have sent her over the edge.”
Jett rolled his eyes and grabbed her elbow. “Let’s go.”
“What? Phantom, you know I’m right.” Vick looked affronted.
“We’re going, Vick.” Jett motioned to the room and everyone started walking out, but Katie grabbed Brey’s hand and those two stared at one another. Bastian patted my leg before he left.
Vick and Jett followed the rest out as Vick yelled, “I’m still ordering the flowers. You’ll want them before they discharge you!”
Brey shook her head. “She’s out of control.”
Katie nodded but didn’t say anything for a long time. She sat there holding Brey’s hand over my chest, and I let the silence stretch, knowing she was working through something.
“I’m used to plowing ahead, guys. I’m used to not feeling anything and then having to move on.” Her moon eyes glistened with tears that hadn’t spilled yet. “I’m feeling way more than I usually do,” Katie whispered to her friend over me. It was a plea from her, a question I couldn’t understand between two friends who’d known one another long enough to share an unspoken bond.
“It’s fucking awful.” Brey’s fingers squeezed Katie’s. “I think you told me once, though, that it doesn’t get better but it doesn’t really get worse either, right? This will be kind of like that. Pregnancy and the kid and worrying about this guy here—it won’t get better in the sense that you’ll always worry. But it won’t get worse either. You’ll get to feel that freaking love, Katie. You wouldn’t trade that for anything, right?”
“I don’t think Rome would let me even if I tried,” she choked out.
“Not gonna happen. You can handle it,” I grumbled.
She squeezed my hand and Brey got up to leave, waving at both of us but not saying a word.
“Hm…” I stared at her hair. “Maybe your hair’s out of control.”
“Yeah, no time for straightening with you in the hospital.”
“That’s all it took to get them back?”
She rolled her moon grey eyes at me. “The curls? They don’t scream lethal, do they? They’re too wild.”
“They’re fucking beautiful. You’re fucking beautiful to wake up to.”
“Not in a hospital.” She sniffed and looked up toward the ceiling. “Jesus, we’re in a hospital and you were dead. Dead for too fucking long.”
The way her voice shook, how she tried to hold back her fear, I wanted to comfort her. “I’m fine,” I ground out, sure as hell I was about to die from the pain in my side.
She sucked in a breath and jerked her hands away from me. “Sorry. Sorry.”
I shook my head and waved her off. My pain didn’t matter. I tried to lift my head but felt the pain in my side too much.
I tried to sit up again. The pain ripped through me; the wound screamed for me to lie down. The sweat started to pour from my body. I didn’t care. I tried again, and this time Katie gasped as I shoved up from my elbows and we saw the wound had bled through from my back onto the sheets.
She moved toward the door, “We need a fucking doctor right now.”
I grabbed her hand before she walked away and yanked her back toward me. I gripped her upper arms and straightened her stance so that she faced me directly. I took in every inch of her. She had a bruise on her face that I ran my thumb over, and she had a cut on her lip that I dragged a finger down. “My baby still in you?”
I’d blacked out when they’d shown up with her. I knew they’d brought her there to kill me off. Ivan wanted her removed after he discovered she wouldn’t deliver him the great grandchild he’d always wanted. I knew she’d be tested, but I knew she’d find a way too. That woman was badass where I couldn’t be, even without any of us by her side.
She jerked out a nod and her chin trembled before she sucked in a quick breath and straightened, blinking back her tears. “She’s in there safe and sound.”
“You have to offer yourself and her on a platter for me to be here?”
“In some way, I guess. I didn’t fight him. I told him to let the bratva pick. I wasn’t going to fight it out with him. This is a chess game, not a fist fight. I did what I had to do.”
“Don’t ever do it again, got it?”
“I’ll always save you, monster.” Her stare was hard, unmoving.
“Save my baby and yourself first, Cleo.”
“My blood is your blood, monster. I bleed, you bleed. You bleed, I do too. We need you.”
“Well, you got me, I guess. The queen reigns, huh?”
“The bratva took down Ivan for me. They drove you here.”
“No shit?” I said, surprised. I knew she could do it. I just didn’t know when or if it’d be before I died. Ivan wanted my head. I thought for sure he’d get it after that injection and being shot.
“Yeah, no shit. Next time you decide to bleed out, I need you to make sure you do it slower.”
I laughed at her order and then wheezed when the pain hit me like a freight train.
“Jesus Christ. You need pain meds.”
I grabbed her and pulled her mouth down on mine. “I need you.”
“You got me. Forever and ever.”
“You did it, Cleo,” I whispered as I stared into her silver eyes. “You won their trust.”
She shook her head, her mess of curls weaving back and forth. “No, Rome. We earned it.”
